Текст книги "Letters"

Автор книги: John Barth

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I stood trembling in my sweat. Nature bloody in fang and claw! Under me, over me, ’round about me, everything killing everything! I had dined that evening on crabs boiled alive and picked from their exoskeletons; as I ate I’d heard the day’s news: Judge Boyle denies Kennedy request to cross-examine Kopechne inquest witnesses; last of first 25,000 U.S. troops withdrawn from Viet Nam; U.S.S.R. acknowledges danger of war with China. And Drew would become a terrorist, only accidentally killing others. And you, sir, killed yourself, the only lesson you ever taught me. Horrific nature; horrific world: out, out!

Come misty morning I rowed ’round Sawmill Cove and found nothing. Trappe Creek and all its contents were dewy, fresh, innocent, almost unbearably sweet. Oh, end it! I felt heart-haggard as the Ancient Mariner; looked as zombieish as on the morn of June 22 last. End it. A northwesterly sprang up in time for me to leave cove and creek silently, under sail, as I’d hoped. No good-bye; just out, out. In the river I passed without emotion Red Nun 20. By midmorning Osborn Jones was in his Cambridge slip, fit with reasonable maintenance to sail to the end of the century; but I left him without a qualm, almost sorry I had yet to sail back to Todds Point, so done was I with what had been for 30 years my chiefest pleasure – and with having done.

I walked up hot High Street to the hotel for a shave, shower, and change of clothes; snatched up the accumulated mail without sorting through it; went over to the office to see what was what. Hello, Ms. Pond and partners. Pleasant enough, thank you. Get Buffalo on the phone, please. Come again, Buffalo? No “Monsieur Casteene” to be found in Fort Erie? No one home at Jerome Bray’s establishment (Comalot, you say? Is that first o long or short?) except a family of goats and a crazy lady who calls herself Morgana le Fay? Who you what? Have reason to suspect might be Harrison Mack’s daughter? By all means investigate further! And now, Ms. P.: Joseph Morgan, please, in Fort Erie. Not available? Your name is what? Jacob Horner, administrative assistant? Ms. Bea G., please—Bibi, I believe you call her… Not there? Since 8/14? Never mind whose birthday! Presumably with Mr. Bray in Lily Dale?

Oh, Polly, where are you to advise me? I asked your successor now to get Jane herself on the phone, thinking to share with her my concern for her, our, daughter and perhaps (discreetly) to signal my apprehensions about her fiancé. While Ms. P. dialed I leafed through the mail; saw your dear handwriting on one envelope; tore into it in the dim hope that whatever it contained might invite my apology for so rebuffing you – and found the announcement of your wedding on the 21st.

A wedding performed, you kindly explained on the back of the announcement, after that last desperate visit to Cambridge three weeks since, when – hoping against hope I’d welcome you home, order you to stay, propose marriage on the spot to the woman who’d left me only to prod my sluggish heart – you’d been coldly turned off instead; and even so, madly imagining I might just be ill or distracted, madly praying that one last word might drop the scales from my eyes and heart and prompt me at last to say Come, Polly, Come with me and old Osborn Jones, let’s sail together to the end of the chapter… you called; you telephoned me at Todds Point in the middle of the night, cursing and loving me, hoping and praying; called to propose flat out to me what, decades since, I ought to have proposed to you. And your call was answered by a sleepy young woman’s voice, and for the last time you swallowed your pride; rang off without a word; went home to Florida; said yes at last to your patient friend, and to me a hurt but even yet loving last good-bye.

Good-bye, Polly.

Cancel that call, Ms. Pond. Cancel everything. No, nothing wrong; everything is right, and full to overflowing with intrinsic value, except that I remain alive.

Back aboard the boat I sat for some time stunned, then made a certain codicil to my will regarding the posthumous disposition of my “personal papers,” including this. Home next day to Todds Point, where I spent the Labor Day weekend considering, among other things, Tomorrow Now. Why await the equinox, or the winding up of business, or the illumination of mysteries, before ending, ending, ending it? Was there any reason at all not to have done?

