Letters

by John Barth

  I cannot say even what my feelings were, except that if not self-canceling they were anyhow canceled from the future, 13 R’s end, and meanwhile overriden by shrug-shouldered curiosity. I washed the day’s salt sweat off, dinghied over in my go-ashore seersucker, and was introduced to André, Baron Castine: a mustached, ruddy, virile fellow in his mid-fifties, with a broad smile, good teeth, an easy winning manner, and a fine cultured baritone voice softly accented a la Quebec (though the family estate was in Ontario). What they sipped was cold Mumm’s Cordon Rouge, fetched up by their steward in buckets of ice, along with caviar-and-cream-cheese canapés, from the air-conditioned galley. Jane as always was utterly at ease, as if we hadn’t humped aboard O.J. in May and again in the Todds Point cottage in June; as if I hadn’t seen those photos of her and her friend in spectacular flagrante delicto. Castine as well, with better reason: an immediately likable chap, who indeed looked to me less like the fellow in those photographs than like a better-bred relative of A. B. Cook (as Buffalo had reported).

  Ah, well: people change. Their ease put me at mine. Castine informed me that the yacht was Jane’s gift for his 52nd birthday (younger than he looked, then); that he thought it a bit, ah, baronial, and was unfortunately prone to mal de mer—he’d even missed a few meals aboard the Statendam in Bermudian waters! But he was determined for her sake to acquire sea legs, and so had committed himself to the sport of deep-sea fishing. Was I an angler?

  Toddy always has an angle, Jane declared, not especially meaningly. He’s probably been following us to see whether we deep-six Harrison’s merde.

  I was astonished. Castine asked about the verb “to deep-six,” but clearly understood the general sense of Jane’s allusion. That tone prevailed through dinner (I surprised myself by accepting their invitation; all envy, guilt, and jealousy slipped away in their easy company, lubricated no doubt by the fine champagne; and after two near-solitary August weeks afloat, the air conditioning and the company were irresistible. Fresh roses on the table! Conversation! A steward to cook and serve!): the good-humored implication that they knew more about certain of our common interests than they were telling. I asked where in fact that minor but notable item of Harrison’s estate reposed. Jane was (smilingly) damned if she knew, and damned if she’d tell me if she did; things were too hectic at m.e. for her to bother with such foolishness until my subpoena, which she quite anticipated, obliged her to. Castine asked my opinion on the danger of being hijacked in these waters, or on the Intracoastal Waterway, by narcotics smugglers: one heard rumors of piracy and of Coast Guard cover-ups. We all doubted there was any danger. I inquired about his vessel’s name. Both his own forebears and Jean Lafitte’s, he declared, were Gascon; perhaps he would take up piracy himself if Mack Enterprises fell upon hard times and if he could learn to do without Dramamine. Did I know Longfellow’s poem about his (Castine’s) progenitor?

  Artichokes vinaigrette. Escalope de veau and fresh asparagus, perfectly steamed. Had I heard anything from her wayward daughter? Jane wondered mildly. I considered; then reported my understanding that Jeannine had broken off with Reg Prinz and left the film company; that she was unhappy with the Fort Erie establishment and frequently disappeared from it; and that she was drinking too much. Castine tisked his tongue and regarded his fiancée. Without looking up from her sauce bearnaise Jane declared crisply that she knew all that; but Jeannine was her own woman and must find her own way. She Jane had been rebuffed too often by both of her children to do more than wish them well and hope for the best.

  Then she brightened. As for that movie: that’s what they were doing there! Shooting was already in progress farther up the Patuxent, it seemed, and tomorrow Prinz & Co. were going to “burn Washington” on Bloodsworth Island—but André must explain; she had no head for history.

  The baron explained that before they’d learned (on their return from Bermuda) of “Bea Golden’s” falling out with Mr. Prinz, they’d agreed for a lark to ferry the film crew tomorrow from Benedict, sixteen miles upriver—where footage was being shot of the British invasion of August 1814—down the Patuxent and across the Bay to Bloodsworth Island, a 40-mile trip. There Prinz had built a set for the Burning of Washington, 155 years to the day from that regrettable event. They had expected, of course, that Jane’s daughter would be there; in any case her son would be, who with his radical friends (and, presumably, the director’s consent) was using the occasion to protest U.S. “involvement”—Castine’s tactful euphemism—in Southeast Asia.

