by John Barth
Goats: 3 nannies, 1 buck, 1 kid. Front. Don’t know. Maybe. Yes. See below. Don’t know. Rebegin:
In fulfillment of your Wiedertraum prescription—to Reenact Jacob Horner’s Movement of 7/19/53 from Baltimore to Wicomico, Maryland, his Interviews At Wicomico Teachers College of 7/20/53 and 7/21/53, and his Excursion To Ocean City of 7/22/53, where he Met and Subsequently Bedded his Fellow English Teacher Peggy Rankin—you Set Out Alone in light rain from Fort Erie on 7/19/69 in the late Doctor’s old Mercury wagon, your First Such Adventure in 16 years. Steering wheel! Accelerator! Brake! Very Nearly Paralyzed by Saturday traffic on the Peace Bridge (you are Not Surprised at Senator Edward Kennedy’s loss of control at Chappaquiddick), you were Detained by U.S. Customs officers on its farther shore on suspicion of being Stoned, but Released for want of evidence after their thorough inspection of vehicle and driver. Thirty minutes into the journey, you were Already Exhausted, and once safely out of. Buffalo, you Stopped at the first available motel on the back road you Preferred to the New York State Thruway: the Eden, in Eden, on Rt. 62, about 25 miles from your Starting Place. It was not yet noon; you Had No Baggage; they wondered. The balance of that day and night, as Generalissimo Franco captured Cadiz, Huelva, Seville, Cordoba, and Granada, you Sat in a chair before the motel TV receiver Watching Walter Cronkite watch Apollo-11’s entry into moon orbit, then the reports from Chappaquiddick, then the test pattern.
On Sunday 7/20, St. Margaret’s Day, ☌☽‧☌♃☽, birthday of Sir Edmund Hillary and F. Petrarch, cloudy, cool, breezy, you Achieved between breakfast and lunch another 25 miles and Bid Fair To Manage the remaining 10 to Lily Dale, but Reached An Impasse just into Chautauqua County, at the hamlet of Hamlet. There the road forks, State 83 continuing west to State 60, which drops south to Lily Dale; County 312 running more directly to your Destination. Both are good paved roads; County 312 is shorter, but State 60, once attained, more familiar to you. You Could Not Decide. The Kennedy accident inquiry continued. Aleksandr Kerenski became premier of the provisional government of Russia. The moon men landed.
Next day—warm, overcast, still; Ernest Hemingway and Isaac Stern—as Apollo-11’s crew lifted off from the moon and Francis Drake engaged the Spanish Armada and Jacob Horner First Met Joseph Morgan at his WTC Job Interview and news reached London that the United States had declared the War of 1812 and Union forces won the Battle of Bull Run, a New York State Police officer encouraged you, after inspecting you and your Vehicle for illegal drugs and administering a sobriety test which you Passed With Flying Colors, to Start your Engine, Shift into Drive, and Move the late Doctor’s automobile out of that fork in the road, out of Hamlet, and along County 312 to a certain familiar dirt lane on the margin of Cassadaga Lake and the Lily Dale Assembly. Past a familiar mailbox bearing an unfamiliar name: Comalot Farm. Up to a familiar house, barn, and outbuildings, all much more in need of maintenance than they had been when the late Doctor & Co. removed hastily thence to Canada four years ago.
No sign of life except the five goats aforementioned. The three nannies and kid browsed on tall weeds in the dooryard; the buck emerged from the open front door of the farmhouse as you Drove Up. The kid capered over to say hello; his presumable mother bleated some concern; his presumable sire strolled down off the peeling veranda, paused to sniff first her, then another of the nannies, finally meandered to the car and put his forehooves upon the driver’s windowsill, not unlike the two officers before him, to ask your Business.
You Bided your Time, though it grew increasingly warm in the car with all windows raised. Sounding your Horn neither fazed the buck nor fetched help from the house, whose open windows suggested it was either abandoned or actively tenanted. Ra’s voyage ended in Barbados. Savannah, the first nuclear-powered freighter, was launched. Irritated at his presumable son’s irreverent leapings upon his back, the buck ran the kid down toward the barn, whose door also stood wide. The nans ambled after. You Took The Opportunity to Dash from car to house, Realizing only as you Shut the front door behind you that there might be other bucks where the first had come from.
The familiar parlor was in filthy case: goat droppings on the floor and furniture; upholstery torn and chewed upon; soiled plates and glasses, some broken. Clinks came from the kitchen: you Froze, then Inquired Cheerily whether anyone was home? Considered Retreating to the car, but Observed that the Family Gruff had returned to the dooryard. Picked up a knocked-over straight chair to precede you like a lion tamer’s through the house.
