by John Barth
You Were Not Displeased at his ultimatum, only A Touch Anxious that Morgan might now attempt whatever he had in mind by Independence, rather than by Labor, Day. The prospect of Casteene, Morgan, and the hippies gone, yourself and Marsha Blank still here—not displeasing, not displeasing. But no one was perturbed by the Doctor’s orders; no one made the least motion either to protest or to accede. July 4 came, birthday of Louis Armstrong, Calvin Coolidge, Stephen Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne; with a final muttered warning that They’d better be packing when he got back, the Doctor went fishing. Another tremendous Friday P.M. storm promptly exploded on Lake Erie. Among the 200 Feared Missing thereafter: il vostro dottore, no trace of whose body or boat has as of this writing been found.
You Miss him. A Little.
The Remobilization Farm moves on, under altered management. Tombo X continues as Resident Physician and Chief of Physical Therapy, yourself (who Can Account for nothing) as General Accountant, Monsieur Casteene as Prime Mover—and Saint Joe as Progressor & Advisor, with whom this afternoon, ☌♀☽, you Recommenced your Weekly Interviews, Reviewing your Schedule of Therapies and Der (likewise altered) Wiedertraum.
Suppose—Mister Bones had Inquired of Mister Tambo in effect and in desperation at the Minstrel Show—Rennie Morgan were by some miracle restored to him by 9/1/69: What then? Why, sir, rejoined Mister Bones (while Monsieur Interlocuteur beamed upon us all), the dream will take its course: she will reacquiesce to your Seducements or not, reconceive or not, rechoose abortion or not, et cetera. And why 9/1? Asked Bones. Can it be, added M. Interlocuteur, for the reason that on 31 August 1953—Day 44 or thereabouts of your original Hundred Days—after a month of horseback-riding sessions during which Jacob Horner Learned of Joseph Morgan’s passionate rationalism and Played Devil’s Advocate thereto with hapless Rennie, the two equestrians happened to espy upon return at twilight from their latest session that same Morgan, solo in his study, simultaneously masturbating, picking his nose, and speaking nonsense syllables to his reflection in a mirror? And that that (for her) shocking revelation of her husband’s less than absolute rationality can be said to have led, in the plot of that novel at least, to her initial infidelity on Day 46, Nine/Two/Fifty-three?
Not impossibly, Tambo acknowledged. Not impossibly.
Then why, pressed M.I., is not Nine Two rather than Nine One our deadline? By your own chronological abstract of the novel based upon Mister Bones’s Account of this adulterous connection, nothing happened between said espial and said consummation save Horner’s Quarterly Visit, on Day 45, to the Doctor, to Report his Progress and Receive Advice. N’est-ce pas, Mister Bones?
That is how it is, you Affirmed, in that novel.
And see here, Casteene went on: ought we not to consider, for the edification of Mesdames et Messieurs our audience, such matters as the double paradox of Joseph Morgan’s unreasonable rationalism and Jacob Horner’s reasonable irrationality, which, in that novel at least, surely accounted for their mutual attraction? What of Morgan’s complicity—the term is not too bold!—in his own cuckolding? Eh? I mean his proposing those riding lessons in the first place, to divert his wife with Horner’s Company whilst he completed his dissertation? His deliberate and foolish trial, as it were, of her fidelity? I do not even mention his insistence, when the adultery came to light, that she reenact it, on Nine/Eleven and Nine/Sixteen, to “clarify her motives”—which reenactment may feasibly have led to her impregnation? Eh? Eh?
Those are all matters to be considered, Joe agreed: every one.
It was here, you Believe, that the tornado watch supervened and the Doctor issued his futile directives, before you could Point Out that (in that novel, at least) there was no proof that Rennie ever conceived, by you or Joe or anyone else, that fall! Not that it mattered, morally and ultimately, perhaps; but still. And was it in that abortive Minstrel Show or in this afternoon’s paralyzing knee-to-knee in the P & A Room that your Sixteen-Year Penance was reviewed, from your Voluntary Sterilization to your Hornbook and other Scriptotherapeutic Disciplines? There, there, there was the sticking point, declared your new Advisor; and he would come to explaining why, in time. But not just now. For just now, he and Monsieur Casteene had cause to believe, you had a More Pressing Concern, antitherapeutically distracting beyond doubt, and which too might call for some alteration of Der Wiedertraum’s timetable.
