Letters полностью

You are Concerned. “Peggy” is semicomatose again, as when you Picked Her Up at Lily Dale on 7/22, St. Mary Magdalene’s Day. “Rennie” (again) is dead drunk. Dr. Morgan impatient. You Do Not Believe that he will abide much longer Ms. Golden’s ever less convincing portrayal of the late Mrs. Morgan, who seldom used alcohol. It is only for the sake of Bibi’s own therapy, since her recent abandonment by Reg Prinz in favor of Merry Bernstein, that Saint Joe indulges her sloppy rendition of Rennie, to the point of sleeping with her. But he dislikes drunks, especially when they misplay starring roles in Der Wiedertraum, already out of gear. What will you Do, you Wonder, when he throws her out and redemands that you Produce His Wife, alive and well as before you Came Between Them?

For that matter, what will you Do if Marsha (whom you Can No Longer Easily Call “Peggy Rankin” or “Pocahontas”) really does revisit Bray next week, as she declares she must? You are Jealous (and Vaguely Frightened) of him. You are Truly Frightened for her. But you are as Terrified by the prospect of another solo expedition to Lily Dale as by the prospect of what will happen when you Fail To Restore Rennie Morgan to her husband by 9/1, per schedule.

Yet who is there to go with you, if Marsha does not return and you must Re-retrieve Her? Tombo X grows weekly more belligerent; wants all honkies off his premises. Casteene appears to have disappeared with Merry Bernstein’s group. Anarchy threatens. Reparalysis beckons.

Remarkably, you Care About All This.

Last time you were Lucky. Tell us about it, Horner, they demanded, Casteene and Saint Joe, in the P & A Room on Thursday 7/24, Fast of Av, ☌♆☽‧☌♂☽, when you Regained The Farm at last, Fetched Marsha straight to the infirmary, and were by them Shaken Awake, not from Paralysis, but from Exhausted Sleep. What’s Bray up to over there?

He wasn’t home, you Replied. Fortunately. It was your Impression that he had gone again to Maryland with the film company, leaving Marsha, in the condition to be described, to tend his automatic computer and feed his livestock.

What sort of livestock? Is the farm legit, or a front? Indian nationalism? Dope? Is it the same premises that the Remobilization Farm occupied from 1956 to 1965, before it moved here? What’s he up to with that computer? C.I.A. connection? What took you so long?

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.