Letters

by John Barth

  Concerning whom, as Jean Blanque stands out of the gulf in August 1820, there remains a tantalizing mystery. When he last queried her in Baltimore concerning the source of her information about the Roman Bonapartes, Betsy had teased him with sight of a letter from Rome written in the Pattersons’ own family cipher. Knowing him to be “a clever hand at such things,” she scarcely more than flashed the letter; even so, she underestimated Andrew’s capacity. The forger’s trained eye and memory caught only the salutation and the close, but those he retained as if transcribed, and in fact transcribed them at his first opportunity: Vs Dryejri D., it began, and ended Nyy vs Yejr, G. Like most ciphers, it was written letter by letter, not cursively; yet the handwriting seemed half-familiar. I could almost have believed it yours! he exclaims to Andrée.

  En route from Baltimore to New Orleans, New Orleans to “Galvez-Town,” he studies his transcription, but is unable either to recognize or to decipher it. Throughout the long voyage to St. Helena—normally a two-month sail, but extended to five by privateering excursions at Isla Mujeres and Curaçao, and by hurricane damage off Tobago—he studies the cipher while perfecting two separate impostures of Napoleon: a public, “false” one on deck for the benefit of Lafitte and the Baratarian crew, based on popular portraits by Isabey and Ducis (short-cropped hair, bemused mouth, right hand tucked between waistcoat buttons); and in his cabin a private, “true” one based on his last sight of the fallen emperor aboard Bellerophon—paunchy, jowly, slower of gait and speech—which he means to use to deceive his rescuers when the time comes.

  Vs Dryejri D… Nyy vs Yejr, G. It looks vaguely Slavic, Croatian, Finnish. He remembers pondering the hieroglyphics in the British Museum in 1811, en route to his rendezvous with John Henry: the stone discovered at the village of Rosetta on the Nile by Napoleon’s soldiers in 1799 and taken by the British, with those soldiers, in 1801. The recollection reminds him of Napoleon’s Egyptian affair with Mme Fourès, the French counterpart of “Mrs. Mullens,” and of his own amorous North African escapade in 1797… Suddenly (it is September 14, seventh anniversary of his “death” at Fort McHenry; in Paris the “father of Egyptology,” Champollion, is deciphering those hieroglyphics with that stone) he has the key to Betsy Bonaparte’s cipher, and to both her “Swiss secret” and her “secret Swiss.”

  The actual words he works out, within reasonable limits, later. Most conspicuous are the repeated sequences vs and yejr; given that y is the only character to appear four times, he anticipates Edgar Poe and calls it e, but can make nothing likely in either French or English of the result: _ _ _ _e_ _ _ _ _. . . . _ee _ _ e _ _ _, _. The character r, which appears three times (no other appears more than twice, but in a text so short the table of frequencies is unreliable) makes a more promising e (_ _ _e_ _ _e_ _. . . . ._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _e, _), especially given the conventions of epistolary salutation and close. Assuming the final character in each phrase to be the first or last initial respectively of addressee and author, and remembering Mme B.‘s first and last to be the same, we have: _ _Be_ _ _e_B. . . ._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _e, _.), the repeated yejr is then surely love (_ _ Belove_ B. . . _ _ _ _ _ Love, _.); which gives us _ _ Belove_ B. . . . _ ll _ _ Love, _.; which is surely My Beloved B. . . All my Love, _. Only the mysterious terminal blank (G in the cipher) remains to be filled.

  But the real key is not Andrew’s sorting of frequencies and correspondences, which leads after all but to that crucial lacuna. It is in the calligraphy of that very G, as it were an aborted or miscarried flourish from its final serif: the first thing that struck him as familiar, but which he cannot be certain he has accurately duplicated. From Galveston to Yucatan, Yucatan to Tobago, he does his Napoleonic homework and covers every available scrap of paper with uppercase G’s; a fortuitous stroke on the aforementioned anniversary—Jean Blanque is pitching terrifically in the storm that will carry off her foremast and half a dozen Baratarians with her square-sail yards—delivers him the key.

