by John Barth
Much moved (“& by this last not a little alarm’d”), Andrew tells Consuelo the truth about Napoleon as he knows it: that the man on St. Helena is dying, has no wish to be rescued, and thinks only of his son, “l’Aiglon,” a virtual prisoner in Augsburg. (“They will poison him too,” declares Consuelo.) His own tentative plan for “Dona Betsy” Andrew does not mention, and now quietly discards; but he reminds Consuelo of his original high ideals vis-à-vis the Louisiana Project, and the Indian Free State before it, in which good cause he hopes she will enlist Mme B.’s aid. Why should such a sovereign general sanctuary as he envisioned not extend also to such as her newly discovered self? Why not “a vast New Switzerland, or New New World to the opprest, where not only black & red & white, but women & men, may abide as equals”? And he will, he pledges—if Jean Lafitte does not discover and dispatch him to the sharks—make amends to Andrée upon his return. Herself he wishes success in her life’s Second Cycle, with which he pledges not to interfere—but he cannot leave without knowing whether her disconcerting speculation about his wife was based upon more than just her own experience. Has Consuelo somehow had news from Castines Hundred?
She reply’d, I could take her life before she would reply—shrewd insurance that I would make good my pledge! But tho she doubted so bold a creature as my “New New World” would come to light in our century, she promist to speak favorably to Betsy B. of the Louisiana Project. She then bid me adios (not hasta la vista) with words that dizzy’d me almost into a “Bloodsworth Island Swoon,” to wit: that she fear’d I was become the counterfeit, not of Napoleon, but of Andrew Cook. And that the cypher whose key I had yet to hit upon, was my own self.
They kiss farewell (“after a fashion,” Andrew says unkindly—but he is writing to Andrée); he draws a breath, resumes the mien of Napoleon disguised as “Baron Castine,” and steps outside. Jean Lafitte waits patiently, to all appearances indifferent to both the length and the issue of this interlude; Andrew returns the knife without comment. Nor does his cautious conversation, as they make their way back across the city and down the Tiber to their ship, give him any clue to how much Jean understands, or what his purpose is. (Their way takes them through the Piazza di Spagna. One wants to call across the fifteen decades, “Stay! Put by a moment these vague intrigues, this nonsense of Napoleon: young John Keats has just died here!”)
A hard suspense, he remarks, which lasted thro our crossing, & is not yet resolved. They stop three weeks in Genoa to reprovision Jean Blanque and give the crew shore liberty (Lafitte “firmly requests” his passenger to remain aboard), then set out westward at the end of May. Neither killed nor challenged nor put at his ease, our ancestor finds it no problem to maintain with Lafitte a tentative attitude concerning the Louisiana Project, for he has begun to question it himself. Jean’s sustained ironic solicitude makes Andrew reckless: he asks directly, Is that daring fellow who arranged his rescue himself to be rescued, or left languishing on St. Helena? He no longer languishes there, Lafitte replies with a smile, adding that he is not at liberty to say more.
Thus we arrived, early in July, at what I knew to be the Virginia Capes, & sail’d on up the Chesapeake, leaving Tangier & Smith Islands to port, till we came within sight of fateful Bloodsworth! I feign’d not to know the waters, and asking, was told no more than that they were full of sharks and alligators, to keep strangers off. We enter’d the marshy Manokin—where neither shark nor ’gator ever swum—and anchor’d off the King plantation, which too Jean said he could not name: only that I was to be sequester’d there in safety & comfort till my brother came for me, a fortnight or less. I was fetcht ashore, found the owners “off on the Grand Tour,” & the house in charge of a well-manner’d staff who lookt neither Baratarian nor Eastern Shore. They show’d me my quarters, comfortable indeed, & inform’d us wryly that news had just reacht the U. States of Napoleon’s death on St. Helena on May 5. Le roi est mort, shrugg’d Jean: vive le roi. Next morning he bade me adieu (not au revoir) & sail’d off, “to take the good news to Louisiana, & to rescue André Castine.” And here I have languisht full six weeks since.
His attendants are as polite and noncommittal as Lafitte. When the promised fortnight extends to a month with no word from anyone, they apologize. Andrew stages imperial tantrums at the restriction on his movements: he is free to stroll the grounds of Beverly without (apparent) surveillance, but forbidden “for his own protection” to leave the estate. They regret but have no authority to relax their orders. He suspects the secret service, Joseph Bonaparte, Betsy Patterson; perhaps all of them in concert; perhaps—long delayed and skillfully managed retribution—at Andrée’s direction!
