Letters

by John Barth

  None of us, the laureate concluded, is immortal:

  The stoutest fort’ll

  Fall; the final portal

  Open. Death’s the key

  Of keys, the cure of cures.

  All passes. Art alone endures.

  Horner applauded. Marsha whacked him. People shushed. Muttered Ambrose (as the chaplain rose to give a final benediction): “Art passes too.”

  Outside there were brief unavoidable stiff encounters; I was relieved not to have to deal with them alone. John Schott harrumphingly gave me to know that other pressing commitments of Mr Cook’s might make it impossible for him to ornament the English faculty after all, and that he Schott, among others, was pressing for my immediate reappointment. That matter would be brought before the provostial Appointments and Tenure Committee at once if I was agreeable; bygones be bygones, etc. Perhaps for the fall semester, I replied, if the university dropped their action to rescind Ambrose’s honorary degree. But never mind the spring: we were expecting a baby in March or April.

  The man was satisfactorily taken aback; his fink of a secretary as well. Ambrose squeezed my arm approvingly. But Marsha was all ears behind us, with her husband in tow. She too, she announced with saurian satisfaction, was expecting a child—with, given her relative youth, better odds than some on a normal delivery. Let us charitably suppose that Marsha had not yet heard of Peter’s death and was simply reconnoitering the effects of her Bombshell Letter. I feared for Ambrose’s temper; was tempted myself to reply that Marsha’s own track record in the delivery of normal children was not impressive. But our grief (and love) detached us; put things in right and wry perspective. You’re married, then, Ambrose remarks to the pair of them, with a great no-alimony smile. Certainly not, snaps Marsha. Well, opines Horner, in point of fact we are, though Marsha is retaining her maiden name. Shut up, Mrs H. commands him. And while their new baby is of course not his, Horner bravely persists, he hopes his wife will permit him to name it, if a boy, Joseph Morgan Horner; if a girl, Josephine. Oh, you jerk, says Marsha; I’ll Josephine you.

  Ambrose expansively congratulated them and invited them to our own wedding on the Saturday next, at Fort McHenry (we had of course decided earlier to postpone it, but Magda was insisting that we proceed; this was my first and happy notice that we were going forward as scheduled). Marsha flounced and sniffed away as satisfyingly as a comeuppanced Rival at the end of a Smollett novel. Her husband shifted about, thanked us gravely for the invitation, but declined on the grounds that that date (Rosh Hashanah and birthday of Sherwood Anderson, Claudette Colbert, J. B. Priestley, Walter Reed, and Arnold Schoenberg, we might be interested to know) marked Marsha’s debut as admissions secretary at Wicomico State College, where he himself hoped soon to return to the teaching of remedial English. Hers was not normally a six-day job, we were to understand; but the coming week and weekend were busy at Wicomico, as at Marshyhope, with the orientation and registration of incoming students.

  Ambrose fairly clapped him on the shoulder. Bravo, old chap, and so long! Have a good life, etc.! We were both grinning through our grief: poor bastards all! I’d not have minded a clarifying word with A. B. Cook, whom I espied in deep conversation with Todd Andrews; but we were anxious lest Marsha disturb our household with a visit to Angela. Our walk to the car took us past the Tower of Truth, the last of its scaffolding cleared and its landscaping in progress. Drew Mack, in clean blue denims, and those same three who had helped in the search for Merope Bernstein—the black girl Thelma, a good-looking Chicano or Puerto Rican boy, and a fuzzy gringo—were regarding the structure and pointing things out to one another. Drew had the good manners to offer his condolences for Peter’s death and his regrets that the rifling of Mensch Masonry’s files was being regarded in some quarters as an “inside job” to cover our legal tracks. As if the state General Services Department didn’t have copies of everything stolen! He himself thought the tower an architectural abomination, a rape of the environment, and a symbol of the American university’s corruption by the capitalist-imperialist society which sustained it. That there was literal falsehood in its construction he did not doubt; the building’s infamous flaws, with their attendant litigation, attested that. But he knew Peter Mensch to have been an honest man and an able stonemason, happier in blue collar than white.

