Letters (84 page)

At least for
ostensibly
so organizing, infiltrating, supporting. For while it is clear that they played the Game of Governments, however ineffectively, to the top of their bent, it is less clear which side they were on. By the time I learned—at least decided, in 1953, after Mother’s death—that they had in fact been sly counterrevolutionaries all along, the revelation made no real difference to me, for I had also come to understand that the Second American Revolution was to be a matter, not of vulgar armed overthrow—by Minutemen, Sansculottes, Bolsheviki, or whatever—but of something quite different, more subtle, less melodramatic, more… revolutionary.

But that, of course, is for another letter, which I will happily indite once I have provided you, in weeks to come, with the bones of my
Marylandiad:
the further adventures of Andrew Cook IV in and after the War of 1812. Till when, I have, sir, the honor of regarding myself as

P.S.: As to the orthographical proximity of your
Chautauqua
and my
Chautaugua:
The Algonkin language was spoken in its sundry dialects by Indians from Nova Scotia to the Mississippi and as far south as Tennessee and Cape Hatteras, and like all the Indian languages it was very approximately spelled by our forefathers. The word in question is said to mean “bag (or pack) tied in the middle.” Chautauqua Lake was so named obviously from its division into upper and lower moieties at the narrows now traversed by the Bemus Point—Stow Ferry, which I hope it will be your good fortune never to see replaced by a bridge. Chautaugua Road, where this will be typed for immediate posting to you at Chautauqua Lake, is near the similar narrows of Chesapeake Bay (now regrettably spanned at the old ferry-crossing, as you know, and about to be second-spanned, alas), which divides this noble water into an Upper and a Lower Chesapeake. The scale is larger, but the geographical state of affairs is similar enough for the metaphor-loving Algonquins, wouldn’t you say?

ABC/mb: 4 encl

June 17 1969

Mr & Mrs Gerald Bray a.k.a. Gadblank III
c/o Ranger & Mme H C Burlingame VI
Backwater National Wildlife Refuge
Dorchester County Maryland

Dearest Parents & Foster Parents

Every RESET has a RESET Back where we started All shall be ill Jack shant have Jill the man shant have his mare again and naught will be well Not bad how about a spot of punctuation, that’s better. Continue to delete all references to blank, very good, the mails aren’t safe, but don’t reset
every
time you see a pattern, or these letters will be a meaningless jumble of you-know-whats, here we go.

Dear Mother and Father and Foster Ditto it is not easy to write this letter. Are having a terrible time. Wish you were here. Why have you forsaken us, you too, like H.M. II a.k.a. G. III, Todd Andrews, Andrews Mack, and bad Merope Bernstein a.k.a. Margana y Fael, anti-Bonapartists all? Old Ranger B., dear Madame: Are you still at sweet Backwater or flown to your reward? Do you recall this orphan of the storm, that you rescued from his bulrush basket and raised up in the marsh as though he were yours despite his bad foot? Whose mother was a royal virgin whose father RESET Whose maternal grandfather RESET Please forward. Have you learned in the evening of your lives what you never knew in the morn of ours: where our true Mommy & Daddy are, and why they don’t write clearer letters? Please forward.

Dear parents: It is not easy to RESET Your long message to us of April 1 was duly printed out and delivered by LILYVAC, but we cannot find the key to that treasure, and we despair. Numbed by your numbers, stung like fallen Bellerophon, we wander far from the paths of men, devouring our own soul. The midpoint of our life approaches, unhappy birthday, ditto the
Phi-point
of our 5-Year Plan, .618 etc., and we are nowhere. The Tidewater Foundation has rejected us; they shall pay. Our letters go unanswered; our enemies rejoice. Year
T
(a.k.a.
V
) ends; soon it will be time to mate. With whom, Ma?
NOT
will not come to
ES!
Our business will go unfinished ha RESET Oh stop.