One. In the office on Tuesday morning last, September 2, I found Buffalo on Line One, calling me before I could have Ms. Pond call him. Nothing new on “Morgana le Fay” (which was all I cared about), but all was chaos at that other crazy place, the one across the river in Canada. As of yesterday, Labor Day, Joe Morgan was dead, an apparent suicide; all the white patients and staff were being evicted by the blacks – no Bibis or Bea Goldens or Jeannine Macks among them. Should he continue to keep an eye on things, discreetly?

Sure, but not at the expense of A. B. & A. In my capacity as executive director of the Tidewater Foundation I retained him to investigate and report the goings-on at the Remobilization Farm, from which we ought probably to withdraw our benefaction. Then, discretion be damned, I called Jane directly and told her everything I knew, suspected, or feared about Jeannine, Drew, André Castine, and, alas, poor Morgan – everything except my quasi-incest of three weeks since.

To my surprise, she was unsurprised. Her “own people” had already informed her of all those things, Jane declared coolly, including Morgan’s regrettable suicide, and other things besides, which, given the pending litigation, she was not at liberty to share with me. My retention of a private investigator on behalf of the foundation she did not disapprove; that was my business. Her fiancé’s background, on the other hand, was not; she would thank me to cease my prying thereinto, or at least my bothering her with my “discoveries.” The blackmail threat I could forget about, as she intended to. It was nothing: it had been dealt with, or was being, or would be, by her people. As for Jeannine and Drew: she had already made clear to me her sentiments, which were unchanged. But I was to understand that that business of my possible paternity of her daughter was a fiction which she Jane had never seriously entertained. She regarded it as one of the several, should we say idiosyncratic, obsessions with which I amused myself. Now, if I didn’t mind…

Where is Harrison’s shit? I demanded. Jane chuckled: She would leave it to me in her will. ’Bye.

I telephoned Drew, thinking to go with him at once to Buffalo, Lily Dale, Fort Erie, in search of his sister. Yvonne answered, even chillier than Jane: she was sure she didn’t know where her estranged husband was; their house was hers until the end of the week, when she was leaving Red-neck Neck forever. ’Bye.

So far as I knew, Joe Morgan had no living relatives except his college-age sons. I asked Ms. Pond to make me air reservations to Buffalo for next morning and to have the foundation arrange a memorial service at the college for its first president. (In the event, when I met and conferred with the Morgan boys in Fort Erie yesterday, we arranged the funeral too, to be held in Wicomico the day after tomorrow.)

Wednesday, then, I flew to Buffalo, in pursuit of my shall-we-say-idiosyncratic-et-cetera, consulted and terminated our investigator (nothing new), hired a car, and drove down alone to Lily Dale, to “Comalot.” A ramshackle farmhouse and outbuildings; there were the goats, a rangy Toggenburg buck and two mixed-breed nans, one pregnant. No sign of Bray, but as I drove up, a wild-haired, scowling, long-skirted, granny-glassed young woman came from the barn, already shaking her head at me. The Bernstein girl! What on earth was she doing there? None of my business. Where was “Bea Golden”? Come and gone. Gone where? Didn’t know and didn’t care. Jerome Bray? Hard at work with “Lilyvac II”; couldn’t be interrupted. Might I inspect that machine and arrange a conversation with its owner? I might f – g not; if the f – g Tidewater Foundation wouldn’t put up, it could f – g shut up and get off the premises. She had spoken to me at all, declared Ms. B., only because I’d once arranged bail for her with those red-neck pigs; but that gave me no f – g permanent claims. There might be a police search, I informed her, if Bea Golden didn’t soon turn up. Ms. B. replied sweetly: Till f – g then. As she strode away I called after: Was she also known as Morgana le Fay? Without turning, she hitched up her skirt and flashed her (bare, white, uncomely) bottom. When she reentered the barn she closed the door behind her.