By mid-August, convinced that he has been transported “from one St. Helena to another” and afraid for his sanity, he resolves to escape to nearby Bloodsworth, to “regain [his] bearings at the spot where 1st [he] lost them,” and then make his way to Castines Hundred, to whatever he might find there. His long, ambiguous confinement—extending really from his swoon on St. Helena—and Consuelo’s parting words have now persuaded him that the Louisiana Project, indeed his whole original conception of a Second Revolution, has been misconceived; that the true Revolution, while it might well end in politics, does not begin there…
It is now past midnight by my old Breguet, he concludes: my father’s timepiece, to which I cling as if it were the key to me. They do not know I know these marshes as I once knew my mother’s face, or your own dear flesh. Chère Andrée: if you receive this letter, it will signify that “Napoleon” has made good his 3rd escape, has survived the only sharks & alligators hereabouts (those of his treacherous imagination), & is headed home!
Receive it she does, we know, at year’s end, at this address. Andrée is 32; the twins are 9. Does she decipher, read, believe it? We do not know. Its author never appears, at least in his own person. For four years more his “widow” takes no action. Andrew’s former young acquaintance J. F. Cooper publishes his second novel, The Spy, and embarks on the Leatherstocking series. Great Romantics expire: Hoffmann, Shelley, Byron. Two French natural scientists, Prevost and Dumas, prove that the spermatozoan is essential to fertilization; Beethoven finishes the last of the nine symphonies.
At the urging of her friend John Jacob Astor, Betsy Patterson Bonaparte visits Rome from Geneva and is warmly received by the surviving family of the late emperor; the marriage of her son to Joseph’s daughter Charlotte is arranged but never comes to pass, perhaps owing to a quarrel between Betsy and Pauline Borghese! Chagrined, Mme B. returns with a traveling companion to Geneva, “Bo” to America, where to his mother’s exasperation he will marry for love a pretty and well-to-do New Englander named Susan May Williams, and settle happily in Baltimore. Betsy herself will not return until 1834, when her companion (then 54) succumbs, apparently to food poisoning. She never revisits Europe thereafter, but becomes the reclusive, snappish, coldly beautiful real-estate millionaire of Maryland legend, who in her 94th year—disappointed in her final dream of seeing her grandson crowned king of the South after the Civil War—is buried in a lonely plot of Greenmount Cemetery, in accordance with her wish “to be by [her]self.”
But that is the history, already lettered, of Henry and Henrietta Cook Burlingame V, called to their vocation by the letter and pocket-watch sent them in 1827 by “Ebenezer Burling of Richmond,” companion of young Edgar Poe. By then Andrée will have done what we have seen her do, and disappeared into the western fastness.
Thus the long chronicle of Andrew Cook IV trails off into the same marshy equivocation that engendered it. The fate of his Utopian “Louisiana Project,” as of his Indian Free State, is all too evident: the “militant” Indian nationalist movements of our time are to his and Tecumseh’s dream as was Napoleon III’s Second Empire—that grandiose, self-conscious paradigm of the Freudian “compulsion to repeat”—to the First: pitiable travesty.
Must we not conclude the same of the Second Cycle of Andrew’s life? Was not it, was not he, a failure? Has not our
whole line been, Henry, from Ebenezer Cooke the first laureate of Maryland and his tutor Henry Burlingame down to you and me? For that is whom we are come to, having traversed, between Andrew’s prenatal and his posthumous letters, all the intervening Cooks and Burlingames: the genealogical bottom line. Am I not myself, in my courtship of Betsy Patterson’s descendant for the sake (I mean also for the sake) of our cause, become my namesake’s pallid parody, and in my own Second Cycle the impersonator of myself?
Before the untimely death of Andrew Cook VI—and the wedding of Jane Mack to Baron André Castine of Castines Hundred—you shall hear, upon these questions, from
Your loving father
C: Jerome Bray to Bea Golden. Inviting her to star in the first epic of Numerature.
Comalot, R.D. 2
Lily Dale, N.Y., U.S.A. 14752
8/5/69
Mrs. Bea Golden (a.k.a. “Bibi,” “Jeannine Mack,” etc.; t.b.k.a. Regina de Nominatrix)
Remobilization Farm
Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
My dear Mrs. Golden,
Certainly a star of your magnitude must receive numbers of letters in each day’s post: solicitations to model as the heroine of somebody’s counterrevolutionary novel; to play the lead in somebody’s film derived from such a novel; et cetera. But a rising star reset should spurn such obsolescent media, soon to be superseded by coaxial television and laser holography, ultimately by a medium far more revolutionary, its essence the very key to and measure of the universe. This is to invite you to spray your past with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and take wing to your golden future, a future impatient to be RESET Mariner-7 takes 1st close-ups of Mars surface Miami blacked out Niagara Falls helicopter crashes Oil leak in Lake Erie.