More debris. Goat shit. Flies. And, sitting at a battered kitchen table in the dirty sunlight, Marsha Blank: naked, frowzled. Paralyzed? So you Could Almost Fancy, with a Rush of Anxious Joy. But on the table, along with a cup of moldy yogurt, were phials, a tiny hypodermic syringe, and her left arm. You Sat in your Chair, beside her. It was not morphine. Her hair was a mess. Her breasts just touched the tabletop; on the right one a housefly circumambulated. Marsha was only half comatose: she regarded you, well, blankly, and nodded or at least bobbed her head for a considerable while.
Time passed. The light changed in the room. You Sort Of Inspected her: no manacles or other bonds in evidence; no apparent lacerations or contusions, just a few bug bites and, on the arm, red needle marks. A trickly sound; you Looked; the woman was pissing in her seat. You Returned to yours and presently Inquired, Was she all right?
Through the afternoon the dope wore off. At some point you Surveyed the other rooms, most of them empty except of litter. But one bedroom was more or less furnished, with a curious five-sided bed on which was piled what looked to be computer printout: long sheets of numbers, chewed at here and there by goats and, it appeared, slept on. Creases, rips, stains. Still no sign of Bray. Marsha wandered up and sat on a corner of the bed, legs apart, blinking now. She seemed to have wiped herself. You Had Not Seen a reasonably attractive unclothed female body for some while.
What kind of dope was it, Horner? You Still Don’t Know. Bray has it in both pill and powder form, the latter water-soluble and mainlined like heroin, which it isn’t. Marsha called it Honey Dust, and was hooked on it: a fix in the late forenoon, after morning chores, spaced her as aforedescribed until midafternoon; by dinnertime she’d be reasonably herself again, enough so at least to prepare a simple meal. But there are residual effects, which two weeks of enforced abstinence and therapy have since diminished but not altogether removed, and which you Fear will be restored by today’s mail. Formerly fastidious, she was now unsanitary and heedless of her appearance. Formerly assertive, sharp-edged, she was now passive, vacant. As she boiled eggs for your Dinner this first evening, for example, padding barefoot about the kitchen in one of Bray’s capes (open at the front), the buck wandered in to check the menu. Don’t mind him, she advised you, and herself ignored his persistent snuffling at her backside, through and under the cape. But when, growing more aggressive, he thrust his bearded snout between her thighs from in front, she said Ouch I’m sore there and conked him mildly with a ladle.
Having Established that Bray had been in Maryland for a week and was not expected back for another, you Took Heart, Ate A Boiled Egg, Asked More Questions, which Marsha more or less answered. As best you can Reconstruct The Events, she went down to Maryland from the Farm in late June or early July, either in her capacity as secretary to M. Casteene, or to visit her daughter by Ambrose Mensch, or both. Falling in with Reg Prinz’s film company in Cambridge on July 4, she met or remet Jerome Bray and with him formed some project of revenge upon her former husband (against whom she still harbors a grudge) and upon Bibi Golden, who it seems had vigorously spurned Bray’s advances and gone off somewhere with Mensch. The details of their joint grievance and joint plan of retaliation are unclear and, you Gather, no longer important: to discuss them, however, Marsha had permitted Bray to drive her back to her Cambridge motel at the end of that evening and buy her a nightcap in its bar.
Her insistence that what ensued was voluntary on her part is, in your Opinion, the insistence of a victim still in
thrall to her victimizer: it Seems Clear to you that she was doped and raped that night and kept in some degree of narcosis thereafter until her need for the chemical, and its debilitation of her will, made her sexual and other compliance “voluntary.” All indictable offenses, you have Indignantly Pointed Out. Marsha shrugs her shoulders. Once installed on his farm, she went naked except on cool nights or when working outdoors among briars and thistles. She prepared the meals, tended the goats, did general chores—all perfunctorily, as has been seen. No further mention was made of their original project.
It is obvious that Bray abused her sexually: a week after his departure her vulva was still sore, and even now, a full month since, your Infrequent Copulation causes her discomfort. But she remains indifferent to that abuse, even uncertain of its details. Every forenoon, you Gather, from July 5 through 13, she would “do her Honey Dust” and “zonk out,” to find herself some hours later upstairs in that bed with a sore cunt, leaking semen on that printout paper. Sometimes she slept there at night as well, sometimes not (she had a double mattress of her own on the floor in another room), but except at the noon hour Bray never touched her sexually or otherwise mistreated her—aside from his ongoing crime upon her spirit!
Was she free to leave? Matter of semantics: her chemically induced complaisance, her indifference, was entire. You Imagine that the question never came up until you Raised it, next day.