I considered waiting them out, or driving away for an hour and then returning unexpectedly, or concealing myself in the nearby woods and watching for Bray or Jeannine. But the detective had done all that, without success, and my rights in the matter, as no more than a concerned friend of the family, were tenuous. Back to Buffalo.

Thence (yesterday) over the Peace Bridge to Fort Erie and the “Remobilization Farm.” Sure enough, a general exodus of whites was in progress, ordered by a young black chap who but for his green medical tunic might have passed for Drew’s late friend Tank-Top. He called himself Doctor Tombo X; he was the son of the late owner of the establishment; he was surly; and he was perhaps quite within his rights (in the absence of either a will or a board of directors) to evict whom it pleased him to, though I warned him not to expect further support from the Tidewater Foundation. I spoke as aforementioned with Morgan’s sons: stalwart, taciturn, capable boys who however welcomed my offer of legal and funerary assistance. In an hour we’d made arrangements for interment on Saturday in Wicomico, where their mother was buried. About their father’s “freaking out” they were reticent, whether from lack of information or a wish for privacy. No doubt his defeat by the Schott-Cook party at Marshyhope, plus the general upheaval and antirationalism of this wretched decade, repotentiated Morgan’s distress at the loss of his wife, which he had never truly got over. But such dramatic metamorphoses as his are always as ultimately mysterious as is, for that matter, their absence.

Finally I interrogated Mr. Jacob Horner, an odd duck indeed, and his female companion, whom he called Marsha and the others called Pocahontas. I could make little sense of his account of Morgan’s death (Horner I gathered was a long-term “patient” at the Farm as well as some sort of administrator, and an old acquaintance of Morgan’s), but inasmuch as he’d been in the room when Joe either deliberately or accidentally shot himself – indeed, it seems there had been a scuffle between them: an inquest was being considered – I advised him to retain a local lawyer and requested from him, “for the foundation,” a copy of the account I urged him to set down for that lawyer.

On the subject of Jeannine they could or would say no more than I’d been told already: she’d come back “from Maryland” much distressed on August 11th, lingered unhappily at the Farm for two days, then gone with this “Pocahontas” person to visit Bray at Lily Dale for unspecified reasons (I suspect narcotics). Pocahontas had returned on the 15th; Jeannine had voluntarily stayed on. When I declared that she appeared to be there no longer, and that Miss Merope Bernstein was there instead, they shrugged. Perhaps “Bibi” had gone back to Reg Prinz? Such things happened.

Well. This Marsha-Pocahontas woman struck me as a bit evasive, but she might merely have been stoned, or drunk: she had the voice and manner of an old lush, not unlike Jeannine’s, but acerbic. The similarity made me weary, even cross. That Jeannine would have substantially mended her life if I’d kept her with me was neither impossible nor likely; I pitied her, hoped she was “all right,” and doubted either that she was or that if she wasn’t it was owing to foul play. Chances were she was boozing it up in New York City or Los Angeles. I had done enough; I was tired. Even so, I filed a missing-person report with both the Ontario Provincial Police and the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office (whose jurisdiction includes Lily Dale) before returning that night exhausted to Baltimore, to Cambridge, to the Dorset Hotel.

“This morning” (I mean Friday, but time has passed), from the office (nothing new), I tried to reach Prinz, Drew, and A. B. Cook by telephone – that last to ask exactly when and how Bray had turned up from the Prohibited Area and what he knew about Merope Bernstein and Jeannine, No answer at Drew’s house. No listed number in Manhattan for Prinz. Ditto for Cook or anyone else on Bloodsworth Island, where the operator doubted there was even telephone service. I gave up. Left the office. Came out here. Rebegan this letter around lunchtime. And have kept at it unremittingly through the weekend, pausing only to eat and sleep, determined to have done with it, with you, before turning my attention for the last time to myself.

There I have succeeded: my one success in recent weeks. It is Sunday forenoon now, September 7. Bishop Pike’s body has been found in the deserts of Israel; Joseph Morgan’s will be memorialized a few hours from now; Jeannine’s is still missing. Just time to wind this up, or down, and drive over to Marshyhope for Joe’s service – where, not quite done with guilty interest, I hope to press all relevant mourners for more information about What in the World Is Going On.

