Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, which demonstrated, I thought, new
heights of eloquence and sensitivity. As I keep reiterating,
I haven't been able to distance myself sufficiently far from
my father's "Das hat mit mir nichts zu tun," - for him and
for me a protective insulating mode which obviates the need to
acknowledge ones own limitations. My latter-day apology: that
I can't allow myself to be distracted, that I need to focus
on the tasks that I have undertaken, to try to discharge the
obligations I've assumed.

The weather-vane behavior of Nantucket's lawyers, although
emblematic of their weakness, takes its toll on me, requiring
almost non-stop retooling of my intellectual arsenal. No sooner
have I elaborated a given legal strategy, that the wind changes
direction and a new set of paradigms is in order. All well and
good, if I can pull it off, but it's energy consuming and 
makes me tired. 

Yesterday morning, up at 3:45 for a 4:30 breakfast with Klemens
preliminary to taking him to the airport. Back in bed by 6 a.m.
to sleep until 8:30. Then final mental preparations for the
10:30 telephone conference with Mr. Pucci, unexpectedly pressing
for prompt inspections as if a bubble of Nantucket's legal strategy
had burst.  Next the necessary telephone call to Mr. Gordon, who
becomes more confiding each time we speak. He has on several occasions
referred to the fact of his being a "childhood cancer survivor",
unafraid of death, for years having had to accept the fact that each
month might be the last. I've come to the interpretation that perhaps
he intuitively recognizes my struggles with the Nantucket authorities
as the antics of a "childhood Nazi survivor", although I've never
apprised him of that fact. (You may remember that my friend Helmut
Frielinghaus has given me permission to stigmatize them as
"Mini-Nazis.") 

The rest of yesterday I felt unusually tired, so much so that I
was unable to write and went to bed very early for me, at 8 p.m.
Today I'm back to normal, as you can infer from the letter to Mr.
Pucci which I forwarded to you. And now, back to the novel.
Jochen