John Barth - Letters

Now the big guns blasted away with their blank black-powder charges. Time for Ambrose to don his costume. Things were being filmed, he said, “not necessarily in sequence”—understatement of the season! As the full sunshine, for example, was apt for the Wedding scene but wrong for the rainy “twilight’s last gleaming” of 13 September 1814, we were pretending that today was tomorrow; tonight and tomorrow we would shoot today with the aid of fireboats and wind and rain machines. Certain scripted statements, too — not very meaningful to us lit’ry types — were delivered face-on to the camera, Godard-style, some of them by Author and Director standing shoulder to shoulder. E.g.:

AUTHOR:

This film begins with a shot of the opening pages of my novel.

DIRECTOR:

The novel opens with a sequence from my film.

Or:

AUTHOR:

And the Word shall have the last word.

DIRECTOR:

Cut.

DREW MACK:

The Novel is a cop-out. The Film is a cop-out. But the Movement is not a cop-out. Until now the media have killed us with accommodation. Now we will fight them on their grounds, with their weapons. We will make use of them without their knowing it—

DIRECTOR:

Cut.

And how about this, read by Prinz’s erstwhile protégée?

MEROPE:

The Author knows very little of the Movement; his rendering of it in the novel is naive, as is the Director’s rendering of the novel into film. But real revolutionaries can make use of such ingenuous mimicries.

Or, finally, this, delivered to me (Ambrose’s hands upon my shoulders) and meant to be the wrap-up shot not only of the Word- versus -Image theme but of the whole cockamamie film:

AUTHOR:

Make no mistake about it, my darling: We will have the final word! We will triumph over our natural enemy in—

The scene ended at the dash. I asked him where the last two words were. Oh, well, you see, he said, they’re to be superposed in block capitals on the film…

Enough of that, yes? Getting on to half after three now, and up we trip to the dressing-room barracks, where A. strips to become Francis Scott Key, transferring your unopened letter, of the existence whereof the bride has not yet been apprised, to the waistcoat pocket of his dandy Federal-period togs. Then — well, it’s that time again, and #5, R.I.P., was his Reign of Terror — before dressing he bends me forward over a barracks-bed footboard, ups B.P.B.‘s green gown and white petticoats and downs her drawers, and, his potency more than restored by that Asti spumante, merrily puts it to me (your indulgence, sir) like a ramrod up the breech.

Wedding time! And, Zeus be praised, no hitches to our hitching! Once for the cameras: Do I, Britannia, and do you, America? We did. God Save the Queen! My Country, ’Tis of Thee! Once more for real. Who gives this woman? Andrew Burlingame Cook, sir: Chief Singer of the Old Line State, / Bell ringer for our new fine fate, etc. Did he Ambrose take this woman to be etc.? He did. And did I Germaine ditto? I did, I did! If there be any present who etc., let them speak now or etc…

(We held our breaths. Bray? Marsha? Merope? Magda? André? One could hear the soft whirr of cameras, the flap and crack of the great fort flag, a mockingbird practising gorgeously our epithalamion…)

We were then pronounced Husband and Wife. Off went the guns! Kisses from Ambrose, from Magda and the family! Shy gift from Angie of her treasure beyond price, that Easter egg! Bear hug from Chief Singer/Bell Ringer! (Did I espy, behind his winks, traces of a tear?) A bronze wedding band (I forgot to say) more precious than gold, because fashioned from a bit of the nib of the very pen of History: gift of A. B. Cook to me via our Director/Best Man (who framed us once through it before passing it to Ambrose) and my groom, who slipped it with a kiss upon my finger! Key to the city from the jolly mayor himself, a bit late arriving but better late etc.: Mr & Mrs Key, I give you the key! A grave blessing from Mr Andrews; a tongue-tisking one from Drew Mack, who disavows the institution on ideological grounds but wishes us the best anyroad. And a rousing chorus by all hands, standing hats off and palms over hearts (a few raised fists among the hippies), of what else but “O Say Can You See”!’

What with our late bereavement, my uncertain status at MSU, and the filming yet to be finished, we’d planned no honeymoon trip; this whole 6th Stage had been our honeymoon! At six we bade good-bye to Magda & Co., who were returning in the van; we would see them on the morrow. Then we ourselves retired for a short while from the scene. Rather, the scene moved with us (Brice, Bruce, Prinz) around the harbour to the Constellation: the “3rd Conception scene” after all, which — we made jolly sure — consisted on film of no more than our climbing the gangplank, descending to the captain’s quarters in the stern, and tossing my bridal bouquet into the harbour from one of the aft windows. A newlywed wave to the cameras and cheerers on the dock… and then we closed and latched that window, drew shut the curtains kindly provided for our privacy, and secured the door.

And made 6th love. Shall I tell it all? First my groom proposed it to me, ardently, and found his bride (it had been a long day) a touch cool and, well, dry. Second he kissed me, and then I him, and we moved from kiss to touch. Ambrose rose; I was stirred. Third we undressed and laid on hands, the bride running like a river now. Fourth we soixante-neuf’d it to my first orgasm (of this session), a little skipperoo. Fifth he entered in good old Position One, and I recame at his first full stroke. Sixth he struck again, and again, and again, and again — are you counting, John? — and again, and on this you-know-which stroke ejaculated with a cry above the ground-groan of my Big O, a plateau I had been skating out of my skull upon since way back at Stroke One. And then he struck again, and on this last and seventh had himself a vision.

Yup: a Vision. I could see him having it, that vision, as if he’d held Angie’s Easter egg to his eye (he will, a bit farther on). I had one myself, as a matter of fact, no doubt not awfully different from my groom’s: a vision of Sevens, the dénouements that follow climaxes. I have not queried my husband upon this head, nor he me. No need.

Seventh he fell limp into my arms, and we held each other until a big clock somewhere onshore tolled the hour.

Meanwhile, back at the fort (we return there now, seven-thirtyish, subdued and pensive; good as their word, B. & B. & R.P. have left us alone and gone back already; the Constellation’ s guards smile and nod as we disembark; some vulgar fellow calls, “D’ja get in?” and Ambrose gives him the finger), the movie party is still in swing. Fireboats and pump trucks are hosing up for the Twilight’s Last Gleaming. Baratarian is still anchored out among the former, with Drew Mack evidently somehow aboard, for we overhear — indeed, we are filmed overhearing — a curious exchange upon that subject between Todd Andrews and A. B. Cook.

The laureate has bestowed upon Ambrose, on camera, the “Francis Scott Key Letter”: i.e., the one allegedly given Key by Andrew Cook IV back in 1814. It is in fact, Cook remarks with a chuckle, an unfinished personal letter to his son, which he’ll want back when the filming’s done, but ’twill do for the purpose. Ambrose duly pockets it unread, as F.S.K. is supposed to have done — and that ends our part in the shooting until the Dawn’s Early Light routine, to be filmed from Constellation’s deck in the morning. But as we newlyweds withdraw to change out of our costumes and slip into town for a late supper (Captain Buck has kindly brought my street clothes ashore), we hear Mr Andrews demanding to be put aboard the yacht, and Mr Cook cheerily refusing. They are making ready, declares the latter, for the “Diversion sequence,” to be filmed somewhere after dark; it is not convenient to shuttle extras back and forth or bring Baratarian to shore. On whose authority, Andrews wants to know, does Cook give and withhold such permission? Is the boat his? Is he Mrs Mack’s fiancé?