Did you expect a climax, Dad? A surprise ending, a revelation? Sorry. I here close my Inquiry for good, first opened 49 years ago this month. As you did not deign to let me know why you turned yourself off, I shall not tell you this time (as I did in 1937) how, when, and where I mean to do likewise. Commence your own Inquiry! Begin, what in your life you never once began, a Letter to

Your Son.

I: Draft codicil to the last will and testament of Todd Andrews.

Morgan Memorial Tower

Marshyhope State University

Redmans Neck, Maryland 21612

Friday, September 26, 1969

I, TODD ANDREWS, a resident of Dorchester County, state of Maryland, being of sound & disposing mind, memory, & understanding, do hereby make, publish & declare this instrument of writing as & for a Codicil to my Last Will & Testament, supplementary to my Codicil of 9/1/69 comprising Article Sixth of my Last Will & Testament aforesaid. To wit:

SEVENTH: I give and bequeath to my Literary Trustee named in my Codicil of 9/1/69, in addition to my Letter to My Father, my Inquiry into his suicide, and the Log of the Skipjack Osborn Jones, this Codicil itself, if it survive the imminent demolition of the structure wherein I draft it and of myself, and whether or not it be completed, signed, and legally witnessed.

I write this by full-Harvest-Moonlight, almost bright enough to read by (but I brought with me a red-lensed pocket chart-light from the boat, along with pen, trusty yellow legal pad, and my 7x50 night glasses), in the locked & bolted Observation Belfry of the Morgan Memorial Tower, variously & popularly known as the Schott Tower, the Shit Tower, and the Tower of Truth. Drew Mack and some surviving fellow terrorists – dressed and painted as Choptank Indians to dramatize Redskin Rights in the event of apprehension – got in like burglars a few hours ago to do their work, mugging the night watchman for his keys and his watch-clock. But I entered, not long past midnight, as befits the Tidewater Foundation’s executive director & former counsel to MSU: with a gold-plated passkey presented symbolically by John Schott at last evening’s ceremonial dinner to me, to my counterpart on the State University’s Board of Regents, and to the governor of Maryland as represented by the comptroller of the treasury. A souvenir Key to Truth, which, broken off in the lock cylinder, insures my privacy to write and my freedom from rescue.

By this gorgeous light I can see clear across campus to the Mack mansion, where Jane is once again in mourning. Since her own – no doubt her first – Dark Night, Wednesday week last (9/19), when the yacht Baratarian was found derelict & half scuttled, with specimens of Harrison’s freeze-dried droppings aboard, and charts of the Mexican Caribbean, and very little else, Jane has suddenly looked her age: a metamorphosis more spectacular by far than mine because she had looked so inordinately youthful. I have done what I can to comfort her, without impressive success, and learned in the process that in fact she & Castine had concealed her late husband’s leavings lest I try to “pull another fast one” in the will case “as I did before.” And that the cache had nonetheless been stolen just prior to the Fort McHenry action – evidently but unaccountably by her fiancé! Whatever for, since her loss stood to be his? Neither Jane nor I can imagine. We rule out collusion with Drew as pointless and out of (Drew’s) character, whatever other connections the pair might have had. And we do not know what became of the crew & cargo of Baratarian. Jane declares herself inconsolable, and may be so. But I rather suspect that the opening next month of the first Cap’n Chick franchises and the early, favorable settlement of Harrison’s estate (now that the Tidewater Foundation is about to lose its director, and given Jeannine’s continued disappearance & Drew’s amenability to an out-of-court settlement) will go far towards consoling her; farther at least than my heartfelt but unavoidably detached solicitude.

Jeannine, Jeannine: what has our Author done with you? And if your little cruise with me furthered His plot, can you forgive me? We’ve little time.

My old heart pounds like a spring pile driver after an icy winter. What a heavy, hokey (but not untypical) irony it will be, if natural death prevents my suicide!