  That he was, my friend, said Ambrose. And it would have pleased him to see this thing dismantled, stone by stone.

  Jane Mack was chauffeured past, somewhat grim-faced, I thought. She did not return her son’s amiable wave. They are, Drew explained, contesting his father’s will; he apologised to me that my own bequest was being delayed by that suit, and assured me that neither he nor his mother, and most certainly not the Tidewater Foundation, begrudged me my reward for “caring for” Harrison Mack. Drew’s own attorney and Mr Andrews were pressing the court to execute all such non-contested bequests forthwith.

  Will you believe, sir, that I had quite forgot I was an heiress? I’d certainly never humoured and tended poor Harrison with expectation of reward, but my provision in his will is generous—$30,000, I believe. That amount would, will, decidedly bolster for a time the sagging economy of the Menschhaus and provide a bit of a nest egg for our hatchling-in-the-works. I shared the good news with Ambrose; together with the glad tidings of Marsha’s marriage, it cheered us right up, and Magda too, as we returned to our bereavement.

  Harrison Mack, Joseph Morgan, and Peter Mensch, good men all: rest in peace!

  We now enter our 6th, climactic week of Mutuality, Ambrose (and you) and I: what I must call, though I’ve yet to wed, our honeymoon; the “ourest” week of “our” stage, this 6th, of our romance. I write these words on Thursday evening, 11 September, just returned with my lover from a day of planning and conferring at Fort McHenry. It is, A. B. Cook has told us, the anniversary of Governor-General Prevost’s rout at Plattsburgh and Lake Champlain in 1814 (i.e., in the 1812 War), when also the British Chesapeake fleet, fresh from burning Washington, assembled at the mouth of the Patapsco for the attack on Baltimore. What’s more (Jacob Horner would have applauded to hear) it is by the Diocletian calendar New Year’s Day of Year 1686.

  Our own new week had till today been spent in loving grief and vice versa at the Menschhaus, which now belongs to Magda. We have put Peter’s affairs in order (there was little to do that receivership had not already done; Angie is Ambrose’s—our—financial responsibility; with her own children independent, Magda can live adequately on her new salary and Peter’s insurance). Over her protest I have renewed my lease on 24 L Street. Magda wants us to live unabashedly with her; she hopes we will at least leave Angie there. But we are making no commitments.

  We have been making love, as you will have imagined, in recapitulatory fashion: i.e., on the Monday Ambrose was scarcely potent, and I awkward and unresponsive (it was midmorning at 24 L; we were both distracted with Last Things); on the Tuesday his potency returned in spades, but I was wondering whatever happened to Bea Golden and managed no more than a partial orgasm; on the Wednesday we were chaste: Magda insisted we go forward not only with our marriage but with our wedding, and we agreed on condition that she and Angie take part in it (I spent the day drafting the preceding pages of this letter). This morning therefore Ambrose warmly reproposed marriage to me; I accepted; we sealed the compact with an “A.M. quickie” and drove up to Baltimore for a story conference.

  The Baratarians were already at McHenry, minus Reg Prinz, Merope Bernstein, Jerome Bray (who however was, it seems, somehow not blitzed after all on Bloodsworth), and of course Bea Golden. Bruce, Brice, and A. B. Cook were in clear charge, the laureate commuting to the scene like ourselves but from nearer by: that house of his down near the Bay Bridge. Drew was on hand with his gang (we have learned that he and his lovely black wife are divorcing; no details). Below us in the harbour was moored the yacht Baratarian, lent us again—by Mack Enterprises?—for water shots, for ferrying gear and personnel between Baltimore and Bloodsworth Island (7
5 sea miles to south of us), and for limited overnight accommodation. No one was aboard except the hired skipper. Such is the power of the movie-camera lens, at which Ambrose and I still shake our heads, that the U.S. Park Service and the city of Baltimore had obligingly put the fort and the old U.S.F. Constellation (in process of being restored in the city’s inner harbour) at our limited disposal for as long as we required them.