Themurah
a.k.a. anagrammatical transposition is all humblank. Everything comes out scrambled after MARGANAYFAEL, leafy anagram for bad Margana y Flae, who bit us bye-bye on May 18, she shall RESET It was the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation, 1st Sunday after Ascension, mild & cloudy,
☿
stationary in Right Ascension,
☍♆☉
, hear the buzzing of the blanks in the apple trees, Apollo-10 launched, will land on USS
Blank,
etc. The bad news had just arrived from the Tidewater Foundation; we were RESET Drove down to Chautauqua in our VW Blank to share our sorrow with Margana y Rodriguez y Thelma y Irving, loyal comrades so we thought, with the weariness that only true revolutionary lovers Forget it. We did not knock; strode into their pad in the old St. Elret Hotel on the institution grounds for the comradely consolation that only RESET It was but May, Ma, and they were
mating!
In hemp smoke so thick it brought tears to our eye of newt! Irving with Thelma! Rodriguez with my Margana!

Look who here, said Thelma: it old Numbers. I can explain, Jer, said Margana. What’s to explain? Rodriguez asked rhetorically: Everybody must make the revolution in his/her et cetera heh heh. We’re like practicing up for the Mating Flight, joshed Irving; pull up some smoke and join us. He not joining
me,
declared Thelma; he give me the heeb-jeebs. Jerome, Margana said, it’s time I told you. Tell shmell, sniffed Rodriguez; he’s got eyes. What big ones, Irving chaffed. Cool it, hombres, urged Margana; remember what I said. Now look here, Jer, these spray guns aren’t what you think, okay? she went on (for while numbly regarding them we had not failed to notice the hideous weapons deployed about their quarters); we ripped off some herbicide from the county agent’s office, right? Our plan is to defoliate the Ivy League during their commencement exercises. Think what you please, Jerry; it’s the truth. And Roddy and I, well, we’re lovers: true revolutionary RESET Quick Henry, cried Thelma as we angrily opened our cape, the Flit! Jesus H. Keerist, expostulated Irv, put that thing away, man!

They flew for the exits: perfidious Margana alone stood her ground, spray gun in hand. Wicked, beautiful le Fay! Abdomen we so prized, that was to have taken our seed come August to hatch a brood of Conquerors! We hefted our barb; her courage failed, with a squeal she flung the spray gun at us and turned to flee, that’s
F-L-E-
RESET She deserved to die, Da, but we but numbed her: little shot in the tail to teach her a lesson and keep Rodriguez out of there till after mating season. Her friends abandoned her as she’d abandoned us, afraid either to come to her aid or to call the police lest they be burst for Illegal Possession. We ourself telephoned the Chautauqua Infirmary, gave the St. Elret number, reported a young female apparently O.D.‘d on some narcotic.

Faithless Merope! Margana y Blank! We kissed her numb face; we covered her numb and swiftly swelling shame; we retracted our number, rearranged ourself, waited with her till we heard the ambulance before slipping out through the screen and making a blankline home. All the way weeping and wondering, Now who’ll unscramble things? Who’ll feed the goats for fudge and slaughter? Who’ll take delivery in the rear, as wanton Merope was wont, come mating season? Perfidious M y F, would thou wert a blank preserved in amber! Yet never return to Lily Dale: we will not so spare you a 2nd time.

That was last month. Alone since with these senseless numbers, as Maimonides says that YHWH RESET We see now the scale of our betrayal. Agents of you-know-whom, the lot of them, and Merope Bernstein was their tool! The foundation was their creature; they supported us only to learn and steal and neutralize our plans; they put the blanks in LILYVAC’s program, saw to it our spring work period was wasted in vain unscrambling. This is no leafy anagram at all!

Ma y Da: Mayday! Mayday! We are back where we began. How to recycle? Every RESET Now they swarm to Chautauqua for the kill, operatives of the false T.F., under pretext of making an anti-Bonapartist film: perfidious Prinz, his ally Mensch, their beautiful captive Bea Golden (whose mind they have drugged with C
₂
H
₆
O; whose name they are not worthy to RESET Tomorrow, we daresay, they will celebrate the 154th of Waterloo; tonight they have chartered the
Gadblank III
(ah, Da) for a party cruise around the lake. We are not fooled: They know we are its pilot; they think by this crude stratagem to snare us in their web.