That other pounding – an almost furtive pounding, one could call it – is not my heart: it’s Drew and/or his associate Indians at my door. No, there’s no one in here. No, I shan’t open up. Yes, I daresay there is an Emergency of Sorts requiring immediate evacuation of the building; but I am not inclined to believe it a fire, as you now disingenuously claim, inasmuch as you have not seen fit to sound the fire alarm. Come on, Drew, you can do better than that. Saw a bit of light up here, did you? I’ll switch to the red night-vision lens on my pen light. And I saw you, too, my lad, with my 7x50’s, sequestering the watchman (I’m pleased you didn’t hurt him, or sequester him in the building you’re about to dynamite. May you at least acquire the Tragic-Humanist View of Terrorism). Very impressive you are, son, in your Indian redface, warpaint, braids, & matchcoat: the reincarnation, not of the lost Choptanks, but of your white ancestors in redskin drag who hosted the Boston Tea Party & related festivities. I wonder whether your discovery of my death at your inadvertent hands will prove the first step of your regression from radicalism to good old Stock Bourgeois-Liberal Tragic-Viewing Humanism; and I wonder whether I hope it will. I believe I do. Go away, now: time to make your mugged watchman’s rounds for him.

Good. And good-bye, Drew.

Come to think of it, that did not sound quite like Drew Mack’s voice, though it was familiar. Fort McHenry…Wedding scene…Germaine Pitt’s bridegroom? Not likely. No doubt Drew disguised his voice.

At last night’s banquet, my last supper, two Intelligence Types were much in evidence, trying hard to look inconspicuous. Did they have wind of Drew’s plan, I wondered, or were they keeping an eye on me? Drew himself (who now believes both Cook & Castine to have been undercover operatives for rival U.S. intelligence agencies, each sabotaging the other) says that I can expect surveillance at the least, maybe even some harassment, since my suit for subpoena of Prinz’s film of the Navy’s Accident at Barataria Lodge. Do your worst, lads, so long as you don’t foil today’s big bang.

The dedication ceremonies, my souvenir program announces, are scheduled to commence at 9:30 A.M. To the strains of Handel’s Water Music as performed by the MSU Brass Ensemble, an academic procession of the faculty, followed by representative members of the board of regents and trustees of the Tidewater Foundation, distinguished guests (the state comptroller and Dorchester County commissioners), and the now official president of Marshyhope State University: Schott’s maiden ceremonial since his confirmation, not counting the memorial for Joe Morgan. Prayer by MSU Chaplain Arthur Beille. National anthem. Welcoming remarks by the chairman of the board of regents and by the executive director of the Tidewater Foundation, who is to invoke Our Algonquin Heritage apropos of American Indian Day. Official presentation of the Morgan Memorial Tower to MSU by the state of Maryland, as represented respectively by President Schott and the comptroller. Acceptance speech by President Schott (“What is Truth?”). Itemization by the acting provost of the Faculty of Letters of the contents of the cornerstone: this week’s Dorchester News; yesterday’s Cambridge Daily Banner; this morning’s Baltimore Sun (Congress complains of U.S. forces in Laos; Defense Dept. denies. Senator Goodell says cut off Viet War funds); an Algonquin arrowhead found during excavation for the building (other Indian artifacts, unearthed from their burial ground, are on display in the tower lobby, otherwise unfurnished because of Structural Problems); a list of important historical events occurring on this date (General McArthur recaptures Detroit from Tecumseh and General Proctor. Holy Alliance against Napoleon signed in Paris); Polaroid photographs of the ceremonial itself; souvenir program of same; and – if I finish this in time and contrive to slip down, deposit it there, and slip back here – this draft codicil. (Lawyers learn how burglars work. I shall tape the belfry bolt to enable my return.) Official laying of cornerstone by President Schott, the general contractor, and a construction crew (it was to have been Peter Mensch and his stonemasons, but that stout fellow has gone to his reward). Benediction by Chaplain Beille. Recessional: Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music.