  Come with us, Toddy! Jane cried with imperious enthusiasm. Drew made her nervous with his childish politics; André could talk to him, but she’d feel better yet if I were there too; Drew had always respected me. I must come. She herself would miss the Sunday night fireworks—she had to get back to Cambridge and Cap’n Chick—but André or Buck (their combination captain, cook, and steward) would be happy to redeliver me to my boat on the Monday morning.

  His pleasure, Castine assured me. Peach sherbert and Armagnac. “Heat lightning” to north of us, from where now stirred a rain-smelling breeze. I had a number of questions yet to work diplomatically into our talk—the baron’s relation to A. B. Cook, for instance; “Buffalo’s” mention of the F.B.I.; maybe even the matter of the blackmail photographs—but the evening was evidently over, and I was sleepy from the long day’s sail and the champagne. Jane politely invited me to use the guest stateroom, but—among other reasons for declining!—I wanted to be aboard O.J. if a squall blew through. As for the trip upriver, I’d let them know in the morning. My own Patuxent destination was only half a dozen miles up, where I had certain bases to touch. On the other hand, I was powerfully curious to see a bit more of my old love’s new lover, now that my heart was proven truly clear of her. We’d see.

  Sunday dawned hot, hazy, and still. 70% chance of late-afternoon or evening thunderstorms. Knowing that the anchorage would soon be empty, I paid out plenty of scope, battened everything down, and made ready after all to go aboard Baratarian. But the baron, smiling cleanly, dinghied over with a different plan: they had radiotelephoned Mr. Prinz at Benedict after I left them, and mentioned my presence; he was particularly anxious to film Baratarian en route to “Barataria,” and though period detail was irrelevant to his production, it would please him too to film Osborn Jones coming downriver under sail. What’s more, they could use the extra deck space. I would of course be remunerated; and Jane—whom Castine understood to be “entirely familiar” with my vessel—had volunteered to serve as my crew. He himself, alas, could be of small assistance. We were to rendezvous off Benedict at noon, where Prinz was filming the Withdrawal scene.

  Mm hm. I agreed, but urged Castine to ride up with us as well. Surely he wished to be with his fiancée? The baron’s expression fairly twinkled: they had just returned from the recentest of a series of honeymoons, and would soon be married; knowing how much Jane esteemed me, he would sacrifice for a few hours the joy of his friend’s company in order to catch up on various business in the air-conditioned comfort of his yacht.

  So: less was accomplished than I’d hoped, yet more than I’d have expected before that weekend. Jane, as I anticipated, was all impenetrable good cheer as we motor-sailed upriver on a medium reach in the wake of Baratarian. I complimented her on her fiancé and learned without pain that they planned a late-September wedding. Um… his relation to A. B. Cook? Oh, well: André claimed it and Cook disclaimed it, neither militantly. Their mother Jane believed to have married twice; the family had been either scattered or peripatetic; perhaps there was some ill feeling, but it was as much a joke as anything. Relations between the two men Jane understood to be civil but not close. I did not risk mentioning the C.I.A., but asked whether the baron practiced any profession. Jane answered easily that he had worked in some capacity for the Canadian and British intelligence communities during and for a while after the Second World War, and had at various times tried his hand at novel-writing, without success. But the management of his inherited property, and latt
erly the courtship and entertainment of herself, were his principal and painless occupations.

  Ah. We passed the mouth of St. Leonard Creek, where Polly Lake and I—but good-bye, good-bye! Experimentally I announced that Jeannine had been aboard two weekends since. Really! Jane hoped she’d behaved herself. What had she wanted? Just to go sailing and talk things over, I said; but she’d seemed amenable to an out-of-court settlement of her father’s estate. Jane’s tone grew brisk: Oh, well, that. Where had Jeannine been when she’d felt like being reasonable? Now she wasn’t sure what she meant to do, exactly—but we oughtn’t to talk business, okay?