  Two days of preparation and one of principal shooting, we estimated, and set about making plans. Since the “D.C.” fracas, Ambrose’s authority seems to have waxed. Prinz’s return is more or less expected tomorrow or Saturday, but is far from certain (Merope, Cook declares, is unbelievably reconciled with Bray and has returned to live with him in Lily Dale!) Bruce & Brice make technical suggestions, but take their orders from Cook; and Cook and my fiancé, believe it or not, are in surprising general rapport on what the scene is to comprise. The historical text is still what they are calling the Ampersand Letter of A. B. Cook IV—the ciphered original begins with that character—which describes not only the operation against Washington but the move on Baltimore. As to the casting: Cook as before will play his ancestor; Ambrose (his cast and sling now exchanged for a wrist bandage) will take the part of F. S. Key, watching through the night from the decks of Baratarian—renamed Surprize after Admiral Cochrane’s temporary command-ship—to say whether he can see etc. In default of other leading ladies, I have agreed to play Britannia one last time, “still mourning the loss of her colonies in ’76 and making her final effort to repossess them.” What had been projected as a “Third Conception scene” has been rescripted as the Wedding scene: our actual nuptials, but evocative (not my adjective) of the Treaty of Ghent and the new harmony to follow between Britannia and Columbia.

  What about British support of the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War only 40 years later, I innocently enquire? A mere marital squabble, Cook replies. He then congratulated me, most warmly, on my Delicate Condition, and proposed that it be made somehow to betoken the parturition of America from Britain. Also, that our wedding march be “God Save the Queen,” sung thus by the “British” and as “My Country ’Tis of Thee” by the Yankees. Finally, to symbolise the birth of a nation truly independent of both Britain and France, the bridegroom Ambrose/Key will draft, and all hands sing, “The Star-Spangled Banner”! There remains to be worked out the inclusion, in this armistitial farrago, of the reconciliation of Word and Image, fiction and film. It is my fiancé’s deadpan hope that Reg Prinz will appear in time for consultation on that score. Otherwise we shall “wing it.”

  The constituency of the wedding party, too, has yet to be decided; we shall settle all that tomorrow.

  But now it is tomorrow, Friday, 12 September, celebrated in this state as Defender’s Day by reason of the foregoing. It is in fact late evening, properly showering (as in 1814) and cooler, a wet touch of autumn. I did not, it turns out, go up to Baltimore today. Angie was rambunctious, Magda feeling down; I stayed behind to look after things. Now Ambrose has returned and reported; likewise shall I.

  The day began with love, and so it has just ended (but not, this P.M., with lovemaking: our last night as lovers leaves us subdued, nervous, chaste). After Ambrose had made love with me this morning and left, I consoled dear Magda as best I could, not without some effect. I then reviewed this letter and did a deal of note-taking on the Fiction of the Bonapartes, against the possibility that I might after all be teaching this fall. As if conjured by that activity, a phone call came from John Schott, “feeling me out” again (his creepish term) on my “standby availability” should Mr Cook be unable etc. He has recommended to the board of regents that Ambrose’s degree be let stand after all, and though of course the decision is theirs, not his, he feels confident that etc. The 1960’s, after all, are etc. And he understands that Dr Mensch and I are about to Tie the Knot, Make It Legal, heh heh. Cook is to let him know definitely next week whether he can accept the Distinguished Visitorship.

  I shall do likewise, I said. And the spring semester? He will cross that bridge when he draws nearer it, Schott declared. What the Faculty of Letters needs for the 1970’s, he foresees, is less trendy “relevance” and more Back-to-Basics: he is considering the restoration of required freshman courses in basic composition, prescriptive grammar, even spelling. He knows a first-chop teacher in that field, who has recently moved to the area…

  I said—and say—no more. In any case, the afternoon brought a more serious jolt, which it shakes me afresh to record. Pacified at last with the (regressive) help of her Easter egg, Angie went out after lunch to fool about on the river shore as is her wont in every weather. As is our wont, I made certain to check on her from time to time from a window. At one point I saw her speaking with two men in a battered Volvo wagon parked at the road’s end, not far from the house. I hurried out, affecting nonchalance. Was at first relieved to see that the driver was Drew Mack: denim shirt, sandy-blond ponytail, flushed face, and white smile of greeting. Why was he not in Baltimore with the rest? They were just on their way, he declared; had some business here before he and his friend took over the night shift at Fort McHenry. Had I met Hank Burlingame?

