"I spent three days in Petersburg, arriving there finding both Veta and Max very ill. Max with fever of 104 or more. Max had all kinds of complications afterwards ending in an abscess in the ear. I looked after him for three days and nights and then Veta got up."
Kovno 1914.
"Every day I live the more insoluble everything seems and the more convinced I am of the insolubility of everything. There are lovely things and tracks in life and humanity, but as a whole the latter is so loathsome and life so sad and dreadful. I feel a terrible fatigue of life and it seems to me that all my energy is simply restless, except the energy to denounce. If I live a hundred years ten times over I think my feeling of indignation for some things will never diminish."
Always still feeling the loss of Tibi, Nelka did not seem to be able to get reconciled. She wrote to her aunt:
Kovno 1914.
"I have just the interest of having begun the thing and wishing to see it permanently established, as I have started it, but at bottom I don't care what happens to anything, and I am only thankful I have had my thoughts arrested momentarily. I had no right to complain of anything or wish for anything as long as Tibi was alive, and what torments me most is not my grief but that Tibi should have suffered. I don't understand anything and I only live in hope and helplessness. I can bear the grief of Tibi's death but I cannot get reconciled to the conditions of it."
During that winter my mother moved from the country where we were living to Petersburg, and Nelka happened to be with us when this took place and took part in the moving. Here is some of the description of the event:
Kovno 1914.
"We followed the next day with a dog and a cat. Veta, Max and I with all the baggage, a parrot 'Tommy' and two small birds in separate cages. I tried to look out for all three and froze my fingers off holding one cage and another that I wrapped up in my shawl. And so we started off in immediate danger of upsetting every minute. A day or two before the sleigh with Veta and Max and her sister-in-law and the driver upset completely in a ditch, horse on his back and toes in the air."
"Max's examinations were to be in two days so of course we tried to beat him into a cold corner to study in the midst of the confusion."