  That was that. Even at half-throttle Baratarian soon disappeared ahead; Jane asked no further questions about her daughter; I mildly regretted this excursion. I shall pass over the movie-making, Dad, which I have little comprehension of or interest in. God knows what the foundation is getting for its money: Prinz maintains that he makes his films as much in the editing room as on the set with the camera, and often doesn’t know clearly himself, until he reviews the “takes,” what his shooting is about. So reported one of his assistants, who seemed to Jane and me to be more in charge of things than the director himself. There was a box-lunch affair ashore, itself filmed. Prinz was on hand with the Bernstein girl, who does appear to have supplanted Jeannine. There indeed was red-faced Drew, surprised to see us but warily cordial; no sign of Yvonne, and Drew’s face purpled when I asked whether she was about. He seemed to know and be on good terms with André Castine; with his mother he was reserved, and she cool with him. No sign either of Ambrose Mensch, who I had thought was involved in the project.

  There was a postluncheon Withdrawal scene of all hands to our boats; good Buck saved me the trouble of making a fuss about hard shoes by demanding that everyone not wearing sneakers come aboard barefoot. We counted out life jackets; cameras on each vessel filmed the other, and the flotilla of water-skiers and buzzing runabouts as well. No one seemed to be delivering lines or acting out business, and don’t ask me what any of it had to do with the War of 1812 (except that I was invited, and declined—on camera—to take the role of Dr. Beanes, the fellow whose arrest led to the composition of “The Star Spangled Banner”). Movies aren’t what they used to be, Dad.

  I soon decided that I would go no farther than back downriver to Solomons Island: I had no taste for crossing the Chesapeake with that freight of landlubbers (several of whom I recognized from the great Marshyhope Commencement Day Bust) in impending thundersqualls. There was room enough on Baratarian for all hands to squeeze aboard for the crossing; I would lend as many life jackets as O.J. could spare, to help meet Coast Guard regulations, and retrieve them next time our paths crossed. But my itinerary had been compromised enough, and the sight of Jane’s manly, worldly, amiable baron more and more depressed me.

  Drew was sympathetic (he rode down with me, ever friendlier; Jane was back aboard the trawler, having brushed my cheek lightly with her lips in Benedict and bade me pert good-bye); he commandeered the film crew’s walkie-talkie to relay my decision forward and arrange for a transfer stop at Solomons. Then to my surprise he offered, with his abashed but open grin, to ride out the squall with me that night in Mill Creek, say, and cross to Bloodsworth in the morning if the weather cleared. His presence at the Burning of Washington was not imperative, and there were a few things he’d like to discuss. Of course, if I had other plans, or simply preferred to be alone…

  Good-bye, Good-bye Cruise! We made the transfer (more footage) and watched Baratarian churn out Baywards, crowded as a Japanese excursion boat. In her stern stood Jane and her baron, waving merrily with the rest, his arm lightly around her waist.

  Good-bye.

  Thunderheads piled already in the west. Beefy but agile in his jeans and moccasins, Drew smartly handled the lines as we docked across the Patuxent in Town Creek for supplies and a hose-down to wash the visitors off us, then poked back up into my favorite storm shelter on that river: the eight-foot spot in an unnamed bight in the snug little cove just between the words Mill and Creek on Chart 561. By five o’clock the hook was down; too many nettles for swimming, but we stood watch for each other from the deck and managed to get wet without getting stung. Thunder and lightning approached, seriously this time, but a hurricane could not have dragged us. We congratulated ourselves on having not attempted the crossing; sipped our tonics and watched the sky turn impressively copper green, the breeze veer northwest and turn cool and blustery, O.J. swing her bows to it as the storm drew nearer. We checked the set and scope of the anchor (the rigging whistled now; trees thrashed, and leaves turned silver side up), secured everything on deck, calculated with relief that even so loaded, Baratarian would easily be at her dock before the squall crossed the Bay. My pulse exhilarated, as it had done 200 times before, at the ozone smell, the front’s moving in like an artillery barrage, one’s boat secure in a fine snug anchorage with room to swing and nothing really to fear. How splendid the world! How fortunate one’s life!

