You Were Not Displeased at his ultimatum, only A Touch Anxious that Morgan might now attempt whatever he had in mind by Independence, rather than by Labor, Day. The prospect of Casteene, Morgan, and the hippies gone, yourself and Marsha Blank still here — not displeasing, not displeasing. But no one was perturbed by the Doctor’s orders; no one made the least motion either to protest or to accede. July 4 came, birthday of Louis Armstrong, Calvin Coolidge, Stephen Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne; with a final muttered warning that They’d better be packing when he got back, the Doctor went fishing. Another tremendous Friday P.M. storm promptly exploded on Lake Erie. Among the 200 Feared Missing thereafter: il vostro dottore, no trace of whose body or boat has as of this writing been found.
You Miss him. A Little.
The Remobilization Farm moves on, under altered management. Tombo X continues as Resident Physician and Chief of Physical Therapy, yourself (who Can Account for nothing) as General Accountant, Monsieur Casteene as Prime Mover — and Saint Joe as Progressor & Advisor, with whom this afternoon, ☌♀☽, you Recommenced your Weekly Interviews, Reviewing your Schedule of Therapies and Der (likewise altered) Wiedertraum.
Suppose — Mister Bones had Inquired of Mister Tambo in effect and in desperation at the Minstrel Show — Rennie Morgan were by some miracle restored to him by 9/1/69: What then? Why, sir, rejoined Mister Bones (while Monsieur Interlocuteur beamed upon us all), the dream will take its course: she will reacquiesce to your Seducements or not, reconceive or not, rechoose abortion or not, et cetera. And why 9/1? Asked Bones. Can it be, added M. Interlocuteur, for the reason that on 31 August 1953—Day 44 or thereabouts of your original Hundred Days — after a month of horseback-riding sessions during which Jacob Horner Learned of Joseph Morgan’s passionate rationalism and Played Devil’s Advocate thereto with hapless Rennie, the two equestrians happened to espy upon return at twilight from their latest session that same Morgan, solo in his study, simultaneously masturbating, picking his nose, and speaking nonsense syllables to his reflection in a mirror? And that that (for her) shocking revelation of her husband’s less than absolute rationality can be said to have led, in the plot of that novel at least, to her initial infidelity on Day 46, Nine/Two/Fifty-three?
Not impossibly, Tambo acknowledged. Not impossibly.
Then why, pressed M.I., is not Nine Two rather than Nine One our deadline? By your own chronological abstract of the novel based upon Mister Bones’s Account of this adulterous connection, nothing happened between said espial and said consummation save Horner’s Quarterly Visit, on Day 45, to the Doctor, to Report his Progress and Receive Advice. N’est-ce pas, Mister Bones?
That is how it is, you Affirmed, in that novel.
And see here, Casteene went on: ought we not to consider, for the edification of Mesdames et Messieurs our audience, such matters as the double paradox of Joseph Morgan’s unreasonable rationalism and Jacob Horner’s reasonable irrationality, which, in that novel at least, surely accounted for their mutual attraction? What of Morgan’s complicity — the term is not too bold! — in his own cuckolding? Eh? I mean his proposing those riding lessons in the first place, to divert his wife with Horner’s Company whilst he completed his dissertation? His deliberate and foolish trial, as it were, of her fidelity? I do not even mention his insistence, when the adultery came to light, that she reenact it, on Nine/Eleven and Nine/Sixteen, to “clarify her motives”—which reenactment may feasibly have led to her impregnation? Eh? Eh?
Those are all matters to be considered, Joe agreed: every one.
It was here, you Believe, that the tornado watch supervened and the Doctor issued his futile directives, before you could Point Out that (in that novel, at least) there was no proof that Rennie ever conceived, by you or Joe or anyone else, that fall! Not that it mattered, morally and ultimately, perhaps; but still. And was it in that abortive Minstrel Show or in this afternoon’s paralyzing knee-to-knee in the P & A Room that your Sixteen-Year Penance was reviewed, from your Voluntary Sterilization to your Hornbook and other Scriptotherapeutic Disciplines? There, there, there was the sticking point, declared your new Advisor; and he would come to explaining why, in time. But not just now. For just now, he and Monsieur Casteene had cause to believe, you had a More Pressing Concern, antitherapeutically distracting beyond doubt, and which too might call for some alteration of Der Wiedertraum’s timetable.
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.