John Barth - Letters

Hum. Tell us more, Horner. No one else about? Only the goats, who luckily had lost interest in you. “Checking LILYVAC” seemed to involve no more than Marsha’s sitting for some minutes in a seat molded into a cube of spun yellow fibrous stuff and pressing a red button or protuberance on each of its “arms.” Nothing you Could See ensued, but en route back to the house she dreamily remarked, That’s a real buzz. Fibers still stuck to her hams and buttocks, raising gooseflesh on you both. You Made Bold To Assist in their removal. She mmmed. In nothing like the predatory spirit wherein you Laid Peggy Rankin in the Surfside, or Seaside, or some other motel near Ocean City, Md., sixteen years past, you Caressed the labia, both majora and minora, of Marsha Blank. Her ouch this time was sharp enough to send the goats scampering. You Apologized.

Then, to your Surprise, she asked only whether she might do her daily Honey Dust before leaving (she seemed to have got it from LILYVAC). You Took Heart, Said Absolutely Not, Where are your clothes and things, et cetera. There wasn’t much; she made no fuss, but lost interest in the project. You Pretty Much Had To Dress Her yourself, not a disagreeable job at all but an awkward one. Then you Led her to the toilet and Instructed her to pee before you Set Out For Home. Dutifully she did, ouching again as she wiped herself after. Your Heart Was Stirred. Get in the car now, you Gently Commanded. She got. Exhaustion overcame you, the responsibility of initiative. For a long while you Sat behind the steering wheel, Marsha beside you, whom from time to time you Patted. She was open-eyed but glazed. Sometime after noon you Started The Engine, and after a while Moved Down The Driveway to the mailbox, where you Paused. Will the goats be okay till he gets back? you Inquired. Marsha murmured: Fuck ’em. We’ll take care of Bray later, you Promised. She fell asleep.

In an Unprecedented Show Of Self-Possession, which alas Marsha was oblivious to, you Dared The Thomas E. Dewey Thruway for the 20-odd consecutive miles from Exit 59, Fredonia, to Exit 58, Irving/Angola, before your Nerve Failed and you Exited. Handing the attendant the correct change! Checking Mr. & Mrs. Jacob Horner into the Iroquois Motel, overlooking Lake Erie, as if you Did Such Things Every Day! Finding Room 121! Extracting 2 ham sandwiches, 2 ice cream bars, and 2 Pepsi-Colas from 3 several vending machines with scarcely a hitch! Spreading that repast before your Woman on one of the twin beds in Room 121, whose air-conditioning unit you Adjusted yourself, and Bidding her eat! Posting outside your Door for all to see the Do Not Disturb sign; Turning back the bedcovers; Undressing both her and yourself; and, Almost Swooning with your Authority, Very Nearly Ordering her, in consideration of her tender vulva, to perform fellatio upon you! But exhaustion, exhaustion imperiously reasserted its claims: you Stood Unsteadily before her where she sat still on her bed edge; you Cupped her chin in your Left Hand, your Already Flagging Member in the other; you Wondered Gently Whether? She obliged, mouth still ice-creamy. I Love you! you Ejaculated.

Then with the Last Of your Strength you Wiped her mouth, Laid her down to rest (it was past 3 P.M.), and yourself Collapsed Into Sleep beside her. Next day, Wednesday, as the Dow-Jones Industrial Average sank to the year’s low and General Grant died and Senator Kennedy’s driver’s license was suspended and Haile Selassie was born and the Sun entered Leo, Jacob Horner was Scheduled per Wiedertraum to Have Dinner with Joe and Rennie Morgan, his Prospective New Colleagues at Wicomico Teachers College, where he had Just Been Appointed as a Teacher Of Prescriptive Grammar. But schedule or no schedule, you Needed Further Restoration before Resuming Management both of Marsha and of the Mercury. That day, therefore, a bright still one, you Spent In your Room except for three excursions to the now friendly array of vending machines, for breakfast, lunch, dinner. The chambermaid looked at you. There seemed to be no other guests at the Iroquois Motel. Deprived of her Honey Dust, Marsha was vacant but not comatose: it Appeared To you that she understood where she was and with whom, and did not mind. Sometimes she even replied to your Remarks and Queries. Daytime TV. When you Suggested A Shower she even said My my, and as you Soaped Up in there together, she declared almost crossly that she was able to scrub her own tits, thank you. This sharpness you Took For A Sign Of Recovery. Ditto her disinclination, this time, to receive your Ejaculate in her mouth, though she had no objection to collecting it in her other hand, which promptly thereafter she washed with more soap and water.

Skip your Sex Life, Horner. Any more information about that computer?

Only that when you Asked her sometime that night, as David Brinkley reported a.6 % increase in the U.S. cost of living for June, whether in her opinion LILYVAC was a bona fide electronic computer or a monstrous simulacrum, she formed the longest syntactically coherent sentence you had Heard from her since before her disappearance, possibly excepting the one about her tits, to wit: Life is going to be a bitch without Honey Dust.

Next day, then, Th 7/24, as H. “Rap” Brown’s speech in Cambridge, Maryland, inspired some of its black citizens to arson, and Congress established the Internal Revenue Service to raise money for the War of 1812, and President Nixon greeted the Apollo-11 astronauts quarantined aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, happy birthday Dumas père, Lord Dunsany, Amelia Earhart, you Successfully Checked Out of the Iroquois and Made Your Way up through South Buffalo, across the Peace Bridge, through U.S. and Canadian Customs, and back to the Farm! Fetched Marsha to the infirmary (Just rubbed raw is all, Tombo X’s new black nurse reported: She been getting it off with a corncob?)! Et cetera.

Joe allowed that afternoon’s P & A, here reported, to serve in Der Wiedertraum as your Abortive First Interview at Wicomico Teachers on 7/20/53; the subsequent week’s P & A (7/31/69) as your Second Interview (7/21/53), whereat you First Meet Joseph Morgan — though in fact your Dinner With Joe & Rennie Morgan (7/23/53) had been reenacted, inversely, the night before, 7/30/69. 1st tropical storm of season (Anna) reported in Caribbean, Goethe’s “Albert” arrives at Waldheim, Ted Kennedy announces will rerun for Senate but not for presidency in ’72, munitions ship Black Tom blown up at Jersey City docks by German saboteurs. Bibi/“Rennie” having gone off somewhere again, and you and Pocahontas/“Peggy Rankin” (as all save yourself still called your Woman) having Established yourselves at the Farm as a Couple, it was decided that you (O heavy plural!) would Have Morgan To Dinner instead of vice versa: i.e., that he would sit at your Table in the Dining Hall; that Marsha would pass the salt et cetera; that yours would be the awesome Hostly Initiative: Welcome, How are you this evening, Splendid or Beastly Weather we’re having, Like you to meet my Woman, How about a drink, all that. For you were a Couple, though access to Marsha’s vagina was proscribed till Lammas Day, ☽ on Equator, Herman Melville’s birthday: you Personally Monitored her withdrawal symptoms and her schedule of therapies (principally workouts on the Exercycle, meant both to ward off catatonia and to toughen up her crotch); you Slept Together (but see above); you Ignored the smirks and ungenerous comments of Tombo X and others; you Even Went So Far as to Make Clear to M. Casteene that while you Had No Objection to Marsha’s resuming her secretarial activities for him, he was not to expect resumption of additional services, inasmuch as etc. Fortunately he only laughed, wished you good luck, declared his business as prime mover at the Farm was about done in any case, and gave you to understand that the services previously rendered him by Pocahontas he had made shift to secure elsewhere. Even so, your Temerity laid you out for an interval.