  We lingered in the cockpit till the last possible moment, drinking the spectacle in with our cocktails and speaking little. When the rain came at last—great white drops strafing through the trees, across the cove, and under the awning—we scrambled below, made a light cold supper (tuna salad, fruit Jell-O, and a chilled Riesling), and talked: the conversation we might have had in early July had I not been dazed from 12 R, my Second Dark Night of the Soul. For openers (dear Bach serenaded us from the FM; the storm crashed spectacularly all about; leaves and twigs flew; O.J. rolled and swung, but never budged his anchor) I remarked that the world was an ongoing miracle and that everything bristled with intrinsic value. Drew parried (flecks of tuna-mayonnaise on his lower lip) that two-thirds of that miracle’s population went to bed hungry, if indeed they had a bed to go to.

  I set forth the Tragic View of Ideology, acknowledged that the antiwar movement was having some practical effect in Washington and was certainly preferable to passive acquiescence in our government’s senseless “involvement” in Southeast Asia, etc.; but confessed that I did not otherwise take the sixties very seriously even as a social, much less as a political, revolution. The decade would leave its mark on 20th-century Western Culture—no doubt as notably as the 1910’s, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s—but from any serious perspective, probably no more so. North Americans neither needed, wanted, nor would permit anything like a real “Second Revolution”; once its principal focus, the Viet Nam War, reached whatever sorry dénouement, the much-touted Counterculture would in a very few years become just another subculture, of which the more the merrier, with perhaps a decade’s half-life in the media.

  More Riesling. He too, Drew carefully declared, took the Tragic View of political activism, but would not follow me thence into quietism. On the contrary: as the war, the decade, and the movement wound down together, he was inclined to escalate. The fewer the actors, the more radical and direct must be the action. Yvonne was divorcing him: she wanted herself and their sons out of the Second Ward, out of Cambridge, out of the civil-rights and the antiwar movements, into the civilization of the Haves. They were about to move to Princeton, New Jersey, where she had friends. Drew’s face purpled: Princeton! She wanted the boys in Groton, maybe Andover; she was prepared to let them pay their dues as Show Niggers if that’s what it took to lead them to Bach and Shakespeare rather than to “Basin Street Blues” and Black Boy.

  I offered my condolences: why could they not aspire to be civilized orthopedic surgeons or district court judges, repudiating neither their black nor their white cultural legacy or for that matter neither the high nor the popular culture? Drew fulminated for a while against the U.S. medical and juristic systems, comparing China’s favorably. I denounced Chinese totalitarianism: the regime’s extermination of, say, Tibetan and other cultures within its hegemony; its atrocities against its own prerevolutionary civilization, not to mention prerevolutionary human beings. The storm passed.

  And returned, and rum
bled around Maryland late into the night, as cool and snug a night for sleeping as I’d had since I left Todds Point. But we worked through another liter of German white, this one a rare and fine Franconian, in the low light of two gimbaled kerosene lamps on the cabin bulkheads. Drew conceded that probably nothing could justify the mass killings associated with the Russian and Chinese revolutions. I conceded that possibly nothing short of revolution would substantially have improved the welfare of the surviving masses in those nations. We came home to the Tragic View, neither of us greatly altered by the excursion, but even more cordial.

  Did he mean, then, to become a flat-out terrorist? Bombs? Assassinations? Drew shrugged and grinned: he’d think of something. And he reminded me that in June of 1937, so the story went, I myself had put gravely at risk the lives of a Floating Theatreful of innocent Cantabridgeans, in no better cause than my own suicide. At least he would have an impersonal end in mind, and would direct his violence against symbolical property instead of people. I perpended that detail, specifically that adjective, wondering what property he had in mind—and reminded him on the one hand that while the event he’d cited happened to be a fact, the story he’d invoked was fiction and should not be categorically confused with my biography; on the other hand, that my then “philosophy” was one I’d long since put behind me—especially that deplorable, reckless endangerment of others’ lives. At least most of the time, in most moods. For I was and am no philosopher.

  Drew laughed: Nor was he. Just a thoughtful terrorist. Might he ask whether his mother and I had once been lovers? Yes and yes. With his father’s knowledge and consent? Yes.

  The news seemed to please him. So: that crazy old fart (his father) had remained a sexual liberal even after he’d repudiated liberal politics! Well, I said; for a while, anyhow. Harrison was his father? Drew assumed, grinning. No question, I assured him.