Brown's Requiem

Dear Fritz:

It has taken me a long time getting around to writing this letter, because it has taken me a long time to resolve my feelings about you. I apologize for my actions on the day of August 2. It was absurd to call you a killer. At the time I blamed you for Sol’s heart attack, which was ridiculous, but understandable. To me you were the catalyst of all those terrible events that awful summer. Later I learned that they had been set in motion many years before, and all you did was stumble into them and try to help the victims as best you could. Thank you for that. Sol has told me that you acted courageously and were responsible for lifting a terrible yoke off his back.

Sol is doing very well, by the way, and so am I. I am attending Milliard and getting good! Some day I will be a good cellist, worthy of the Strad I play with and the love Sol has given me. Sol is here in New York, too, and is enjoying his retirement and nurturing a new fondness for modem art.

I feel strange about you, Fritz, and somehow guilty that I couldn’t love you. I know you had put great hopes on our being together. I sensed in you a desperate loneliness and a great thwarted love of beauty that contradicted the violence that seemed to define your character. Try to pursue that love of beauty, Fritz, try.

Maybe if you listened to less violent music, it would help. Beethoven and the romantics sometimes tend to create violent emotions in people already prone to violence. Listen to some baroque, enjoy the delicacy of it. Listen to the impressionists, they have a great statement to make, one I know you could appreciate.

I have to go now. Thank you for all the help you gave Sol and me. Sol won’t tell me the whole story, but I know you acted bravely, and with great concern for us. Try to love. I will always remember you fondly.