John Barth - Letters

Tuesday 16th brought the Bloodsworth Island catastrophe. I stayed home to prepare my unexpected lectures at 24 L and help keep an eye on things at the Menschhaus. Ambrose, against my inclination but with my consent, went down to observe the “final frames,” meant to echo the destruction of Jean Lafitte’s pirate headquarters in 1814. There had been, after all, no real hostilities between Author and Director since the D.C. Burning; A. was content to leave this “wrap-up” to Reggie; he had not even drafted a scenario for it; it would be their last personal connexion; any further communication Ambrose had resolved would be by letter; it was time he looked to what he will do next, with his pen, with his life.

His distraction, in this last respect, may have saved his life. Twice, en route to Bishops Head through a sticky drizzle, he stopped the car to jot down notes of some sort; when he arrived there he was too late for the runabout scheduled to ferry him across Hooper Strait, and had to wait in hope of its return. He had just espied it, and was waving his pocket handkerchief, when the “accident” occurred, of which you will have read.

It is simply too slick, John, and it scares the bejesus out of me, even without yesterday’s sequel! Or it would so scare me, but for that calming gravity whose centre seems to be my womb. What a frightful game, André’s “Game of Governments”! We have heard already A. B. Cook’s contention that the navy wanted him off Bloodsworth Island. We have heard the charge that Cook himself was an F.B.I. counteragent. It is a fact that another of those routine gunnery exercises, this one involving pilotless target aircraft, had been scheduled and announced for that morning long in advance, and that, as in the Washington scene, Prinz had meant to make use of it for “the contemporary tie-in”; had even stationed Bruce and Brice outdoors at the ready to “catch the action” whilst he and the company organised their plans for the day. But where are the rackety helicopters, the warning patrol craft? Standing over on Bishops Head, Ambrose sees and then hears a single, sleek, wicked-looking little “drone” aircraft or missile shoot from the overcast and plunge out of sight into Bloodsworth Island. He hears the crash — no explosion this time — and sees black smoke rise; it appears closer to him than the Prohibited Area. The bearded skipper of the runabout is peering sternwards too, alarmed; he picks Ambrose up and runs back to Barataria, wondering where the planes are and what the fuck…

Too slick! It is one thing for Drew Mack (pulled injured from the flaming cottage by Todd Andrews — what is he doing there?) to accuse the navy of deliberately targeting what they knew was a headquarters of the antiwar movement: Rodriguez, Thelma, and the other chap under arraignment would doubtless have said the same had they survived the crash; Reg Prinz’s position we shall never know. But Andrews himself — no radical, surely, and a man not given to paranoia — agrees that the pilotless aircraft, which he caught sight of from where B. and B. were poised, and pointed out to them, neither swerved nor faltered nor “flamed out,” but zipped as if on wires out of nowhere (read Patuxent Naval Air Station), unaccompanied and unpursued, straight into Barataria Lodge.

Four killed. Three others badly burned. Drew Mack slightly so, and ankle-sprained. About half of the Frames footage (and History’s pen, and Fame’s palm) destroyed in the fire along with the Director; the rest salvaged by B. & B., who, with Mr Andrews and now with horrified Ambrose and others, pull the injured from the flames.

Fishier yet, you may have read Andrews’s contention that the film shot by Bruce and Brice of the event itself ought to attest, if not the navy’s culpability, at least the fact that the drone did not “unaccountably swerve off course” as reported by a government spokesman — but the film has been impounded by the Pentagon on the grounds that the craft was a prototype of a classified experimental weapon, unauthorised photography whereof is strictly verboten. They will Thoroughly Investigate the Regrettable Accident; they stand ready to compensate where compensation is called for, including the estate of the late A. B. Cook; but the film is classified material. Andrews intends to file suit for the victims and will attempt to subpoena the film. B. & B., for their part, mean to do their best to complete Frames, reenacting where possible and necessary the missing scenes. But their budget, like the decade, is about exhausted: they plan for example to film the dedication of the Tower of Truth next Friday, but given Nixon’s announcement today of “at least” 35,000 more U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam by year’s end, no student demonstrations are anticipated.

Slick, slick, slick! Then yesterday the literal slick of diesel oil in the Atlantic off Ship Shoal Inlet (another Restricted Area!), in midst of which the Coast Guard finds at last the derelict Baratarian. All hands missing and presumed dead. Hijacking by narcotics runners Considered Unlikely But Not Ruled Out. Nothing material aboard except, mirabile dictu, a letter from the late Andrew Burlingame Cook VI to his son, dated 17 September 1969 (i.e., four days after the so-called Key Letter bestowed upon Ambrose and then purloined; but — witness my last to you of “13 September”—letters can be postdated)… the contents whereof the U.S.C.G. is withholding pending the location of Mr Cook’s next of kin!

We are more or less stunned. Jane Mack, understandably, is beside herself — indeed, she is in shock and under sedation. Todd Andrews does his best to console her (there, in my strangely tranquil but not tranquillised view, would be a good match; but I am no matchmaker). Everybody is Investigating.

Everybody, that is, except Mr & Mrs Ambrose Mensch, who, come Tuesday, have a different matter to investigate. Then autumn will commence, and our 7th Stage; by the light of the (full Harvest) moon we shall see… what we shall see. Perhaps one day I shall tell Jane Mack about her, my, our André Castine; perhaps not. (Perhaps one day I shall learn the “truth” about him myself!) Meanwhile…

My husband loves me devotedly, I believe. And I him, though (since my little Vision) with a certain new serene detachment, which I can imagine persisting whatever Dr Rosen finds on Tuesday.

That “vision”: I cannot say whether it is the cause of my serenity or whether it was a vision of serenity. Doubtless both. Should Ambrose one day cease to love me; should he go to other women, I to other men; should our child miscarry or turn out to be another Angela — worse, another “Giles” like Mme de Staël’s, an imbecile “Petit Nous”; should my dear friend come even to deny (God forfend!) that he ever loved me, even that he ever knew me… I should still (so I envision) remain serene, serene.

As I remain — though, you having after so long silence spoken, you shall hear no more from me — ever,

Your Germaine

F: Todd Andrews to his father.His last cruise on the skipjack Osborn Jones.

Todds Point, Maryland

September 5, 1969

Thomas T. Andrews, Dec’d

Plot #1, Municipal Cemetery

Cambridge, Maryland 21613

Father.

Fictitious forebear, I was about to call you, wondering once again (with Anger, child of Exhaustion and Frustration) whether you ever existed. But of course you did: that your death has proved more important to me than your life — indeed, than my life — argues that you died; that you died (by your own hand, Groundhog Day 1930, dressed for the office but suspended from a cellar beam of our house: just another casualty of the Crash, one was odiously obliged to infer, in the absence of suicide note, ill health, sexual impropriety, or other contraindication) is prima facie evidence that you lived. Fastidious widower. Respected attorney. Survived by one child, then 29, who for nearly ten years already — nearly 50 now! — had been trying to Get Through to you, first by speech, then by endless unmailed letter, to tell you a thing he had been told about his heart: that it might, at any moment, stop. Who on your decease commenced an Inquiry into its cause, the better to understand himself; closed that Inquiry on June 21 or 22, 1937, with his own resolve to suicide; reopened it a few hours later (and his Letter to the late you) when he found himself for certain reasons still alive; and sustained thereafter, in fits and starts and with many a long pause, but faithfully indeed since March last, both Inquiry and “correspondence.”