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“It was a great pity that you lost your little boy,” he said
gently.
“Yes. If he had lived, all the rest would not have mattered.
You speak about will, but when one’s will cannot keep one’s
child alive, what is the good of it? I don’t care to try to make
anything of my life now, because it seemed to me the only
thing I was good for and cared about was to be a mother to
my little boy. Oh, I could have loved him! I suppose I am
an egoist at heart, for whenever I tried to love the others, my own
self rose like a wall between us. But the boy was mine alone.
I could have worked if he had been spared to me. I could
have worked hard.
“I had made so many plans. On the way down here they
all came back to my mind. I had decided to live in Bavaria
with him in the summer, because I was afraid the sea air would
be too strong for him. He was going to lie in his pram under
the apple trees while I painted. There is not a place in the
world I could go to where I have not been in my dreams with
the boy. There is nothing good or beautiful in all the world
that I did not think, while I had him, he should learn and
see. I have not a thing that was not his too. I used to wrap
him up in the red rug I have. The black dress you are
painting me in was made in Warnemünde when I was out of bed
again, and I had it cut so that it would be easy to nurse him.
“I cannot work because I am so full of him — the longing
for him paralyses me. In the night I cuddle the pillow in my
arms and sob for my baby-boy. I call him and talk to him
when I am alone. I should have painted him, to have a picture
of him at every age. He would have been a year old now,
would have had teeth and been able to take hold of things, to
stand up, and perhaps to walk a little. Every month,
everyday I think of him — how he would have grown and what he
would be like. When I see a woman with a bambino on her
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