Chapter 4: The long-awaited response

South of Tunisia

March 17, 1943

My beloved Eugene:

How I have longed to write these words to you; from the depths of my being, feeling the cold of your absence and the distance that separates us, like a gag; feeling the pain of your loss. Having been with you, to dry your tears with my kisses.

On the battlefield, between the pain of my companions and being in this winter time, walking in the middle of the mud with some sick people and very few provisions, gives us the courage that we still have and that is the strength to continue.

We have seen the cruelty of the enemy troops, but in the midst of this chaos, my love, it is knowing that the letters you wrote me reached me in months; the smell of your fragrance and that lock of your hair that I cling to my chest. I read your letters over and over again, my lady, and I imagine you playing the melodies on that piano that your grandfather left you.

How much I love you!

Whenever I have the opportunity, I lose myself walking, wanting to be with you, caressing your hair, running my hands over your face, feeling the tenderness, looking at those eyes as clear as water and deep as a moonlit night. Behind the veils of intimacy, in the secrets of dreams, in the dawn of the most beautiful being, everything for you. The perfume that covers you, the silk that covers you while I look at you asleep, without taking care of time. As a waiting cocoon, a beautiful butterfly rises. Taking the nectar from your lips; So sweet that I don't want more. As a simple mortal who surrenders to your charms, sick because you are my medicine. How much could compose you! As the number of the stars is this my verse.

Flying in an airplane, flying through the skies with the freedom that we find in dreams without fear, and unconcerned about "what they will say", without the approvals that question you. When you learn to look from this height, you will ask yourself "if you want to go even further, where the forces follow you?". Taking the hands of the wind and being the breeze that someone needs somewhere in the woods. Where the leaves rise up, playing in a harmony between the heavenly and the human. Which raindrops wash the heart of those who are wounded, and be your company on this path called life.

I write my memories my love, the lines that not even the ink will reach me to express what you are to me. You are in every thought, my remembered and beloved.

Always yours, Patrick.