John Barth - Letters

Thus the scenario. I protested to Ambrose that neither Bea nor I was jolly likely to take a helicopter ride with Jerome Bray. He imagined Bea would do anything her Director asked of her at this juncture, but insisted I follow my own inclinations once the cameras were rolling: that was the Point. And Merry Bernstein? Ambrose wasn’t sure, but believed she was to begin the episode as some flower-childish avatar of his daughter (they’d not been able to lay hands on a MARYLAND IS FOR CRABS T-shirt in Buffalo, but had found one blazoned BUFFALO IS FOR LOVERS) and end it with a Revolutionary Statement made Godard-like to the camera as the ’copter reascends and the Obsolete Media slug it out.

She had been warned, though, Merope B., that her nemesis Bray was to be there? Well, Ambrose hoped so: that was really Prinz’s department; she was his hanger-on. Himself was too busy anticipating what the Director might have up his sleeve in the ad-lib assault way to bother with such niceties: he did not fancy another concussion. On that score, I was to stay clear when things got sticky between him and Prinz: he had a couple of rabbits in his own fedora if push came to shove, and not for anything would he have me endanger our just-possible You Know What.

It is evening when we commence. The park brims with floodlights, searchlights, portable electric generators, and the Buffalo curious, whom (true to form) Prinz does nothing to keep back, but often turns his cameras upon. Traffic on the Scajaquada Expressway makes its contribution to the light and sound track. Somewhere overhead a chopper chops. I do not get to hear, alas, Bea Golden’s extemporisings upon American policy objectives in the Second War of Independence: A. and I are busy yonder in our skiff, across the pond. Nor do I get to extemporise myself (I’d given the matter some thought, and concluded that Fatigue was the finally regnant factor on the British side of the negotiating table at Ghent, as it may one day be for you Americans in Vietnam: more than we wanted what we claimed we wanted, we wanted Out): the Script calls for our transit of Delaware Park Lake to be shot in flickering silent film-style, our Q & A to be transcribed into subtitles — but no one is there.

Our wigs and tights and crinolines, quill pens and Union Jacks, amuse the bystanders until, muttering that Prinz has scored again, Ambrose seizes the oars and rows us out on the dark pond toward the bright pavilion, where a Newswatch Traffkopter has already landed. Buffalonians commandeer other park rowboats and follow us. Prinz has missed a good shot: we are a proper little invasion flotilla! I wave my U.J. wanly; am even moved to attempt “Rule, Britannia” against the pavilion loudspeakers, whence softly issues “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” Ambrose does my harmony, and not badly: I am touched.

At our never shall be slaves (which coincides neatly with the loudspeakers’ free-ee and the bray-ave), we attain the landing and are instantly floodlit: score another for R.P., who has monitored our approach and gets fine footage now of the surprisers surprised! In plus fours and reversed cap, hand-cranking some relic from the Eastman Kodak museum, he grins from a camera crane; Bea frowns beside him in her Stars-and-Stripes drapery, looking more like a Chenango Street hippie than like Liberty. Between us, looking merely confused, Merope Bernstein, her uniform blue denims unaccountably exchanged for honey-coloured leotard plus the aforementioned T-shirt, a tiara, of all things, in her teased-out hair, and wings, John — those same Tinkerbell pterons that erst graced the Golden scapulae (on Gadfly III) before Bea fell from favour. Hence, no doubt, her frown. Wings!

We disembark, some of us feeling mighty silly. The music stops. Moths commit enthusiastic suicide in the kliegs. The Author blinks, shades his eyes, cons the scene for light and mike booms. Prinz turns to Bea and asks in a startlingly clear, amplified, and mocking voice: “What do you think of Senator Randolph’s Quids?” No less than Columbia, we are as surprised by the articulation as by the question. I am all ears for her reply; I search for an opinion of my own about the maverick Virginian’s anti-Federalist splinter party; decide to approve it as a manifestation of Randolph’s prevailing Anglophilia… and again do not get my moment in the limelight.

For Merry Bernstein, with a shriek of nonsimulated fright, upstages us all. The spot is on her — and, clearly, vice versa; Fay Wray-like (but that tiara, those wings!) she looks up from the landing into the darkness with an expression of Terrified Disbelief. She screams again… Now a smaller spot obligingly searches the pavilion balcony, passing over grips, sound crewmen, waving bystanders, until it fixes on Jerome Bonaparte Bray. He stands outside the balcony railing, balancing who knows how; he wears no wings, but his famous cape is spread like a flying squirrel’s between his outspread arms and legs. He smiles, well, nuttily. He cries a name (not Merry’s; sounds to me like Morgana); he reaches for his crotch; he leaps into thin air; and in flickering, odd slow motion — Prinz must have wired him up! — he lands upon poor Tinkerbell.

I mean upon her. Merry is knocked flat; her wings are squashed; Bray’s cloak entirely covers the pair of them, who look to be wrestling or humping under a blanket. The girl squeals and squeals.

Prinz and Bea are nearest by, but up on their rigs. Ambrose and I, the closest on foot, dash to pull Bray off. Not as difficult a job as one would expect: he is extraordinarily light, or else somehow half suspended still by a wire I can’t see. He comes up squeaking, buzzing, clicking, salivating; no Dracula marks on Merope’s throat, but the lap of her leotard is soiled as if by axle grease. She scrambles whimpering from under like a half-swatted dragonfly. Light as he is, Bray is hard to hold on to, something about the material of that cape. He slips silkily from my grip; Ambrose still has him fairly fast, but as I make to resnatch him I see Bea Golden dollying grimly in as if to do the mike-boom trick again!

I prevent her. By 1814, Columbia may have been the new Gem of the Ocean, but Britannia was still its boss. We went at it on that dolly, then on the quayside proper, like a pair of fishwives, she wasting her breath on insults and obscenities, me settling the score not only for 4 July but as it were for all I’d put up with at Ambrose’s hands on her account till the past few days. Unfair, surely; paradoxical, too (since it was Ambrose I was fighting for!) —but mighty satisfying all the same. She snatches my hair: ha ha, ’tis Britannia’s wig! Hers is Dolly Homespun’s genuine article, which I lay hold of to good effect. My crinolines and whalebone corseting are dandy armor against her nails; if she rips one petticoat through, there’s another beneath. But her bit of bunting is all she’s got, and while it still waves at the scuffle’s end (in fact more than at the outset, for I’ve clawed it half off her) it sorely needs a Mary Pickersgill to restitch Stars to Stripes.

All this, of course, whilst cameras roll merrily and spectators cheer. Not all of them for Old Glory, either — there must have been a few Canadians in the crowd — though I grant the applause at my most telling blow might have been as much for B.G.‘s jugs as for the stroke that bared them. Comes my Author now to “relieve” me, just when I’m in position to strike Columbia’s colours altogether. Balls! cry I, when he scolds me for so exerting myself in my Condition — but enough I suppose is enough. We step out of the light, still fixed on Columbia as she regroups. Merry B. meanwhile, in proper hysterics, has fled to her Director’s arms — anyroad to his camera crane, where he coolly comforts her whilst she bawls and swipes at her lap. Somehow reascended to the balcony, Bray shrills imprecations upon us all, in particular upon Ambrose, who he ominously vows shall Pay. The crowd applauds him to the waiting Newswatch helicopter, which promptly buzzes off — to Lily Dale? (We’ve not seen him since).