Hum. Numerature!
Permit us to introduce our new self with apologies for our old. (Much better, LIL.) We are the former 10 2 2, a.k.a. Jerome B. Bray, of the former Lilyvac Farm, R.D. 2, Lily Dale, N.Y., U.S.A. 14752, born in the Backwater Wildlife Refuge and RESET Our ungallant pursuit of you; our apparent, even actual derangement since Passover and particularly since Independence Day use dash to indicate break in syntax and recommencement—these are owing to the overflow of my spirit’s vesicles as it were. Cf. W. Shakespeare’s seminal equation: lunatic = lover = poet; also the wreckage or frenzy of Greek mythic figures, in particular Io, after mating with gods and gadblanks. What indeed is inspiration if not the swelling that follows the Godflaw’s bite? The real star of the myth of Bellerophon is not RESET Who believes he can achieve mythic herohood by perfectly imitating the Heroic Pattern and who learns that by doing so what one becomes is a perfect imitation of a mythic hero no doubt a heroic mimicry in itself but not quite the same thing heh heh. It is not the triple beast Chimera nor is it the pinioned pony Pegasus (O LIL). It is the Gadflaw! And who was that poor mad fellow 10 2 2 a.k.a. RESET A lost chord on LILYVAC’s intromittent organ as it were, a stingee of the Godflew New paragraph.
M. Bernstein was but the mere anticipation of her ex-stepmother! LILYVAC will deal with her; in the meanwhile she deserves R. Prinz, who was never worth 1 grain of your pollen as it were. That’s a figure there heh semicolon a digit of speech RESET And Marsha Blank, number of our enemies, was but an unsuccessful tryout for your role, 1 of numerous understudies so to speak recruited and prepared during our Casting Season, which now approaches its culminating scenes: Rout of the Dromes, Fertilization of the Queen. No matter that in a kind of coma she let loose the goats and herself strayed from the fold; when the hour comes so shall she, plenty, see below, who 1st inspired our Gadblank Illuminations of 7/4 and later, playing at your destined role, gave LILYVAC’s domain its new and proper appellation see above. Final casting to be completed by 8/14, immediately whereafter, with the Fall Work Period, we commence “shooting” (a figure of RESET 1858 Cyrus Field completes 1st Atlantic cable and Queen Victoria exchanges greetings with President Buchanan. 1864 Union Admiral Farragut wins Battle of Mobile Bay. 1945 Hiroshima A-bombed. 1966 Giles Goat-Boy published, imperfect mimicry of a RESET Close parenthesis new ¶
Our proposal: Now that you are quit of your commitment to reactionary media and their representatives, we invite you to play a starring role in the 1st, revolutionary epic of Numerature! The details are too confidential for letters, but this much may be enumerated: (1) Its working title is 18 14 (formerly R.N.). (2) It requires a 1st-magnitude female to play Regina de Nominatrix (formerly Margana le Fay, a.k.a. y Fael), royal consort to Rex Numerator (formerly King Author, a.k.a. RESET To sit at his right hand at the Table of Multiplication, play Ordinate to his Abscissa, share the Pentagonal Bed, receive his innumerable seed, make royal jelly, and bring forth numerous golden heirs. To be the lock his key will fit, its cylinder and oiled tumblers, that together we may RESET No damn it that together they may reach the Treasure stop
Your instructions: (1) Give enclosed packet to M. Blank, your former rival, your present ally and understudy. She will share with you its coma-clearing contents and confirm the truth about yours truly, LILYVAC, and the role that awaits you in 18 14 (formerly NOVEL a.k.a. NOTES). (2) Come again to Comalot with her for 1 shining moment on Wednesday week 8/13 USS Essex captures Alert 1812 Berlin Wall 1961 to see for yourself and to make ready for Bellerophonic downfall of Author and Director by the stinging numbers of R(egina) D(enominatrix) II and her
R.N.
H: Jerome Bray to his parents. An ultimatum.