By when, ☌☿☉, Apollo-11 on course toward Earth, John Dillinger shot near movie house in Port Huron, Mich., Senator Kennedy attends funeral of Mary Jo Kopechne, Napoleon’s only son dies in Vienna, you Had a Fair Understanding of her condition. That first night you Attempted To Express your Feelings for her, and Mistaking her dozing off for real rejection, you Did Not Share her couch, but Went Upstairs to that double mattress. When she wandered in during the night you Believed she was coming to you, but her mild Oh Hi There disabused you of that belief. She had forgotten you Were In The House. Experimentally, you Mounted her: she ouched in the same declaratory tone as earlier to that goat, whom you Do Not Doubt she’d have received as indifferently. You Of Course Withdrew, not at her request. Then in the morning you Announced, rather than Suggesting or Begging Leave, that you were Returning With Her to Fort Erie. She went on, naked, about her business, which included a trip out to the barn “to check LILYVAC.”
Despite your Leeriness of the livestock, you Went Along, to See What She Meant by that phrase. Your Life since 1953 has not Kept you Abreast of the technology of automatic computers and artificial intelligence; therefore you Cannot Say For Sure, what however is your Judgment, that the extraordinary object in the barn of Comalot Farm is no usual, perhaps not even a genuine, automatic computer. Indisputably it contains what Appeared to you to be components from Eisenhower-era electronic machines, as its name suggests: dusty banks of vacuum tubes, fins and fans for cooling them, bright-colored resistors, capacitors, condensers, wires a-plenty, glows, clicks, hums. But Looking More Closely through the pigeon shit and cobwebs, you Observed that at least some of what you’d Taken for metal or plastic was a scaly, waxy stuff, unidentifiable but vaguely repulsive; some of those wires were more like heavy beeswaxed cord, or dried tendons. There were in fact a great many bees and wasps about; you Feared for naked Marsha, and Began To Wonder whether the circumambient drone was electronic at all.
Hum. Tell us more, Horner. No one else about? Only the goats, who luckily had lost interest in you. “Checking LILYVAC” seemed to involve no more than Marsha’s sitting for some minutes in a seat molded into a cube of spun yellow fibrous stuff and pressing a red button or protuberance on each of its “arms.” Nothing you Could See ensued, but en route back to the house she dreamily remarked, That’s a real buzz. Fibers still stuck to her hams and buttocks, raising gooseflesh on you both. You Made Bold To Assist in their removal. She mmmed. In nothing like the predatory spirit wherein you Laid Peggy Rankin in the Surfside, or Seaside, or some other motel near Ocean City, Md., sixteen years past, you Caressed the labia, both majora and minora, of Marsha Blank. Her ouch this time was sharp enough to send the goats scampering. You Apologized.
Then, to your Surprise, she asked only whether she might do her daily Honey Dust before leaving (she seemed to have got it from LILYVAC). You Took Heart, Said Absolutely Not, Where are your clothes and things, et cetera. There wasn’t much; she made no fuss, but lost interest in the project. You Pretty Much Had To Dress Her yourself, not a disagreeable job at all but an awkward one. Then you Led her to the toilet and Instructed her to pee before you Set Out For Home. Dutifully she did, ouching again as she wiped herself after. Your Heart Was Stirred. Get in the car now, you Gently Commanded. She got. Exhaustion overcame you, the responsibility of initiative. For a long while you Sat behind the steering wheel, Marsha beside you, whom from time to time you Patted. She was open-eyed but glazed. Sometime after noon you Started The Engine, and after a while Moved Down The Driveway to the mailbox, where you Paused. Will the goats be okay till he gets back? you Inquired. Marsha murmured: Fuck ’em. We’ll take care of Bray later, you Promised. She fell asleep.
In an Unprecedented Show Of Self-Possession, which alas Marsha was oblivious to, you Dared The Thomas E. Dewey Thruway for the 20-odd consecutive miles from Exit 59, Fredonia, to Exit 58, Irving/Angola, before your Nerve Failed and you Exited. Handing the attendant the correct change! Checking Mr. & Mrs. Jacob Horner into the Iroquois Motel, overlooking Lake Erie, as if you Did Such Things Every Day! Finding Room 121! Extracting 2 ham sandwiches, 2 ice cream bars, and 2 Pepsi-Colas from 3 several vending machines with scarcely a hitch! Spreading that repast before your Woman on one of the twin beds in Room 121, whose air-conditioning unit you Adjusted yourself, and Bidding her eat! Posting outside your Door for all to see the Do Not Disturb sign; Turning back the bedcovers; Undressing both her and yourself; and, Almost Swooning with your Authority, Very Nearly Ordering her, in consideration of her tender vulva, to perform fellatio upon you! But exhaustion, exhaustion imperiously reasserted its claims: you Stood Unsteadily before her where she sat still on her bed edge; you Cupped her chin in your Left Hand, your Already Flagging Member in the other; you Wondered Gently Whether? She obliged, mouth still ice-creamy. I Love you! you Ejaculated.
