Béla’s fault that I had chosen denial, that I oen kept myself, my
memories, my true opinions and experiences hidden, even from him.
But now I held him responsible for prolonging my stuckness.
at day over beers, one of my fellow students asked me how Béla
and I had met. “I love a good love story,” she said. “Was it love at ĕrst
sight?” I don’t remember how I answered her, but I do know that the
question made me think, again, about the kind of love I wished I’d
had. With Eric there had been sparks, a Ęush all over my body when
he was near. Even Auschwitz didn’t kill the romantic girl in me, the
girl who told herself each day that she might meet him again. But aer
the war, that dream died. When I met Béla, I wasn’t in love; I was
hungry. And he brought me Swiss cheese. He brought me salami. I
could remember feeling happy in those early years with Béla—when I
was pregnant with Marianne, walking to the market every morning to
buy Ęowers, talking to her in my womb, telling her how she was going
to blossom like a Ęower. And she had, all of my children had. And
now I was forty years old, the age my mother had been when she died,
and I still hadn’t blossomed, still hadn’t had the love I thought I was
due. I felt cheated, denied of an essential human rite, trapped in a
marriage that had become a meal consumed with no expectation of
nourishment, with no hope of erasing hunger.
* * *My sustenance came from an unexpected source. One day in 1968, I
came home to ĕnd a letter in the mailbox addressed to me in a
European-looking hand, sent from Southern Methodist University, in
Dallas. ere was no name above the return address, only initials: V.
F. When I opened the letter, I almost fell over. From one survivor to
another, the salutation read. The letter was from Viktor Frankl.
Following my predawn immersion in Man’s Search for Meaning two
years earlier, I had written an essay called “Viktor Frankl and Me.” I