December 22, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. Congenital pessimist that I am, it's a relief to know that your operated eye seems to be getting along well. Please keep me informed.

You asked about the novel. Upon completing chapter 48 on November 24, I permitted myself to be distracted by ruminating on the impending hearing - December 13.  Subsequently, in the course of the past week, I have managed to compose the first 10 pages of chapter 49.  Mengs and Joachim are returning from the Island. They've stepped off the boat and are driving back home on a dark highway in heavy traffic.  Mengs is at the wheel. The adventures on the Island have distracted both of them, Joachim is asleep, too exhausted to dream.  Mengs contemplates the incongruities of the past and the uncertainties of the future. He anticipates that his life is about to change drastically, but has no inkling of its future direction.  He attempts but is unable to reconstruct the bold philosophical inventions with which Katenus, subsequent to their release from the bugged jury deliberation room, regaled his guests at the stately breakfasts, lunches and dinners in his mansion. Mengs is reminded that Joachim took careful notes and he anticipates with much satisfaction the opportunity of recapitulating the novel theories with Joachim's help. (What Mengs doesn't know, but what I know, is that Mengs is going to be so taken with Katenus' ideas, that he presents them in a lecture course and in a seminar, and that these presentations, frowned upon by his jealous colleagues, are the source of much trouble for him.) There will be a new perspective with opportunities to invent characters and conflicts. Joachim's problems will be of a different nature arising out of the emotionally charged relationship between himself and Charlotte, the young woman who was an untalented piano student of Susanna's and appointed herself as Mengs' and Joachim's housekeeper when Susanna died.  Charlotte is an intelligent and stubborn woman who enjoys visiting the zoo and the circus and is anything but sympathetic with Mengs' intellectual and cultural pretensions. She declined an invitation to accompany the two men to the Island, because as she said nothing is more boring than staring at the ocean, when you've seen one breaking wave, you've seen them all; and she's intent on liberating Joachim from what she considers Mengs' decadent empyrean spirituality.

The two men come home late at night. Mengs who has done all the driving is exhausted and slouches off to bed. Joachim who has slept in the car is sprightly and goes to the kitchen for a cup of hot milk. But he's really looking for Charlotte and steeling himself to be scolded and berated by her for having been taken in by Katenus' nonsense. When Joachim doesn't find Charlotte in the kitchen, - and when she fails to appear, Joachim begins to fear that she has moved out, feels guilty and starts blaming himself for having left her behind. He doesn't know where he should look for her and decides to go to his room. There sleeping in his bed, he finds Charlotte.  Petrified, he doesn't know what to do, afraid that waking her would result in a passionate midnight drama with which he couldn't cope. Joachim decides to spend what remains of the night on the living room couch, but on his way he passes the open door of Charlotte's obviously vacant room. Himself now overcome with exhaustion, his judgment fails him, and without access to pyjamas ends up clothesless between the clean sheets of Charlotte's bed. After some hesitation, I decided that I was in no mood for an X-rated scene, and I persuaded Charlotte, when she discovers him in the morning, to act the role of an authentic virtuous Victorian girl who brings Joachim his bathrobe, drapes it over the back of a chair, and closes the door behind her.  Joachim I've left standing in the bathtub taking a lengthy hot shower, reflecting on his life from its conscious beginnings to the present moment and wondering where it will lead him.  I have no idea. If you have prophetic powers, please let me know what's next.

This evening I reread some of the chapters I've recently written.  Of course, I've forgotten not only details; I've forgotten important facets of the plot. I discovered that the end of chapter 46 unravels into unfinished incoherent fragments. It needs more work. Other chapters I find magnificent and profound to a degree that makes me jealous of their author, makes me wish that I had comparable imagination and verbal virtuosity. This evening I am suffused with a pervasive sense of gratitude to Messrs. Ciamartaro, Ramos, and Butler, to Judges Hopkins and Macdonald for keeping me off the Island this winter and giving me the opportunity to put it all in writing. If they manage to persist in their mendacious absurdity long enough, I might actually have the chance to write a book, maybe even a good book.

The dates of Nathaniel's enterprises I wrote into the appointment book which is downstairs. If I remember correctly, he has planned to give his talk twice, on Tuesday Dec 27, at 4 p.m. and on Friday Dec. 30 at 1 p.m. The concert will be at 2 p.m. on Thursday Dec. 29. I did NOT relay your injuctions for brevity, and when I asked Nathaniel for how long he would talk, he replied "I hope not longer than an hour." He had planned to conduct only the Eroica; I urged him to lengthen the program.  If he has no time to rehearse a second piece, I told him to repeat the Eroica, play it twice, as a test of musical sensitivity, flunked by anyone who left at the intermission.

The night as it progresses is unmasking my insanity. It's time to stop. Good night.

Jochen

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