John Updike - S

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Dear Mr. Gilman:

I've been puzzling over your several letters for some days here in the desert. The ashram's spiritual routines make it difficult to focus upon the nasty worldliness that, evidently, still goes on. In my view, I removed from the accessible joint holdings of Dr. Worth and myself merely my proper wife's share-rather less, indeed, since most of our property could not be carried away or divided. I am confident that a divorce court, were we to come to it, would grant me no less and probably more. I would gladly consent to divorce proceedings whenever you can persuade your client to forgo such hurtful and inappropriate terms as "desertion," "adultery," and "theft," and to approach me not in a spirit of bitter adversary but one of sober, saddened mutuality as we lay to rest a partnership long shared, one to whose virtues and fatal defects we no doubt contributed equally.

Equal division of blame and assets does not seem to me a very radical principle. In fact, as of course all males know, and male lawyers doubly know, the'divi-sion can never be truly equal, since the man retains the professional skills and status to whose acquisition and consolidation the subservient wife sacrificed her prime years; he can rapidly earn his way out of any momentary financial setback, whereas the wife is forever financially maimed, and unless she leaves the marriage with enough capital to support her-which is rare and growing rarer in this day and age of misogynistic judges and shameless lawyers-will be thrown back upon the job market like a load of old laundry, fit for nothing but the rags and odd buttons of employment.

It saddens me, Mr. Gilman, to receive your blustering missives, on such nice creamy stationery, engraved with all those names of younger partners no doubt looking to you for some sort of moral example, and to read, amid all these physical signs of pomp and prosperity-engraving, watermark, dear little etching of your office building on Devonshire Street-these squalid threats of "prosecution" and "extradition" and "deposition" and "restitution." I scarcely know what the words mean; I feel I am being sent back to Latin class.

And I sadly marvel that my former (for so he already is in my mind, irrevocably) husband has the preposterous temerity to claim "damages to his mental health and professional reputation" due to my "desertion" (a tactful withdrawal, was how I felt it); and to sue for "alienation of affections" the utterly otherworldly man who passively allows his beautiful presence to shed divine light upon his disciples and who was known to me while living with Charles only as an image on a poster and a voice on a tape; and furthermore and most brazenly to list as "stolen property" flatware, a tea service, and candelabra which have been in a branch of my family since their initial purchase (and all, indisputably, monogrammed "P"; anything marked "W" Charles is welcome to) not to mention some precious old books that were the only luxuries my dear dead father allowed himself and that since my earliest girlhood I have often seen tenderly held in his hands. I cannot conceive of any judge who, however corrupt and woman-hating, would not dismiss these charges with the contempt they deserve. Honestly, Mr. Gilman, can you?

So, why are you, presumably hitherto a reputable man, consenting to play a part in Charles's psychopathetic farce? Do you have no wife or, as they say now with such cumbersome euphemism, "relationship"? Have you never had a daughter," or perhaps sisters? Surely you have had a mother, and were not discovered under a cabbage leaf like a slug. Consider even the poor female office-slave who takes your hesitant noises grunted and mumbled into the Dictaphone and turns them into the correctly spelled and grammatical letters which I keep receiving in all their impeccable masculine effrontery.

Think of the indispensable female presences in your life and ask yourself if you can continue to execute the commands of this crazed and vindictive client and to run, via registered mail (itself unutterably pompous), his demeaning errands. He at least has the excuse of wounded pride. He at least once shared my bed and still imagines, albeit falsely, that his abuse has some charm for me. But you have no such excuses. Come off it, Mr. Gilman. Go back to evicting the poor and defending rapists and leave good women alone.

Sincerely,

Sarah Price Worth

Dear County Commission Chairman Aldridge:

"He who does whafshould not be done and fails to do what should be done, who forgets the true aim of life and sinks into transient pleasures-he will one day envy the man who lives in high contemplation." Thus spoke our Lord Buddha, as recorded in the sacred Dhammapada. We are in receipt of your letters, documents, and diagrams. The nature of our offenses remains obscure. The wiring and plumbing arrangements that your inspectors discovered are inappropriate, you say, to "winterized tents," as the jargon on our initial permits had it. Then, let us call them "substantial dwellings," which more befits the condition they have grown into. When the sapling becomes a tree, or the bulb a flower, we do not cut it down because it is no longer what it was. You accuse that we applied for a permit for a "greenhouse" and that the greenhouse is now a two-acre assembly hall and an attractive vinyl-clad meditation center of fourteen soundproofed rooms. Is this not cause for rejoicing rather than official rebuke? Is this not the American way, to progress from the humble log cabin to the mighty skyscraper? And you say that our initial announced intent to form an "agricultural commune" of no more than twenty-five members has been played false by our present-day shopping mall, terraced A-frames, paved avenues, trailer parks, printing plant, fabrics factory, and population numbered in the hundreds. Our agricultural commune has prospered; shall it therefore be destroyed, as your Hebraic God destroyed with fire and brimstone cities too happy and serene to make bloody sacrifices to Him every day and twice on Sundays?

You assert that your statewide "land-use" laws were enacted by concerned environmentalists. It is our impression, instead, that such laws are the pliable tool of fat-cat ranchers owning tens of thousands of utterly idle acres, snobbish restriction-minded "snowbirds" from the teeming Northeastern states, and Los Angeles-based real-estate developers who have already transformed Phoenix into a smaller version of their nightmare metropolis. We are the concerned environmentalists, we of the ashram, who have taken an arid, abandoned environment and made it not only habitable but paradisaical. The technicalities you raise could be settled in an hour by men of true good will.

If our population exceeds that allowable without declaring the existence of a city, then let us declare it a city. We propose the lovely name Varunaville, in honor of Varuna, the heavenly encompasser. This celestial god placed fire in the waters and hung the golden pendulum, the sun, to swing above, regulating day and night. The rhythm of his order is the order of the world, called rta. In his mansion of a thousand doors Varuna sits observing all deeds; everywhere his spies survey the world and are undeceived. He is a glorious deity, appropriate to this sunny land and a county called Golden. But if you wish to give our city a more indigenous-sounding name such as Crusty Elbow or Flat Tire, please do. We will govern ourselves nicely, posting speed limits and route signs and all that. Already we have been constrained to create quite a large police force, due not to any derelictions within but to harassment from without. Perhaps once our legal status is clarified we can work with the law-enforcement officers of your estimable county to rid its territory of ruffians and rascals and rednecks and reactionaries. To quote once more the Dhammapada (which means "Truth-Path"): "Weeds harm the fields, passions harm human nature."