John Barth - Letters

We attained the rose garden, a little open labyrinth of teas and multifloras. The Albright-Knox could have been the Louvre, Scajaquada Creek the Seine, Lincoln Parkway the Champs-Élysées. I wept; my André comforted me, without pointless apologising. That business of Andrew Cook IV’s letters, which I’d refused to play his game with? A baritone chuckle: too ingenious by half, no doubt, all that indirection: occupational hazard in his line of work. We were past two-thirds through the century, doubtless through our lives as well; God knew what form the Revolution would take, and when: maybe it would come to nothing more than two-way telly by 1976! André had in fact lost entire track of our son; was reduced to writing long letters to him which he could not post for want of address. Should he ever discover one, or otherwise locate that young man (he took both my hands; we found a secluded bench; the night was aromatic), Henri Cook Burlingame VII would be straightforwardly apprised of his true parentage and the circumstances of his rearing, let him make of those facts what he would, and urged to put himself in communication, if not with his father, at least with his too-long-suffering mother. Might it come to pass before Guy Fawkes Day next!

It was astonishingly easy, John. Heaven bless whatever chemistry made it so! Was he alone these days? I enquired. André smiled and sighed: Oui et non. He believed I knew of his little arrangement with the Blank woman? That had become quite impossible. He was both relieved and sorry to hear that she had involved herself with the peculiar M. Bray; felt perhaps even sorrier for Jacob Horner for having “rescued” her and — as was said to have been the custom in prerevolutionary China concerning preventers of suicide — thereby assumed lifetime responsibility for her welfare. Himself, he satisfied his needs with whatever lay untroublesomely to hand — I would be amused to hear that the Bernstein girl, for example, had conceived a veritable passion for him, which he saw fit to indulge shrug-shoulderedly whilst deploring her want of personal hygiene — but he had no companion; he was alone, and neither happy nor wretched so to be. But how was it between me and my friend, whose ex-wife had unbecomingly reported about him so many and poisonous things? I was, André was gratified to observe, in my own clothes again: might he take that to mean that Ambrose and I had worked out our difficulties and were happy?

Things had indeed been troubled, I replied, but seemed less so presently. And I loved Ambrose, yes.

Eh bien. And he me?

In his way. As you did, André. My fate.

For some moments we reflected silently in the dark. André bade me excuse him for thirty seconds. It took some doing not to clutch at his jacket sleeve, but I said, “Just now I could almost excuse you these thirty years.” He brushed my forehead with a kiss; stepped into the shadows behind our bench; returned smiling in half a minute or less. Then: Would I take a short drive with him? He had a thing to show me. I smiled and declined. He clucked his tongue. The scent of the roses was preternaturally strong; no doubt the hashish intensified my perceptions. When André put an arm about my shoulders and drew me to him on the bench, I kissed him unhesitatingly, but without passion. His tone changed. He touched me; I responded. Just into the car, he whispered; please? I shook my head, but permitted myself after all to be led off, a proper Clarissa. The drug really was getting to me; the little walk from bench to curb seemed miles.

Even so, I drew back when he opened the door of a small black car. André Castine in a dusty Volkswagen? He was huskily urgent: Who cared where? In the road, in the treetops, in the sky! Firmly now I said no. And he — what a grip! — yes. Really, I would call out! He clapped a hand over my mouth, forced me toward the car like any rapist. I bit his finger; felt at once a tremendous shock from behind (where he now was), as if I’d backed into one of those electric cattle-prods the riot police used to be so fond of. I managed (I think) a single shout.

Dot dot dot.

Hashish plays hob with time! Ambrose and Joe Morgan discovered me on the park bench in the rose garden in less time by far, so it seemed to me, than it had taken to walk the fifty feet from that bench to that car (now gone) with André (ditto). They were of course alarmed to have found me “passed out” (they’d heard no cry; my clothes were intact; I seemed uninjured; no aches or pains, though my head was woozy). Casteene? He had been with them the whole time, in the pavilion; had joined them directly I left to find him, thinking his company not welcome to me since our little difference of June, concerning which he assured Ambrose he bore no grudge. I was okay?

Well, it appeared so, though I felt mighty strange right through. For a particular reason, I did not see fit to tell them then and there what had happened, as best I understood it. I pled the dope; begged to be fetched to our motel at once; was. Then, whilst Ambrose at my insistence showered first, I investigated the clammy sog I’d commenced in the cab to feel between my legs. My clothing, I’ve reported, was in place, underpants included, though now sopping; it even occurred to me, along with the obvious ugly alternative, that my belated menses had arrived after all. But now I discovered (here goes, John) a dime-sized tear or… puncture, smack in the crotch of my knickers, and a greenish discharge unlike anything I’ve leaked hitherto: neither semen nor menstrual flow nor spontaneous abortion nor thrush nor monilia nor cystic discharge nor, for that matter, urine either normal or jaundiced. The old vulva, too, was a touch inflamed and tender. I hid the drawers under trash in the basket, showered, applied my travelling douche. Seeing I wasn’t ill, Ambrose made to make love to me by way of solicitude and reassurance. I demurred, slept like a tot from the dope, awoke this A.M. clearheaded and feeling fine. Then we did make love: no problems; tenderness and “discharge” gone; a great comfort to leak the real thing again. No evidence whatever of Whatever: the whole P.M. a clear but distant dream, a dream.

Well! was I Mickey-Finned and raped? By André Castine in an old Volkswagen? By whom, then, and with what? Could it truly have been a terrific hash dream? (No: I rechecked those drawers. Ugh.) Thank heaven John Schott won’t be reading this letter!

I am damned if I know. I will keep last night to myself — ourselves — at least until I can check out “Monsieur Casteene” across the river, where no doubt our filmage will fetch us in time for the great Fort Erie Assault & Explosion of 15 August 1814. If I actually was raped last night, I must say it was as painless, scarless, hangoverless a business (but for that single shock) as smoking dope, its main consequences one ruined pair of knickers, a powerful curiosity to learn what’s come over my old friend André these days, that he gets his sex by C.I.A. methods… and, even as I speak so lightly, a welling up of tears from what I had believed the long-healed fracture of my heart.

Whew! As I’ve spent the morning abed in the Scajaquada Motor Inn, penning this and shaking my head over last night, the Author and the Director have been prepping Delaware Park for the Conjockety and Mating-Flight shots (with echoes of Long Wharf and that mike boom business), which I myself am to play some role in later in the afternoon or evening, if I feel up to it.

I find, to my surprise, I rather do. Ambrose was truly tender with me this morning: not a word about my going off to look for André, only concern and — well, love. I may never know what hit me last night in that rose garden, but I know I’m anxious about the coming confrontation between my Author and his adversary, especially if Bea Golden has rejoined Prinz and if Ambrose’s only ally, besides myself, is that erratic—