Oh?
You are as Distressed as we are, Horner, that the Doctor is not the only member of our cast of characters who has not been heard from since July Fourth. Yes?
Yes.
You are Nowise Comforted by Bibi’s report, upon her return from Maryland for the Doctor’s memorial service on Monday, that Pocahontas was last seen on the night of Four July aboard the Original Floating Theatre Two on the Choptank River off Cambridge, Maryland, in the close company of your former night-school student and later fellow patient Jerome Bray of Lily Dale, New York, a man of questionable rationality, let us say, as well as obscure motive?
Nowise. If ever you Were a Devil’s Advocate of the Irrational, you Had Not Been for sixteen years. On the contrary: you Had Come Desperately To Prize poor fragile Reason, as precious as it is rare. Especially Confronted with Saint-Joe-the-Mystic, you Passionately Wished yourself what you Could Scarcely Aspire To Be: a barrister of Calm Rationality, as Joe Morgan had once been.
Never mind that. The fact is, Horner, your Distress at Marsha Blank’s disappearance with Mister Bray exceeds mine for the loss of a patient, say, or Casteene’s for the loss or absence of his secretary-plus. Inasmuch as while I tolerated or indulged her, and Casteene made various use of her, you yourself Had Come to Feel love for her. Correct?
Well. You Didn’t Know whether you’d Call it love, exactly.
I’m sure you don’t. However, we will so denominate it: you Love Marsha Blank, Horner, for whatever reasons. You are Concerned Indeed for her whereabouts and welfare, the more so in view of Merry Bernstein’s confused but clearly frightened condition when she came to us in May. Even if you Learned, for example, that Blank is shacking up with Bray at Lily Dale of her own volition and is content to continue doing so, you Would Find that information less painful than none at all, or than information that she was being in some way victimized. Respond, if you Please.
Yes.
That is called caring, Horner. We will not split hairs about terminology: you Care for the woman, a rare if not quite unprecedented emotion for you. Now: today is July Tenth, almost a week since Blank’s disappearance. Our schedule for Der Wiedertraum calls for you to “Leave Baltimore” on the Nineteenth and Proceed To “Wicomico Teachers College” for a Job Interview with “Joseph Morgan” and others, following which you were to Go To “Ocean City,” Pick Up a fellow English teacher named “Peggy Rankin,” Engage In Sexual Intercourse with her in “a local motel,” et cetera. My prescription, instead of that, is this: until the Nineteenth you are to Do Nothing. On the Nineteenth, if we have heard nothing from Marsha Blank to contraindicate, you will Leave the Farm, Horner. On your Own! You will Make your Way from here, not to Wicomico, Maryland, but to Lily Dale, New York, thence wherever else you Deem Likely, to Find and Ascertain the circumstances of the woman you Care For.
But.
Having so Found and Ascertained, you will Return and Report, with or without Ms. Blank, depending. In time, we hope, for the next major episode of Der Wiedertraum: your Dinner With Rennie And Me on July 23, 1953, at which I propose that Rennie give you riding lessons in August while I complete my doctoral dissertation. But in no case later than August 1, when Prinz’s company will return to the Niagara Frontier for further shooting.
Entendu? asked Monsieur Casteene, who as Prime Mover comes and goes as he pleases, even into the Progress and Advice Room.
You Pointed Out that though you Had A General Idea of Lily Dale’s location (from the Farm’s having been situated there for the decade 1956-65), you Had Not Been farther than a kilometer or two from the Farm, wherever its location, on your Own, s
ince 1953. They turned to each other and began to speak of other things. It is impossible to be at ease in the Progress and Advice Room; but it is not easy elsewhere, either. Your Mind began to wander; your Eyes to unfocus. Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, etc.
Presently Morgan re-regarded you—their conversation had, it may be, reached some confidential matter—and said Go Write It All Down now, Horner. You’re good at that. Another letter to yourself. Go.