Then with the Last Of your Strength you Wiped her mouth, Laid her down to rest (it was past 3 P.M.), and yourself Collapsed Into Sleep beside her. Next day, Wednesday, as the Dow-Jones Industrial Average sank to the year’s low and General Grant died and Senator Kennedy’s driver’s license was suspended and Haile Selassie was born and the Sun entered Leo, Jacob Horner was Scheduled per Wiedertraum to Have Dinner with Joe and Rennie Morgan, his Prospective New Colleagues at Wicomico Teachers College, where he had Just Been Appointed as a Teacher Of Prescriptive Grammar. But schedule or no schedule, you Needed Further Restoration before Resuming Management both of Marsha and of the Mercury. That day, therefore, a bright still one, you Spent In your Room except for three excursions to the now friendly array of vending machines, for breakfast, lunch, dinner. The chambermaid looked at you. There seemed to be no other guests at the Iroquois Motel. Deprived of her Honey Dust, Marsha was vacant but not comatose: it Appeared To you that she understood where she was and with whom, and did not mind. Sometimes she even replied to your Remarks and Queries. Daytime TV. When you Suggested A Shower she even said My my, and as you Soaped Up in there together, she declared almost crossly that she was able to scrub her own tits, thank you. This sharpness you Took For A Sign Of Recovery. Ditto her disinclination, this time, to receive your Ejaculate in her mouth, though she had no objection to collecting it in her other hand, which promptly thereafter she washed with more soap and water.
Skip your Sex Life, Horner. Any more information about that computer?
Only that when you Asked her sometime that night, as David Brinkley reported a .6% increase in the U.S. cost of living for June, whether in her opinion LILYVAC was a bona fide electronic computer or a monstrous simulacrum, she formed the longest syntactically coherent se
ntence you had Heard from her since before her disappearance, possibly excepting the one about her tits, to wit: Life is going to be a bitch without Honey Dust.
Next day, then, Th 7/24, as H. “Rap” Brown’s speech in Cambridge, Maryland, inspired some of its black citizens to arson, and Congress established the Internal Revenue Service to raise money for the War of 1812, and President Nixon greeted the Apollo-11 astronauts quarantined aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, happy birthday Dumas père, Lord Dunsany, Amelia Earhart, you Successfully Checked Out of the Iroquois and Made Your Way up through South Buffalo, across the Peace Bridge, through U.S. and Canadian Customs, and back to the Farm! Fetched Marsha to the infirmary (Just rubbed raw is all, Tombo X’s new black nurse reported: She been getting it off with a corncob?)! Et cetera.
Joe allowed that afternoon’s P & A, here reported, to serve in Der Wiedertraum as your Abortive First Interview at Wicomico Teachers on 7/20/53; the subsequent week’s P & A (7/31/69) as your Second Interview (7/21/53), whereat you First Meet Joseph Morgan—though in fact your Dinner With Joe & Rennie Morgan (7/23/53) had been reenacted, inversely, the night before, 7/30/69. 1st tropical storm of season (Anna) reported in Caribbean, Goethe’s “Albert” arrives at Waldheim, Ted Kennedy announces will rerun for Senate but not for presidency in ’72, munitions ship Black Tom blown up at Jersey City docks by German saboteurs. Bibi/“Rennie” having gone off somewhere again, and you and Pocahontas/“Peggy Rankin” (as all save yourself still called your Woman) having Established yourselves at the Farm as a Couple, it was decided that you (O heavy plural!) would Have Morgan To Dinner instead of vice versa: i.e., that he would sit at your Table in the Dining Hall; that Marsha would pass the salt et cetera; that yours would be the awesome Hostly Initiative: Welcome, How are you this evening, Splendid or Beastly Weather we’re having, Like you to meet my Woman, How about a drink, all that. For you were a Couple, though access to Marsha’s vagina was proscribed till Lammas Day, ☽ on Equator, Herman Melville’s birthday: you Personally Monitored her withdrawal symptoms and her schedule of therapies (principally workouts on the Exercycle, meant both to ward off catatonia and to toughen up her crotch); you Slept Together (but see above); you Ignored the smirks and ungenerous comments of Tombo X and others; you Even Went So Far as to Make Clear to M. Casteene that while you Had No Objection to Marsha’s resuming her secretarial activities for him, he was not to expect resumption of additional services, inasmuch as etc. Fortunately he only laughed, wished you good luck, declared his business as prime mover at the Farm was about done in any case, and gave you to understand that the services previously rendered him by Pocahontas he had made shift to secure elsewhere. Even so, your Temerity laid you out for an interval.