  And show’d me at once, he writes, that my errand was very likely a wild-goose chase. That were it not for the necessity of deceiving Jean Lafitte, I should spare myself that endless voyage & elaborate imposture, and make straight for Rome, for the Palazzo Rinuccini, & for the clairvoyant “Mme Kleinmüller”… But there is no help for it: key in hand, he is obliged to postpone for nearly three-quarters of a year its urgent application to the lock—unimaginably protracted suspense!—while he sails thousands of miles down the map, from Tobago to the Rocks of Saint Peter and Paul, to Ascension Island, to St. Helena. And (it must be) in order to give Andrée some sense of his massive frustration, the impatience which no doubt contributes to Jean Lafitte’s suspicions of him, he withholds this key for many a ciphered page to come (I myself skipped ahead at once to Rome and the answer, Henry; you may do likewise), until he meets—on May 5, 1821: the day, as it happens, of Napoleon’s death—the writer of that coded letter.

  In mid-January they raise St. Helena, looming sheer and volcanic from the southern ocean; they lie to for several days just below the western horizon, out of sight of the telegraphs, and seize the first small fishing smack that wanders into reach. Its crew are regaled, handsomely bribed for the imposition, promised more if all goes well, and threatened with death, pirate-style, if all does not. Two of their number are comfortably detained as hostages, obliged to switch clothes with Cook and Lafitte, and closely interrogated. They agree that despite the Admiralty’s semaphore telegraphs and strengthened fortification of the island’s four landing places, fishermen come and go as usual from footpaths down the cliffs, which rise in places twelve hundred feet straight out of the sea. Aside from vertigo, there should be no problem in getting ashore. They even know a concealed vantage point from which to survey Longwood, a favorite leisure pastime among them. But on the question whether their celebrated new resident is the former emperor of the French, there is no consensus: one vows he is, though “much changed” by captivity and systematic poisoning; another swears he was replaced a year ago; a third that he was never on the island.

  Andrew and Jean go ashore (Andrew mimics the island dialect in half an hour); they make the dizzy climb from a precarious landing ledge just behind a surf-breaking rock on the island’s sea-fogged northwest shore, entirely concealed from the official landing at St. James’s Bay. A fortnight’s reconnoitering among the villagers and the garrison discovers the same variety of opinion, in more detail: the prisoner is dying of undulant fever, of venereal complications, of pyloric cancer, of boredom and inaction, of arsenic, of dysentery or hepatitis or typhus. He has gone mad, believes himself an ordinary conscript arrested and exiled by an accident of resemblance. He is that hapless conscript. He is an impostor, Metternich’s creature. He is dead.

  They ascend through subtropical greenery to the temperate middle elevations, thick with cedars and willows, through Geranium Valley to the fishermen’s trysting and viewing spot, a dense bower of shrubs, withes, and creepers overlooking the tidy château of Longwood. Supplied by their hired comrades with food, wine, and blankets for the chill nights, they make a little encampment. Andrew identifies Count and Mme Bertrand, the Count de Montholon. One evening a short tubby chap in military uniform steps into the gardens (modeled in miniature after those of Malmaison) and pops desultorily with dueling pistols at a nearby goat and chicken, striking neither. A bored attendant reloads the weapons. The hidden onlookers turn from their spyglasses: Andrew nods.

  I was fairly satisfy’d it was he, he reports to Andrée, tho indeed much changed since Rochefort & Tor Bay. What most gratify’d me was that Jean was less sure, and must take my word for it. Also, that one glance assured me I could manage the counterfeit, once the substitution had been arranged. Our plan was that Jean would take Jean Blanque up to the newly establisht Republic of Liberia for provisioning, & perhaps seize a Spaniard or two along the way for profit’s sake, returning at the Vernal Equinox. He would leave with me, “for my assistance,” his 2nd mate, Maurice Shomberg, a Pyrenean Sephardic Jew call’d by the Baratari
ans “le Maure” for his dark skin, great size & strength, and ferocity in combat: a man much given to the slicing & dicing of his enemies, and utterly loyal to the brothers Lafitte. Whilst le Maure watcht & waited in the bush, I was to install myself among the gardeners & grounds keepers of Longwood, recruit if I could the confidence of Mme Bertrand (who was known to be impatient with her exile & jealous of Mme de Montholon), verify that the Emperor was the Emperor, sound his temper on the matter of escaping, present our (forged) credentials from Joseph B. & Mayor Girod, & cet. & cet., finally delivering him to le Maure upon Jean’s return & taking his place at Longwood. In fact, I meant to do all of those save the last two, and was both reassured, by Jean’s leaving with me his trusty “Moor,” that he would probably return for us in March; and confirm’d that he no longer trusted me to do the job alone. Le Maure’s great size and visibility were no aid to concealment; he was fit only for hauling & killing, and might well be assign’d to dispatch me to the sharks, once Napoleon was in our hands.