These ceremonies will not take place. The fireworks will occur rather earlier than the Water Music: about 7:00 A.M., at sunrise. Charges of TNT, appropriately placed in the already opening foundation seams and other key structural members, will drop this architectural and pedagogical obscenity into its own foundation hole and rebury the Algonquin relics, together with some newer, paleface ones: a future enrichment of the past by the present. This demolition exercise, unlike the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Plot of 1967, has been competently engineered with the aid of construction blueprints stolen, along with explosives and detonators, from Mensch Masonry, Inc., and with the presumably expert advice of the late “Red Baron” André Castine.

Alias A. B. Cook VI? I shall never know. Erstwhile threatener with blackmail of his own fiancée? (I asked Jane quickly at our latest – and final – talk, hoping to tuck up that dangling thread of our Author’s plot.) Perhaps before their firm affiancement changed his strategy, or for some other, more complex reason? I shall never know. Some things Jane was “not ready to talk about yet.” So be it, my dear, and adieu.

On the bridge in ’67 and again at Fort McHenry two weeks ago, I frustrated Drew’s intention; I shall not again. At Barataria Lodge on Bloodsworth Island last week, I did him the favor of saving his life; he will return that favor this morning, unknowingly, by ending mine. It’s a few days past my equinoctial deadline for winding up 13 R, the last installment of my life’s recycling; but flexibility & leisurely improvisation have been of the essence of this reenactment, and shall be to its end. Yesterday Now!

6:15 A.M.: I have spotted what look to me like the late Reg Prinz’s cameramen, with portable equipment, down by the empty dedication platform, filming the “cornerstone” (which has but one engraved face, the tower being round) by Available Light, of which there is more & more as the setting moon lights up the Chesapeake to westward while the approaching sunrise lightens the Choptank to eastward. They ducked for cover when a campus patrol car cruised by. Should they enter the tower (or stay where they are), they have about 45 minutes to live. If I try to warn them, Drew is likely to intercept me and thwart my Plans for the Morning. If I succeed in warning them, they may blow the whistle and thwart Drew’s plans as well.

Now they have reappeared from under the platform. The Associate Indian speaks with them, gesticulates; but he & Drew do not Sequester them with the night watchman. Perhaps they are in on the operation, either from its inception or as of now, and are merely discussing camera angles. Not a bad replacement for their confiscated footage of 9/16!

Now all three take cover again – no, all four: there’s Drew with them – as an unmarked VW Beetle drives slowly up and parks behind the platform. Intelligence Types? Undergraduate lovers or other Innocent Bystanders? Complications.

6:35: The driver has left that parked VW and moved out of my sight toward the base of the tower. Male; couldn’t recognize. Drew & Co. have reemerged, conferred – a touch anxiously, I daresay – and perhaps agreed to disagree concerning the slaughter of the innocent. The Associate Indian now withdraws to a safe remove with the cameramen, and Drew hurries into the building: risking his life, it appears, either to save an Innocent Bystander’s or to prevent a very daring I.T. from saving Schott’s Tower.

6:45: I (and perhaps some others) have 15 minutes or less to live, in which interval I must close this Codicil, attempt to go down & pop it into the cornerstone, and hurry back inside, not necessarily to here.

Hold on: there goes Drew, alone & at a trot, over towards the others. Well, now. Don’t be distressed, lad; you did your best.

6:50: Someone is barreling up from belowstairs. It almost sounds as if he’s got the stuck elevator working: there’s an electrical hum or buzz. All I can hope, sir, is that you’re a culpable I.T. and not an I.E., for you’re about to die. No chance now to deposit this as planned. Improvise, old attorney! Can I make, um, a thick paper airplane of it & sail it out from here at the last possible minute, towards my young friend?

Such a racket outside my door! Somebody really wants into this belfry.

6:53: Good-bye, Polly; good-bye, Jane; good-bye, Drew. Hello, Author; hello, Dad. Here comes the sun. Lights! Cameras! Action!

