John Barth - Letters

A month ago I’d have been appalled at the notion of his even reading them, not to mention using them. Now… I find I don’t really mind. They do spell out something of a story, don’t they, with a sort of shape to it? Wanting perhaps in climax and dénouement, but fetching its principals withal at least to this present gravely tranquil plateau.

Yes. I think I’m granting you my permission, who never after the first time deigned to respond to me, to respond as you please to Ambrose, should he in fact make such a request of you. Always assuming that you received #‘s 2 through 22 in the first place and (here I complete — and forever put behind me! — my six months’ self-abnegation) perchance preserved them, those epistles from

Germaine

P.S. (7:00 P.M.): Laboratory and X-ray findings in, and A.‘s lay worst-case diagnosis confirmed in dreadful particular: Paget’s disease, of sufficient standing to have involved pelvic bones, femurs, lower spine, and temporal bone. “Explosive” phosphatase level. Strong roent-genographic evidence of multicentric osteo-sarcoma: apparent lesions at least in right distal femur and left proximal tibia; apparent metastasis already at least to one lung. The doctor will not speak yet of prognosis, but to Ambrose he needn’t: it’s Very Poor indeed, even with massive radiation and radical “ablative operative therapy”—i.e., multiple amputation. In all likelihood, a few hellish months.

O poor Peter! Poor Magda! Poor tumorous humankind!

E: Todd Andrews to his father.13 R, a visit from Polly Lake, a call from Jeannine.

Andrews, Bishop, & Andrews, Attorneys

Court Lane

Cambridge, Maryland 21613

Friday, August 8, 1969

Thomas T. Andrews, Dec’d

Plot #1, Municipal Cemetery

Cambridge, Maryland 21613

Old Progenitor,

Events recircle like turkey buzzards, from whose patient orbits — eccentric, even retrograde, but ever closing — we determine their dead sun. Seven weeks have passed since 12 R, my Second Dark Night. A full month since the subsequent illumination of 13 R: my recognition that their target is yours truly. What prompts my pen today is neither another such night nor another such dawning, but a long and oddly clouded afternoon, my last here in the office before my August vacation cruise — an afternoon which I’m moved to prolong yet further by writing you about it, in hopes of glimpsing what’s behind those clouds.

13 L, Dad (see my letter to you of May 16 last), was your son’s resolve on the morning of June 21 or 22, 1937, to live that summer day as routinely as possible and kill himself at its close. Its counterpart in my life’s recycling, 13 R, was what A. B. Cook’s mid-sentence wink — possibly alluding to the Floating Opera? — opened my eyes to, four Fridays past: a replay of 13 L in slower motion (as befits the Suddenly Old), but with a more final finale. Not jubilantly this time, but serenely, I recognized in that Marshyhope committee room what all those goodbyes were about: how my future had indeed been fertilized by my past, attained full growth with but a little cultivation, and was ripe now for harvesting. Instead of a summer’s day, the summer season, lived out as normally as possible in face of such extraordinaries as the loss of Polly Lake and the miraculous regaining (and relosing) of Jane. For the summer solstice, the autumnal equinox should serve, or thereabouts; keep late September clear on your appointment calendar, Dad, for our too long postponed reunion.

In the six or seven weeks till when, I mean to make a final single-handed circuit of my favorite Chesapeake anchorages and watch the Perseid meteors for the last time from Osborn Jones. I hope too to wind up a deal of unfinished business before my deadline: principally the matter of Harrison’s estate, but also my Inquiry into your suicide; my Letter; the little mystery of Jane’s blackmailing; and the still-unbridged crevasse, so narrow yet so deep, between me and Drew (who has avoided me entirely since his rare overtures of July).

But I do not conceive 13 R to be necessarily either a detailed rerun of 13 L or a tidy wrap-up of my life. If differences remain unreconciled, distances unbridged, mysteries unresolved, businesses unfinished by (say) 9/21 or 22, so be it, Dad: I’ll keep our appointment.

By what vehicle? The Original Floating Theatre II is too obvious to be ruled out, given our Author’s want of subtlety. But I do not consider myself bound to the letter of His crude scenarios; the choice of vehicle I regard as matter of small, if not of no, importance. I shall not, however, attempt this time to take others with me, I think; at least not Innocent Bystanders — though I am unrepentant for having so attempted last time around, and would without compunction destroy certain of the world’s Dreadfuls along with myself if such a happy dénouement could be arranged. Alas, no one conveniently to hand is to my knowledge wicked enough: not even our elected rulers over on the banks of the Potomac. My final crossing, like my final cruise, looks to be a solo voyage.

The matter of means, then, is a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it, the Author of us all and I. Wednesday two weeks past, July 23, was the second anniversary of the other bridge episode in my life — that encounter with Drew and his explosive colleagues on the Choptank Bridge in 1967. I took the trouble that noon to hike out there and fish awhile near the second lamppost from the draw, just to check whether old A. (above) had any heavy ironies up His sleeve (I admit it was sweet to recall the emotion of Courage, too, and bittersweet to recollect brave Polly’s aid, and our little sail after on Osborn Jones).

He did not. The tide ran. No fish bit.

My sense of the latitude permitted within the general pattern of recurrence was strengthened further by the passage yesterday week, eventless, of another famous anniversary: July 31, when in 1935 (see 10 L) Jane and I resumed our lapsed love affair — in effect shrugging our shoulders, along with Harrison, at the mild question of Jeannine’s paternity. Granted that Jane had 10 R’d me three months since aboard O.J. — re-reseduced me, so to speak — she had re-redropped me in the meantime too, and who’s to say those buzzards can’t spiral in for a third, a fourth, a fifth cycle before their dinnertime? Though my heart has truly bid good-bye to her, I went out to the Todds Point cottage, just in case.

Nothing. (Jane is, I understand, off vacationing with her “Lord Baltimore,” whereabouts a company secret. Cap’n Chick is being capitalized as a wholly owned subsidiary of m.e., which is gearing up Now to capacity for Tomorrow’s Crabsicles and Eastern Sho’ fillers and binders.)

We expect no surprises, therefore, on Wednesday next, 8/13, when in 1932 Jane first instructed me in Surprise. I shan’t play the game further, dutifully pretending to catch an afternoon nap out there in the cottage till she comes to me. Indeed, I shan’t be there at all: O.J. and I will be at sea (oh well: at Bay).

Presumably alone, as I told Polly Lake just this noon during her (surprise!) visit to A. B. & A. Hot as the dickens on the gulf this time of year! Makes damp old Dorchester feel like Heaven! On her way north to rescue her grandchildren from their parents for a spell; thought she’d better stop by to see whether her successor had quit or taken to drink, etc.

Oh Polly, Polly, you look terrific. Ten pounds younger (she’s become a golfer!), crop-haired and berry-brown, outfitted in trim linen from a good Sarasota shop. Florida agrees with you!

No, no, Toddy, it’s living in sin that does. But you look awful! Seriously, have you been sick?