Wish all this would be over and I could come to you. Miss your letters. Wish I could at least send you an address. (Try Morgue on rue Bobillot or Amsterdam poste restante; maybe Bern would forward—no.) Forgive my frenzy. Not really important. You must have enough to cope with in New York. I shouldn’t be writing you all this. Won’t mail this letter. I’ll manage. Just make your film. Feel much better. Quite calm. Bells calling.
• • •
They want me to testify. Everything so efficiently organized here. My head far away on the president’s table. Reading paper. Mistake to think God old-fashioned. No difference between inside and outside. Distinction even in the mind based on matter. It’s simple what my world is now, as simple as—
My name? Don’t confuse me.
Miles of ticker tape curling from my mouth. Floor littered. A news office? Oh, they’ve plugged my nerve ends in an intercontinental—can’t read label but it’s...it’s lovely, lovely. Messages from all over and under the world—larvae at sea bottom, maggots deep in the earth, a flying seed. God.
It’s unimportant; still, you could have the courtesy to translate me...
Coherent discourse? How do you expect me—? Begin to explain now in my present state of decomposition?...Having begun at different points accounts...No, nothing accounts. Totally unjustified. Incomprehensible. Absurd. You can’t imagine how horrible— No, not the pain, not the— Ice water? No thank you. I wasn’t like this before. I won’t say I was perfect, maybe not all of a piece, still, however elliptical, at least I was neat—I managed somehow, as you can see...plurality of parallel existences...not my words...thought I put it in different books—not the case...What do you expect on this planet mud?...all human bumbling programmed billion light years ago in pseudo-substance as predicted in the Pistis Sophia...not my opinion. I have no opinion. Personal what? What personal? Don’t understand the question unless you mean the legal person, but you have all my papers, passport, carte de séjour, insurance policy, my naturalization papers, birth certificate, my grades and medical reports through grammar school, chest X-ray, you have my body—you can assess its condition better than I—almost forgot my publications, of course; college papers, dissertation, etc., on file; have your secretary look up suitcase full of notes left with...Can’t expect me to remember everything. Must repeat have nothing personal to declare, everything about myself is public, you have it. I’m telling you you have all the baggage. What comes to me through this apparatus—whatever you call it, self, ego, brain, don’t know the latest jargon—this is not the moment to split hairs; I can only name you the pieces, already in your possession...for all I know they lie on the dissecting table in their proper place, or side by side like automobile parts: the four limbs together, the skin carefully folded, the glands in a separate bowl—not conversation for the table? Sorry. Didn’t see them bring in the trays...as for the actual memories asked for, the original imprint can’t be removed. Everything I’m telling you, the words, gentlemen, language is your gift, I thank you for it, indebted, your humble daughter, etc. The matter, what my sponges have sucked up? My membranes? The matter...Where my voice comes from? Of body awareness only my cunt curiously, a hole, a nothing, a negativum—it was you who just remarked, waste to give vision drug to women, all they feel is their cunt...I’m only repeating. But who am I talking to? Earphones. The conference, of course. You know what I mean—in any museum with a good Greek section you can see it painted on vases, something in the shape of a winged little man, or bird, or insect, shown flying from the mouth or ear of the deceased—psyche. Perhaps I was never much more ever—
Gentlemen, why are you so old and ugly? Good grief, if I should need further proof that this whole thing is a fraud, it’s your presence. You who said we’d meet in the next world. Afterlife, soul, Judgment, God, One People, One Law: never believed a word of it. So now. Greatly regret, infinitely sorry, unspeakably ashamed of stupidities I got enmeshed in by some particle of belief in your lies. Enough...The fact that you invade my privacy, sprout in my dreams, however unpleasant, debilitating, more proof that this is not the true death here with you. When I’m truly dead, my friends, I won’t see you standing around me. I will find a way out, I’ll get back my arms and limbs, my head, even my heart, I’ll find it whatever you’ve done with it.
“I UNDERSTAND it must be very difficult for you,” the man with the drooping walrus moustache murmurs sympathetically.
“How do you mean?” she asks mistrustfully. The moustache gives him a pleasant bearish aspect and the