  Lafitte leaves. Andrew befriends one or two of the gardeners, is put to work spading, manuring, terracing. He converses in Sicilian with Vignali, the auxiliary priest sent out only a few months before in the party from Rome, who declares that Napoleon is Napoleon but won’t be for long: the Count de Montholon is poisoning him from jealousy of Count Bertrand. He speaks Corsican French with Montholon’s valet: the British doctors are feeding arsenic to the lot of them. He peddles a pilchard to Ortini, the emperor’s own footman: the new Italian doctor, Antommarchi, is the villain, assisted by Mme Bertrand. The French and Italians agree that Napoleon is Napoleon, and that he is nowise interested in escape. But among the fishermen and farmers who provision Longwood, and with whom both le Maure and Andrew carefully converse, there is more general suspicion that the French are conspiring to trick and/or to blame the English, an opinion shared in some measure by the British physicians on Sir Hudson Lowe’s staff: some believe Bonaparte—“if that’s who the rascal is”—to be poisoning himself, in order to consummate his martyrdom and inspire sympathy for his son’s succession. The only hypothesis not seriously entertained on the island is the one Andrew Cook more and more inclines to as his deadline nears: that while the ailing fellow who ever less frequently ventures outdoors (and in March takes to his bed almost constantly) just might be an impostor, and just might be being poisoned by one or a number of “interests,” he is most probably Napoleon Bonaparte dying in his fifty-second year of a variety of natural physical and psychological complaints.

  So mutual are everyone’s suspicions among the Longwood entourage, so clear (however mixed with grief for their leader) their eagerness to begone, Andrew dares take none into his confidence; and there is no use in relaying his “credentials” to an obviously dying man. It becomes his job to persuade le Maure that he has already made contact with the emperor, who looks forward eagerly to rescue and who is feigning illness the better to isolate himself from English surveillance and mislead suspected traitors in his own household. The equinox approaches, but Andrew’s inventiveness fails him: how on earth to get himself delivered to Lafitte and le Maure as the emperor of the French, and at the same time persuade them that “André Castine” is ensconced in Longwood, composing the emperor’s last will and testament? He had not anticipated so universal and profound distrust, such general assumptions of conspiracy, counterconspiracy, double- and triple-agentry!

  Word comes from le Maure that Jean Blanque has returned on schedule. Lafitte himself slips ashore, cool and smiling. With not the slightest notion how to manage it, Andrew assures him that all is arranged: after moonset next night, two of Bonaparte’s household—the lamplighter Rousseau and the usher Chauvin—will deliver their master to the trysting place. Bonaparte will be harmlessly narcotized, to exculpate him from charges of complicity should the escape be foiled by the British. He is in mild ill health, but expects to recover, the more rapidly for a bracing ocean voyage and release from captivity. He has reservations about the Louisiana Project, but is open to persuasion. Rousseau and Chauvin are acting in their master’s best interest, but will not refuse a just reward for their risk. Et cetera! Andrew even invites the Baratarian to slip back to Longwood next day and receive a signal from himself that the substitution has been successful; that he will carry through the charade of dying, return to the ranks of the fishermen, and confidently await his own rescue.

  Desperate improvisation! He expects many questions, whether anxious or suspicious: Lafitte merely embraces him with a light smile, wishes him bonne chance, promises to be in the appointed place at the appointed hour on the morrow.

  Throughout the 21st Cook conjures “shift after desperate shift,” and can hit upon nothing even remotely likely. He has not got through to the invalid prisoner. He has no confidence in Rousseau, Chauvin, Ortini; barely knows them. Beyond bribing a suit of Napoleon’s clothes from a laundry girl (the loss causes little stir; souvenir pilfering and counterfeiting are an industry on the island), he has been able to make no arrangements whatever. In a lifetime of stratagems and ruses he has never been so nonplussed.