S: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The first of A. B. Cook IV’s “posthumous” letters summarized: the deaths of Joel Barlow and Tecumseh.
A. B. Cook VI
“Barataria”
Bloodsworth Island, Md.
July 9, 1969
My dear son,
So: after five months’ silence, your laconic message—undated, no return address—from which, as from your fifth-month stirring in your mother’s womb, I infer that you are alive, or were when you wrote. Further, from the postmark, that you are in Quebec, or were when your note was mailed. Finally, from your curt questions, that you have somehow acquired and read your great-great-great-grandfather’s four letters to his unborn heirs.
Not very graciously, you ask whether those letters are authentic. How am I to reply, when (a) you do not mention which texts you read or how you came by them (the originals, authentic indeed, are in my possession, awaiting your firsthand examination; I have copied them only twice: once for a certain historian, again for a certain novelist; we shall see which you saw), and (b) you do not give me a return address? I must hope that this latter omission means that you’re en route to Maryland to reput your queries in person—and less brusquely. Meanwhile, like Andrew Cook IV in 1812, I am too full of things to say to you to await your arrival; I must address you as it were in utero and begin to explain not only our ancestor’s “prenatal” letters to Henry and Henrietta Burlingame V but also his “posthumous” epistles to his “widow” (Andrée Castine II), which neither that historian nor that novelist has yet seen. May you interrupt me, here at our family’s second seat—close and breathless this time of year as the womb itself, and as humid, and as saline: a better season for Castines Hundred!—before I end this paragraph, this letter…
At least, before I shall have indited this series of letters, my second such since we saw each other last on Redmans Neck in February, at Harrison Mack’s funeral.
Dear Henry: The undisguised, unbecoming suspicion of your note prompts me to rebegin with a confession. A.C. IV’s four letters are genuine; my transcriptions of them—first for Germaine Pitt, Lady Amherst, whom you may remember from that funeral, later for the author of The Sot-Weed Factor, a historical novel, with whom I am collaborating on a new project—are faithful. But my motive for providing those two with copies of the letters was, while I hope defensible, not without a measure of guile. So be it: the originals await you. Lady A. and I have no further business. (Mr. B. and I do: was it he whose path somehow crossed yours, and who showed you what I neither granted nor explicitly denied him permission to share? I should like to know. Indeed, as I plan to send him summaries of these “posthumous” letters too, I here ask him directly: Are you, sir, in some sort of correspondence with my son, Henry Burlingame VII? If you sent him the four “prenatal” epistles, will you kindly forward this as well, and the ones perhaps to follow? And tell me where he is!)
Revelation of the Pattern, Henry: that was to be the first stage of your conversion of my cause. As it has been revealed to you willy-nilly, by whatever agency, I attach a copy of my letter of June 18 last to the aforementioned author, summarizing the consequences—rather, the pitiful inconsequence!—of its revelation to Andrew Cook IV, and of his revelation of it to his heirs. I pray you pause and review that letter now. All the man wanted, Henry, was to clear the generational decks: better, to unstack the deck of History and deal “Henry or Henrietta” a free hand. Weep with me for the Cooks and Burlingames!
And having wept, let us proceed—straightforwardly, sans ruse or stratagem—to the second stage of your conversion. No need to rehearse to you, of all people, what our Revolution is about, or wherein lies its peculiarly revolutionary character: I know you know it intimately well, and I well know you oppose it utterly. But I know too that while it may well come to pass without your aid—even despite your best efforts to thwart it—I have small interest in its realization, the consummation of our history, if you are not its Consummator-in-Chief.
My son, I love you. You are 29, about to commence your second “Saturnian revolution.” You approach that point—“nel mezzo del cammin,” etc.—where many a journeyer before you has strayed right off the map, to where (Homer tells us) “East and West mean nothing,” nor any other opposites. What follows is propaganda, meant to win you to me. How franker can I be? But it is as loving propaganda as ever was penned. I do not expect you to take this letter on faith: you are a Burlingame! But read it, read it—and come to Bloodsworth Island for confirmation!
