Having verified sometime later that same night that his Key letter had been “delivered,” Cook quickly drafted the postdated one above, also in cipher. I was meant to receive it (that is, to find it aboard Baratarian) after I believed him accidentally killed at Fort McHenry: proof that, like his ancestor, he was in fact still alive and remotely monitoring my execution of “our” plan. Instead, I took the letter off his dead body in Baratarian’s tender (Surprize) during the so-called Diversion sequence, just before seeing to the destruction of both that body and that tender.
In short, except that it is now genuinely posthumous, this letter, like its author, is a fraud.
So too are the “lettres posthumes” of A. B. Cook IV: forgeries by his eponymous descendant. (A few details will suffice to discredit “Legrand’s cipher” as “Captain Kidd’s code”: Kidd himself used only numbers; Edgar Poe added 19th-century printer’s marks nonexistent in Kidd’s time; “A.B.C. IV” added further symbols—W and S, for example — not to be found in “Legrand’s cipher.” And the procedure in serious encoding, as even Poe realised, is to make the deciphered message as enigmatic as the ciphered, intelligible only to the initiate: “A good glass in the bishop’s hostel in the devil’s seat,” etc.) Cook IV’s “prenatal” letters are perhaps authentic, but disingenuous: an appeal to his unborn child to break the Pattern so that that child—i.e., the twins Henry and Henrietta Cook Burlingame V — would in fact embrace it, rebel against what they took to be their father’s cause, and thereby (since he has altogether misrepresented that cause) effectively carry on his work. Cook VI’s own exhortations to me — indeed that whole elaborate charade of discovered and deciphered letters, the very notion of a Pattern of generational rebellion and reciprocal cancellation — is similarly, though more complexly, disingenuous.
The man who called himself Andrew Burlingame Cook VI listed, for example, “for my edification” (in the letter you will not receive), what he called “the vertiginous possibilities available to the skeptic” vis-à-vis his own motives, by way of inducing me to simple faith. They are in fact the simple permutation of a few variables: his true wish concerning the Second Revolution (its success or failure), his true conception of himself (a “winner” or a “loser”), his true conception of me (ditto), and his prediction of my inclination with respect to him (whether I shall or shall not define myself against him). Which variables generate (given his public reactionism on the one hand and, on the other, the open secret of his connexion with various radical groups) such equally reasonable-appearing conjectures as the following:
1. He wishes the Revolution to succeed and hopes that I shall support it, since he believes me a “winner”; therefore
a. he works for it himself, because he considers himself also a “winner” and does not believe that I shall rebel against him; or
b. he works against it, because he regards himself (as he regarded his namesakes) as a “loser,” and/or because he believes that I shall work against him.
2. He wishes the Revolution to succeed and hopes that I shall oppose it, since he believes me a loser; therefore
a. he works for it himself, considering himself a winner and trusting me to rebel against him; or
b. he works against it, believing himself a loser and trusting me not to rebel against him.
3. He opposes the Revolution and wishes me to do likewise, inasmuch as he considers me a winner; therefore
a. he works against it, believing that he is a winner and that I shall not rebel against him; or
b. he works for it, thinking himself a loser and that I shall rebel against him.
4. He opposes the Revolution but wants me to support it, believing me to be a loser; therefore
a. he works against it, thinking himself a winner and that I shall rebel against him; or
b. he works for it, thinking himself a loser and that I shall not rebel against him.
Et cetera. Such displays confuse only the naive. To Cook, as to me, the actual state of affairs is as easily sorted out as the ABC’s, no more finally equivocal than the authorship of this letter, or its postscript.
In the pocket of “Francis Scott Key’s” jacket, together with Cook’s letter to me, was yours to the newlywed Mr and Mrs Ambrose Mensch, which you must excuse my opening to see whether it was another of Cook’s stratagems. I took the additional liberty (I was hurried) of tearing off your return address, then replaced the letter, unaltered, in its envelope, the envelope in the pocket. For reasons of my own I subsequently decided to send you a deciphered copy not only of the foregoing but of those “posthumous letters of A. B. Cook IV,” as well as of “my father’s” to me of 10 September last, urging me to join him at McHenry. Inasmuch as you do not know my address, you cannot return them as you returned Cook’s offerings of June. Whether or not you “use” them, I am confident that you will read and be used by them.
The man who died at Fort McHenry was not my father.
I know who my mother is; have long, if not always, known. And she knows who my true father is, as I know (what A. B. Cook little suspected) who and where my twin children, and their mother, are.
Barataria will be dealt with tomorrow. I shall not — as “my father” hoped I would — be there.
About “Comrade Bray” and “Comrade Mack,” not to mention Mr Todd Andrews, I am unconcerned. I know who they are, where they are, what they “stand for,” what they intend, and what will come to pass: at Barataria Lodge tomorrow; on the campus of Marshyhope State University a week from Friday.
The “Second Revolution” shall be accomplished on schedule. Do not be misled by those who claim that it has already taken place, or by those others who childishly expect to “RIZE” in overt rebellion. Little will (most) Americans dream, when they celebrate the Bicentennial of the “U. States,” what there is in fact to celebrate; what a certain few of us will be grimly cheering. The tyrannosaurus blunders on, his slow mind not yet having registered that he is dead. We shall be standing clear of his death throes, patient and watchful, our work done.
H.B. VII
Bloodsworth Island 15.9.69
O: Jerome Bray to his grandmother. His business finished, he prepares to ascend to her.
Comalot, R.D. 2
Lily Dale, N.Y., U.S.A. 14752
9/23/69
TO:
Kyuhaha Bray (“Unfinished Business”), Princess of the Tuscaroras & Consort of C. J. Bonaparte (Grananephew of Napoleon, U.S. Indian Commissioner, Secretary of the Navy, Attorney General, Suppressor of Vice in Baltimore, & Fearless Investigator of Corruption in the U.S. Post Office)
FROM:
Rex Numerator a.k.a. your granason Jerry
Dear Granama,
O see, kin, “G. III’s” bottled dumps — oily shite! — which he squalidly hauled from his toilet’s last gleanings. 5 broads stripped and, bride-starred, screwed their pearly ass right on our ram-part! You watched? Heard our growls and their screamings? Now Bea Golden (“G’s” heir)’s Honey-Dusted 4-square: grave food for her bright hatch of maggots next year! Our females are all seeded; our enemies are not alive: so, dear Granama, take me to the hum of your hive!
1. 9/23/4004 B.C.: World began, 9:00 A.M. EDST. LILYVAC II’s LANG & PUNCT circuitry entirely regenerated; we can even sing now like Katy did. Excuse our conjunctions. O LIL! O Granama! O see RESET Quel artison! ANCIENT PLANETS & ALCHEMICAL BODIES: (1) Moon/silver, (2) Mars/iron, (3) Mercury/quicksilver, (4) Jupiter/tin, (5) Venus/copper, (6) Saturn/lead, (7) Sun/gold. MOHAMMEDAN HEAVENS & THEIR INHABITANTS: (1) silver/Adam & Eve, (2) gold/ John the Baptist, (3) pearl/Joseph & Azrael, (4) white gold/Enoch & Angel of Tears, (5) silver/Aaron & Avenging Angel, (6) ruby & garnet/ Moses & Guardian Angel, (7) divine light/Abraham, etc.