  At moondown he dons those clothes, assumes his “private,” “true” imposture of Napoleon, modified by what little he has seen and learned on the island. He conceals himself in the Longwood gardens, in the vague hope that Rousseau or Chauvin might wander by and be impressed into service. The hour arrives; no one is about except the regular British sentries. Feeling more nakedly foolhardy than at any moment since that night a quarter-century past when he donned Joel Barlow’s clothes and rode out to a certain Algerian headland, to enter a certain dark carriage, Andrew works through the cypresses and privet, past the sentries, toward where le Maure and Lafitte await. Can he perhaps feign detection, mimic several alarmed voices, simulate the thrash of two servants fleeing, bring the sentries running, and then stumble as if dazed into the rendezvous? Faute de mieux, he gathers himself to it…

  And somewhile later woke half-tranced, knowing neither where I was nor how I came there! Bloodsworth Island? 1812? Husht urgent voices all about, in a medley of accents: French, Corsican, Italian, German, English, St. Helenish, even Yankee! A thunder of surf, & the damp rock under me, bespoke that ledge we had barely fetcht up on two months past. I guesst I had either swoon’d again, as at New Orleans & Fort Bowyer, or been knockt senseless by “friend” or “foe,” & carry’d down that terrific cliff. I heard Jean’s voice, unalarm’d, giving orders to le Maure & the fishermen. Who was that German? That New Englander? Was that a British female whisper’d?

  He conceals regaining consciousness in hopes of making out his situation; permits himself to be rowed like a dead man for hours out to sea, hoisted easily over a shoulder he recognizes as le Maure’s, and put to bed in a familiar aft cabin of the Jean Blanque—but nothing he can overhear tells him what he craves to know. Now there is a lantern-light to peek by: he sees Lafitte tête-à-tête with a cloaked stranger; whispers are exchanged, papers, a small pouch or box? They examine a map. They agree. The stranger leaves; Lafitte also; one can hear orders given on deck, sail made. The schooner swings about and settles under way.

  Andrew considers the possibilities. His ruse has perhaps been anticipated by Lafitte, by the U.S. Secret Service, by Metternich, the British, the French. They know he is Andrew Cook, but see fit to support his imposture? Or they don’t know; the imposture has for the moment succeeded! In the first case he must be candid with Lafitte or lose what trust after all remains; in the second, such candor might be fatal—and both suppositions could be incorrect. Should he pretend to be a willing Napoleon? An outraged, resentful one? An unperturbed Andrew Cook?

  He feels his way carefully: “wakes” as if uncertain himself who and where he is; is greeted politely but ambiguously by Jean’s body-servant, by Lafitte himself, whose ironical courtesies fit either hypothesis. On deck the Baratarians receive him as the ailing Bonaparte he pretends to be, but are under obvious and sensible orders not to address him by any name. With Jean, in private, he hazar
ds maintaining that imposture, and is puzzled: the man’s half-mocking deference suits neither the belief that he has rescued his emperor nor the knowledge that his erstwhile comrade has deceived him. He begins to suspect that Lafitte believes him to be neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Andrew Cook, but the impostor alleged to have been substituted for Napoleon in January 1820—and that this state of affairs is for some reason acceptable to him!

  But he cannot be certain, and so the voyage proceeds in an extraordinary equivocality, every gesture and remark a potential test, or sign. Where are they bound? “To America.” And to where in America? “To that place arranged for Your Majesty by his friends there.” Andrew is greatly encouraged to be presented after all, however ironically, with the agreed-upon ultimatum: to live incognito under Joseph’s protection (Lafitte does not say “your brother’s”) or, as General Bonaparte (Lafitte says neither “as yourself” nor “as the Emperor Napoleon I”), to lead a movement organized by American Bonapartists “both exiled and native, of great wealth and influence.”

  He will choose, Andrew declares, when he has spoken to Joseph and the movement’s leaders and heard more details. Meanwhile it is surely best to remain incognito, if only officially, even between themselves.