And we shall go, Ma, though counterstratagem we have none. We shall set out from the institute dock, Da, making false merry. Numbly we shall steer around the familiar circuits: 1st the lower lake, then up through the narrows where the bag of Chautauqua is tied in the middle. There, no doubt, as we round the buoys to begin the upper lake, or 2nd circuit, they will swap their gins-and-tonics for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, and it will be finished. Pfft, forgotten, we shall RESET
Unless
dot dot dot

Lost Mother, old articifrix, key to the key: R.S.V.P.!

Monday, June 16, 1969

Old messenger:

It’s another anniversary (Jacob Horner has got us all doing it): of the birth of Joshua Reynolds in 1723, King Gustaf of Sweden in 1858, Stan Laurel in 1890; of the capture by Boston soldiers of French forts in Nova Scotia in Year 2 of the Seven Years’ War; of young Werther’s letter in 1771 reporting his having first met Charlotte several days earlier; of the lifting in 1812 of the British blockade of European ports to American shipping (but the news won’t reach Congress in time to forestall a declaration of war two days from now); of the invention of the squeeze play in baseball in 1894; of Leopold Bloom’s odyssey through James Joyce’s Dublin in 1904. And of the descent upon me 39 years ago, in 1930, at Andrea King Mensch’s breast as we dozed in a hammock near the hollyhocks in the backyard of the old
Menschhaus
on a flawless forenoon, of a swarm of golden bees.

Eloquence,
Uncle Konrad predicted: the boy will grow up to be a Sophocles, a Plato. But it’s silence I’m stung into, zapped by history. Tides! The past is a holding tank from which time’s wastes recirculate. Nothing lost, alas; all spirals back, recycled. Once-straight Joe Morgan, freaked out on psychedelics, sweetly promises to kill Jake Horner unless history can be redreamed, his dead wife reborn. Horner himself, that black hole in the human universe, that fossil from the early 1950’s, has not altered since he dropped out of giaduate school eighteen years ago: a penman after my own heart, he claims to have “published” his first book by leaving the typescript behind in a rooming house for others to discover, or for the Allegheny Reservoir to drown. His “writing” since, I gather, has been the therapeutic compilation of what he calls his
Hornbook:
a catalogue of notable cuckolds of myth, literature, and history arranged alphabetically from Agamemnon to Zeus.

May I? I asked him yesterday, turning to the
M’s.
Horner shrugged, thinly smiled, assured me he knew no more than what was inferrable from “the fiction.” But there we all were, between Menelaus and Minos of Crete (and before Morgan, Joseph), followed left to right by columns headed
Wife, Lover(s), Remarks.
Not only

but also, after Hector,

How had Horner come by that information, written nowhere but in my jettisoned
Amateur
manuscript? Did the tides of the Choptank circulate somehow through Lake Erie? The answer was plain, of course, in the entry just prior to Hector’s.
Cuckold: Mensch, Ambrose. Wife: Blank, Marsha,
followed in the third column by a
very
long list of names including
Mensch, Peter,
and in the fourth, after that name, by the remark:
issue: Mensch, Angela Blank.
Sorry, says Horner: Pocahontas insisted, and we try to be therapeutic. She’d wanted him to list as well her more recent conquests at the Remobilization Farm, he declared—from
Casteene, M.
through
Joseph, Saint
to
X, Tombo
—but he’d stoutly refused, therapy or no therapy, on the grounds that divorce exempts the cuckold from further horns.

Some of those names, Yours, I didn’t even know! The dates might have stung more if my memory were better—So
that’s
what you were doing in Philadelphia that weekend, etc.—and I could perhaps have made use of the list when Marsha’s lawyers were working me over. But now I neither despised nor pitied the woman, only tisked my tongue, resolved to stay clear of her, and sighed at the regurgitative habit of History that had brought her up in my life again.

In this instance, however, the dramaturge was in all likelihood not Clio but Reg Prinz, who seems as bent on redreaming
my
history as “St. Joseph” his own. The man wants some sort of showdown, clearly, and not only for his show. I expected to discover he’d photographed my tête-à-tête with Horner yesterday; indeed, lest there be hidden cameras in the Progress and Advice Room of the Remobilization Farm, I showed even less emotion than I felt at sight of those entries in Horner’s Hornbook: I simply fetched forth my Mightier-Than-Etc. and, in the interest of accuracy, put a
(?)
after Angie’s name.