  You feel my heart catch. I lean down to manage a tight smile across Drew to his passenger. Angie shuffles her sneakers and snaps her fingers to melodies unheard. It is the same young man as at Harrison’s funeral: dark-haired and -eyed, lean-limbed and -featured, almost sallow; a polite smile and nod, a reticent, accented greeting; very European-looking clothes (black shoes and trousers, white dress shirt fastened at the neck, no jacket or tie). And eyes fiery as Franz Kafka’s. I asked how… did he do? He gazed through me and said Thank you. Angie came with me back to the house.

  There is a shock I didn’t need, John, on my wedding eve. Angie “watched” them from an upper window through her egg, as if it were a telescope; I unabashedly tried Ambrose’s telescope—but “my son” was on the far side of the car. Drew himself was using binoculars, trained not on me but on the Choptank bridge, and seemed to be explaining something. Presently they left; moments later I saw their car pass over that same bridge, presumably towards Baltimore.

  Well. By Ambrose’s return I was composed enough not to show my dismay or even, for the present, mention this encounter. I shall tell him when things are calmer, perhaps in “Stage Seven.” I held him tightly and then kept him talking of the day’s news, our wedding plans, as we made dinner. Todd Andrews, he reported, had been at McHenry, looking in vain for Drew Mack: Bea Golden is officially a Missing Person, of whom no trace has been found since she left the Remobilisation Farm in mid-August to visit Jerome Bray! Mr Andrews confided to Ambrose his fear that she may be a victim of her growing alcoholism, or have been victimised in her dependency. Police have been alerted in New York, Maryland, and California; Bray’s premises have been searched in vain (no explanation of his resurrection from the Prohibited Area!). Andrews is also concerned—Ambrose thinks unnecessarily—that young Mack’s divorce and other factors may be leading him from radicalism toward terrorism.

  Never mind, I said, so long as he doesn’t terrorise our wedding. What had been decided in that line? Perhaps to chuck the whole McHenry circus and slip off to the nearest J.P.?

  He kissed me. Nope. After Peter’s death, Ambrose had considered asking you, sir, to be his best man—your rejection of our honorary doctorate and your subsequent silence having played no small part in bringing him and me together. Given the exigencies of the movie “wrap-up,” however—and the erstwhile Director’s reappearance after all on the set today—it was decided that Reg Prinz, newly spectacled, will serve in that capacity! Now darling, I began—but then thought of Henry/Henri Burlingame VII, and other things. Well, I said, it’s the groom’s choice. But let there be no stunts or surprises on our wedding day. No stunts, Ambrose pledged; and if there are surprises, they won’t come from him. Prinz had agreed: let armistice and harmony prevail! Magda and Angie to be matron of honour and bridesmaid, respectively? Done. A. B. Cook, the d
ouble agent of 1814, to give the bride away? Well… done (I reported Schott’s call: the doctorate not after all to be revoked; the spectre of Jacob & Mrs Horner on the horizon. Ambrose agreed, to my immense relief, that if Angie could handle it we should all vacate this scene as soon as humanly feasible. Hurrah!). The MSU chaplain, faute de mieux, to officiate. We were to be on the set by noon.

  Done, done, done! We kissed our bridesmaids and each other good night, agreed not to make love (we’ve plenty of that to do tomorrow), and for the sport of it bedded down separately, he in the basement, I in the Lighthouse, where I pen this. The casements are open; some quirk of acoustics makes audible the horn of the Choptank River Light, ten miles downstream: an unlikely shofar heralding the Jewish new year and my new life to come…

  Now at last it is the letterhead date: half after nine Saturday morning, 13 September 1969. My (second) wedding day. Partly cloudy, 50% POP. The family are piling into two cars below: Carl, Connie, and their betrotheds into a camperbus, Magda and Ambrose and Angie (egg in hand) into our little car.