Read what? (I stall. I dawdle. Why do you not appear in midst of this parenthesis, as you have more than once astonished me by appearing, without sound or apparent vehicle, as if materialized from ether, with your mother’s eyes, your mother’s accent?) Why, read my digest of my decipherment of the first of Andrew Cook IV’s “posthumous” letters: three removes from an original (before me) whose author’s own wife would not accept it as bona fide!
Read on. I said decipherment. Andrew Cook IV was reported killed by an errant Congreve rocket just before dawn on September 14, 1814, during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor. The five letters which arrived at Castines Hundred over his initials in the seven years thereafter were all in what their author himself refers to—in code—as “the simple family cipher.” (I exclude a sixth letter, the 1827 one from “Ebenezer Burling” of Richmond to Henry and Henrietta V, inviting them to join their father in Baltimore; it is in as plain English as this.) The code is simple, by cryptological standards: a systematic anagrammatizing of individual words, usually by mere inversion, followed by the substitution of numbers and other symbols for alphabetical letters. The phrase Drolls & dreamers, for example (which opens the first letter) is “scrambled” into SLLORD & SREMAERD and ciphered )00‡(†&)(8958(†. With a little practice, one can read and write it readily as English. Omit the first step and you have the code cracked by William Legrand in Edgar Poe’s story The Gold Bug (1843): a coincidence I cannot explain beyond observing that young Poe was “Ebenezer Burling’s” traveling companion in 1827 and that he met the Burlingame twins in Baltimore five years later.
Surely Andrée Castine knew this code. Her apparent refusal to decipher it (or to acknowledge her decipherment) argues that she regarded her husband’s final departure from Castines Hundred in 1812 as an abandonment. She did not disclose these ciphered epistles to the twins in 1825, on their thirteenth birthday, when she disclosed to them the four “prenatal” letters; neither, on the other hand, did she destroy them. Henry and Henrietta themselves, characteristically, professed only mild surprise and equally mild curiosity when “their” son, Andrew Cook V, turned the documents up in the library of Castines Hundred in the 1890’s; if they recognized the cipher, they chose not to acknowledge the fact.
That Andrew, my grandfather, was by his own testimony an able counterfeiter but no cryptanalyst, beyond his telegrapher’s Morse: see my account of him in the letter to B., attached. Interestingly, he seems never to have mentioned the coded letters to my father, nor did my father to me. It was my mother (Andrée III) from whom I first heard of them, just after my father’s death at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Among Mother’s gifts was a prodigious memory for dates: she remarked, in her grief, that my father had been killed on the 27th anniversary of the Bolshevists’ murder of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg, which she had deplored despite her own bolshevism, and the 130th of my ancestor’s “second posthumous letter in the great code.” She spoke distractedly and in French; I could not imagine what she meant by “lettres posthumes” or “le grand c
hiffre,” and I was at the time too bereft myself—and too busy in the immediate postwar years—to inquire. During her own untimely dying in 1953 (cervical cancer), she alluded to them again, this time even more cryptically, so to speak, as “le chiffre le grand.”
1953, Henry, was the mezzo of my own cammin, a road I shall retrace in another letter. True to the family Pattern—of which I was not yet aware—I spent that orphan winter in the library of Castines Hundred, executing Mother’s estate, redefining for myself the Second Revolution, and, in both connections, reviewing like my ancestor before me the archives of our line. I did not then discover (would I had!) the four “prenatal” letters of 1812. I did find what I would come to understand, in the spring, here on Bloodsworth Island, to be les cinq lettres posthumes of Andrew Cook IV, written in what I instantly recognized as resembling “Captain Kidd’s” code in The Gold Bug: Legrand’s cipher!
After a few false starts (SLLORD looked Welsh to me, SREMAERD vaguely Gaelic; I knew neither tongue) I saw the inversion device and set about deciphering and transcribing the first letter. After half a dozen pages I could almost “sight-read” the text aloud. And indeed, as I began to comprehend what I had discovered—not so simple a matter for one who had not first read, as you have, the “prenatal” letters!—I put by my transcribing, read straight to the end… and changed the course of my life.
