Oh?

You are as Distressed as we are, Horner, that the Doctor is not the only member of our cast of characters who has not been heard from since July Fourth. Yes?

Yes.

You are Nowise Comforted by Bibi’s report, upon her return from Maryland for the Doctor’s memorial service on Monday, that Pocahontas was last seen on the night of Four July aboard the Original Floating Theatre Two on the Choptank River off Cambridge, Maryland, in the close company of your former night-school student and later fellow patient Jerome Bray of Lily Dale, New York, a man of questionable rationality, let us say, as well as obscure motive?

Nowise. If ever you Were a Devil’s Advocate of the Irrational, you Had Not Been for sixteen years. On the contrary: you Had Come Desperately To Prize poor fragile Reason, as precious as it is rare. Especially Confronted with Saint-Joe-the-Mystic, you Passionately Wished yourself what you Could Scarcely Aspire To Be: a barrister of Calm Rationality, as Joe Morgan had once been.

Never mind that. The fact is, Horner, your Distress at Marsha Blank’s disappearance with Mister Bray exceeds mine for the loss of a patient, say, or Casteene’s for the loss or absence of his secretary-plus. Inasmuch as while I tolerated or indulged her, and Casteene made various use of her, you yourself Had Come to Feel love for her. Correct?

Well. You Didn’t Know whether you’d Call it love, exactly.

I’m sure you don’t. However, we will so denominate it: you Love Marsha Blank, Horner, for whatever reasons. You are Concerned Indeed for her whereabouts and welfare, the more so in view of Merry Bernstein’s confused but clearly frightened condition when she came to us in May. Even if you Learned, for example, that Blank is shacking up with Bray at Lily Dale of her own volition and is content to continue doing so, you Would Find that information less painful than none at all, or than information that she was being in some way victimized. Respond, if you Please.

Yes.

That is called caring, Horner. We will not split hairs about terminology: you Care for the woman, a rare if not quite unprecedented emotion for you. Now: today is July Tenth, almost a week since Blank’s disappearance. Our schedule for Der Wiedertraum calls for you to “Leave Baltimore” on the Nineteenth and Proceed To “Wicomico Teachers College” for a Job Interview with “Joseph Morgan” and others, following which you were to Go To “Ocean City,” Pick Up a fellow English teacher named “Peggy Rankin,” Engage In Sexual Intercourse with her in “a local motel,” et cetera. My prescription, instead of that, is this: until the Nineteenth you are to Do Nothing. On the Nineteenth, if we have heard nothing from Marsha Blank to contraindicate, you will Leave the Farm, Horner. On your Own! You will Make your Way from here, not to Wicomico, Maryland, but to Lily Dale, New York, thence wherever else you Deem Likely, to Find and Ascertain the circumstances of the woman you Care For.

But.

Having so Found and Ascertained, you will Return and Report, with or without Ms. Blank, depending. In time, we hope, for the next major episode of Der Wiedertraum: your Dinner With Rennie And Me on July 23, 1953, at which I propose that Rennie give you riding lessons in August while I complete my doctoral dissertation. But in no case later than August 1, when Prinz’s company will return to the Niagara Frontier for further shooting.

Entendu? asked Monsieur Casteene, who as Prime Mover comes and goes as he pleases, even into the Progress and Advice Room.

You Pointed Out that though you Had A General Idea of Lily Dale’s location (from the Farm’s having been situated there for the decade 1956-65), you Had Not Been farther than a kilometer or two from the Farm, wherever its location, on your Own, since 1953. They turned to each other and began to speak of other things. It is impossible to be at ease in the Progress and Advice Room; but it is not easy elsewhere, either. Your Mind began to wander; your Eyes to unfocus. Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, etc.

Presently Morgan re-regarded you — their conversation had, it may be, reached some confidential matter — and said Go Write It All Down now, Horner. You’re good at that. Another letter to yourself. Go.

~ ~ ~

S: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The first of A. B. Cook IV’s “posthumous” letters summarized: the deaths of Joel Barlow and Tecumseh.

A. B. Cook VI

“Barataria”

Bloodsworth Island, Md.

July 9, 1969

My dear son,

So: after five months’ silence, your laconic message — undated, no return address — from which, as from your fifth-month stirring in your mother’s womb, I infer that you are alive, or were when you wrote. Further, from the postmark, that you are in Quebec, or were when your note was mailed. Finally, from your curt questions, that you have somehow acquired and read your great-great-great-grandfather’s four letters to his unborn heirs.

Not very graciously, you ask whether those letters are authentic. How am I to reply, when (a) you do not mention which texts you read or how you came by them (the originals, authentic indeed, are in my possession, awaiting your firsthand examination; I have copied them only twice: once for a certain historian, again for a certain novelist; we shall see which you saw), and (b) you do not give me a return address? I must hope that this latter omission means that you’re en route to Maryland to reput your queries in person — and less brusquely. Meanwhile, like Andrew Cook IV in 1812, I am too full of things to say to you to await your arrival; I must address you as it were in utero and begin to explain not only our ancestor’s “prenatal” letters to Henry and Henrietta Burlingame V but also his “posthumous” epistles to his “widow” (Andrée Castine II), which neither that historian nor that novelist has yet seen. May you interrupt me, here at our family’s second seat — close and breathless this time of year as the womb itself, and as humid, and as saline: a better season for Castines Hundred! — before I end this paragraph, this letter…

At least, before I shall have indited this series of letters, my second such since we saw each other last on Redmans Neck in February, at Harrison Mack’s funeral.

Dear Henry: The undisguised, unbecoming suspicion of your note prompts me to rebegin with a confession. A.C. IV’s four letters are genuine; my transcriptions of them — first for Germaine Pitt, Lady Amherst, whom you may remember from that funeral, later for the author of The Sot-Weed Factor, a historical novel, with whom I am collaborating on a new project — are faithful. But my motive for providing those two with copies of the letters was, while I hope defensible, not without a measure of guile. So be it: the originals await you. Lady A. and I have no further business. (Mr. B. and I do: was it he whose path somehow crossed yours, and who showed you what I neither granted nor explicitly denied him permission to share? I should like to know. Indeed, as I plan to send him summaries of these “posthumous” letters too, I here ask him directly: Are you, sir, in some sort of correspondence with my son, Henry Burlingame VII? If you sent him the four “prenatal” epistles, will you kindly forward this as well, and the ones perhaps to follow? And tell me where he is!)

Revelation of the Pattern, Henry: that was to be the first stage of your conversion of my cause. As it has been revealed to you willy-nilly, by whatever agency, I attach a copy of my letter of June 18 last to the aforementioned author, summarizing the consequences — rather, the pitiful inconsequence! — of its revelation to Andrew Cook IV, and of his revelation of it to his heirs. I pray you pause and review that letter now. All the man wanted, Henry, was to clear the generational decks: better, to unstack the deck of History and deal “Henry or Henrietta” a free hand. Weep with me for the Cooks and Burlingames!