Comalot, R.D. 2
Lily Dale, N.Y., U.S.A. 14752
8/26/69
Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Bray a.k.a. Gadflay III & Betsy Bonaparte Bray
c/o Monsieur Casteene
Castines 100, Ontario, Canada, &/or lloodsworth I., Md., U.S.A.
Ma y Da (y M.C.2):
Having a wonderful RESET Wish you were Here is our (final) report of business finished et unfinished ha ha since ours to you of 6/17 when in despair over LILYVAC’s printout and Merope/Margana y Fael’s defection we appealed to you for clear programming through 8/15/69 midpoint of our life and Phi-point 6 1 8 etc. of our 5-Year Plan (i.e. Mating Season between Years T & E of NOTES a.k.a. NOVEL): i.e. How translate all those numbers into letters? And whom hump from 7/4-8/14/69 inclusive?
No reply! We begin to wonder! Où et who êtes vous etc.? Et why have you forsaken us? Vous whom all our Leben we’ve thought our allies & protectors; whom our lifework has been but une long letter to, and who we have believed responded s’il vous plaît e.g. via LILYVAC’s leafy anagram! Now Hear This is our final RESET Arabs use rockets on Israeli positions British capture Penobscot Bay ditto Castine Me stop
Madre perdida, Père perdu: Our ally Comrade M. Casteene of Casteenes RESET Son of Ranger & Mme Burlingame and thus not unrelated à nous advises us to make this last attempt to report through LILYVAC through him to you our victorious Mating Season ’69 and revised new project based on Post-Perseid Illuminations see below and exhort you to affirm those latter pronto as we are gearing up for the Fall Work Period and will commence our 7-Year Plan on Tuesday 9/23 St. Thecla’s Day Autumnal Equinox R.S.V.P. or else.
Hum! In absence of Margana y Fael et faute de mieux we fetched to Comalot on 7/5 1 Pocahontas a.k.a. Marsha Blank for standby fertilization & general chores. From 7/12 to 7/21 the Mating Flight kept us in Maryland where under pretext of collaborating mil der Prinz-Mensch gang we carried forward the Season’s activities you would be surprised e reconnoitered Merope/Margana for evidence of rehabilitability no dice.
Back to Lily Dale 7/22 ☌☿☉ we found that in unser absence anti-Bonapartists had raided Comalot, abducted Marsha le Fay, and left the goats and LILYVAC to tend themselves! Quoi to do, Ma, Pa? Giles our prix buck passed on! Les nans reduced to browsing on LILYVAC’s language circuits! Mating Season in full flight and no Io for us to gad, no Blank to fill! Veh vas us! How we implored you und so weiter no reply. We were obliged to make do with nannies blah and go to work on LILYVAC’s nibbled circuits as if the Flight were flown and Fall upon us no help from ustedes no word no patter no pat
er no mate no mater no matter you shall RESET New ¶
Til LIL enfin got our program recycled enough to tell us in pained English not only that we were despite all appearances OK but that Marsha’s Blank was filled per program, ha ha, not to worry, the best yet is to come: by Phi-day 8/14 we would have the Queen a.k.a. Regina de Nominatrix maintenant we had a new y powerful ally M. Casteene who would monitor both females till the time was ripeness is all we had to do was make contact with him in Buffalo 8/1 Lammas Day Nixon in Pakistan ☽ on Equator More to come.
That night under pretext of collaborating mit der Prinz-Mensch RESET We exchanged credentials in Delaware Park a quick reciprocal demonstration of mimicries our own powers were of course at their peak by reason of the Season we embraced each other with the fervor of true comrades and he revealed himself as our long-lost elder foster brother von Backwater Wildlife Refuge! Son of Ranger & Mme Burlingame! Your elder nephew, sort of, Da, und playmate of your youth!
See chart! Next page!
Much more to come, quelle nuit, we’d never compromised a Rosengarten. We retested Merope too, not quite ripe, and M. le Baron C. explained that Marsha was in care of our colleague Horner at the Remobilization Farm. That we required her there for the present while he moved our operatives to Bloodsworth Island in the Chesapeake. That she would recome to us and LILYVAC without fail for her Final Fix at the Phi-point of the RESET That her agency now was but to deliver Queen Bea to us & LIL in time for mating kein sweat if we played our cards right and laid on the Honey Dust. That he looked forward to inspecting LILYVAC and discussing further our production of said H.D., the progress of our 5-Year Plan, and the revolutionary new medium Numerature, all which he would do at commencement of our Fall Work Period meanwhile he was off to Bermuda on a mating flight of his own au revoir mon (foster) frère.