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF (& of the Intrinsic Value of Everything, even of Nothingness) I hereunto set my hand & seal this 26th day of September, 1969.

T.A.

S: Jacob Horner to Todd Andrews. The end of Der Wiedertraum.

Remobilization Farm

Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

Thursday, September 4, 1969

Mr. Todd Andrews

Andrews, Bishop, & Andrews, Attorneys

Court Lane

Cambridge, Maryland 21613 U.S.A.

Dear Mr. Andrews:

Search for Bishop Pike abandoned. U.S. Ambassador to Brazil kidnapped. Viet Peace Talks suspended until after Ho Chi Minh funeral. Birthday of Anton Bruckner, Chateaubriand, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Darius Milhaud. Anniversary of Battle of Antietam, of Franco’s capture of Irun, of Geronimo’s second surrender, of Lafitte’s offer to Governor Claiborne to defend Louisiana from the British, of Napoleon III’s surrender to Bismarck at Sedan, of Harry Truman’s inauguration of transcontinental television with address to San Francisco Peace Conference.

Of nothing, however, in Der Wiedertraum, of which I Apprised You Briefly in our Conversation this morning. Today in 1953 was Day 48 of the 100 Days between my Arrival at Wicomico, Maryland, where I First Met and Was Befriended By the late Joseph and Rennie Morgan, and my Departure Thence, after Mrs. Morgan’s funeral, for Pennsylvania, with the late Doctor and other patients of the Remobilization Farm. September 4, 1953, was a weatherless day in the eventless interim between 9/2, when Mrs. Morgan and I Committed our First Adultery, and 9/7, when classes commenced at Wicomico Teachers College, now Wicomico State College of the University of Maryland.

Before that, on 9/1/53 (You advised me today to Draft a Detailed Statement for use by the lawyer you advised me to Retain, as did the Ontario Provincial Police, in the event of a formal inquest into Joseph Morgan’s death by gunshot wound on Monday 9/1/69. But it is many years since I Wrote Anything to anyone except myself. This was not Easy to Begin; the 1st-person singular, especially, comes hard; now I Should Like to Rebegin, but Dare Not Stop; you agreed I Might Send you a copy of my Statement, to help you explain things to Morgan’s sons; hence this and the 7 enclosed letters to myself, covering the period 3/6/69-8/28/69 inclusive; I Must Add that my Wife and I are Grateful Indeed to you for arranging the return of Joe Morgan’s body to Maryland and the funeral and memorial services for him there, which we Plan to Try to Attend. There is another reason, too, why Writing It All Down is difficult. Do be patient), I visited the Doctor for my quarterly Mobility Check: in those days I Experienced Occasional Paralysis; was indeed Seized by Same in the Progress & Advice Room that day, when the Doctor discovered I was Unconsciously Imitating my New Friend Joseph Morgan; had to be Remobilized by Pugilistic Therapy; all this is important. And the day before that, 8/31/53, was Eavesdropping & Espial Day, when Rennie Morgan and I Returned at Dusk to the Morgan’s rented house in Wicomico from Horseback-Riding and Conversation about their marriage relationship, Peeked (at my Suggestion & to her Fascinated Disgust) through the window blinds of their house, and Saw that paragon of hardheaded rationalism simultaneously masturbating, picking his nose, and leaping gibbonlike about the study, whereat Mrs. M. was shocked to the center of her soul, and I Comforted Her and the next day Consummated Her Seduction, which I had Not Particularly Known was in process. Subsequent pregnancy, illegal abortion by Doctor, death of Rennie by aspiration of vomitus under anesthesia, cashiering of Morgan by Dr. John Schott of W.T.C., Departure and later Voluntary Sterilization of me, Scriptotherapeutic account of all the foregoing at Doctor’s Rx, chance recovery and novelization of said account by outside party, sudden reappearance at Farm last March of much-changed Joseph Morgan, and ultimatum from him to me to Redream our story and Present him by 9/1/69 with Rennie Alive and Unadulterated.