Rain

In the real version I said "okay," and spent the morning sheltered under and oak tree in the Jardin des Plantes, watching the wallabies sheltering in their bamboo on the other side of the wire that divides toddlers from these improbably miniature kangaroos.

Why are you writing so much about Paris? I can imagine Karl asking the question. Yes, it is a kind of laziness--especially as I've been meanting to get around to the carrots for some time now. Didn't I get around to the gold? To Watertown? I know you don't have much time.

I cannot be brief.

But I will not mess about with the story version either.

The Airport Version

In the story version of this life I follow Dow down St Germain, across Isle de la Cité, wonder where the hell he can be going, watch him sit on a bench in front of Notre Dame, watch him watch a photographer take a photo of a couple unaware, embracing. When the two lovers come away I will note that Dow notes that the woman is far older than the man.

In the story version of this life I might say that Dow's shock registers in the way he sits--but how can someone sit in a way that registers shock? In the story version, people are always smoking cigarettes, gesturing in ways such that their arms come to mean just about anything. (Germans marching down the Champs Elyssées? Dow lights a cigarette and stares out over their gray ranks). This always seems to wash in books bout to pass the time between DFW and ORD and CDG.

Do you speak Spanish?

Does anyone really grow up in Paris? If they did would they say things like, "I tole 'm ee beda fuggin wait fer me"?

"The rain in Spain is mainly on the plain," the woman from Dallas had been saying. "I don't speak French,"she said, "But I speak a bit of Spanish."

"Do you speak Spanish?"she asked her cig-hiding companion. It seemed as if, so long as they were talking about Barcelona, she had the upper hand.

Dow saw and heard all of this too. We were our own Paris witnesses. "Let's split up today,"said Dow the morning after we listened to the lady from Dallas.

Nothing to go on

I tried anyway for my mother's sake. We know a few facts, Karl. Let's start there. It isn't as if I have nothing to go on.

"It is how you stay alive in prison,"I told my mother. What do I know about prison? I know a little about words, about how explanations are easier to swallow if they don't fly in the face of what we have to go on. "If you're white you have someone tatoo the fact onto you," I said.

"How can they tatoo each other in prison?" my mother asked quite reasonably. I explained about needles and ink coaxed to the flame from ballpoint pens. I don't know how I knw this but I explained anyway, as if I had been there and done and seen.

"That is so creative," said my mother. She meant the prisoners who tatooed each other. "They find a way to do anything in jail."

What your mother says if you grew up in one of the houses in the orchard.

Let me explain

She didn't understand the ink in the dying skin.

"White Power," said my mother," Karl's got it tatooed across his belly.

"I think I can explain," I said as if I might know the real reason. Invention, proposing an invention is the easiest way I know to get others to stop and listen.

"He did it to save his life," I explained.

What else could I say? I think every word we write is made to go toward saving our lives. I have a hard time believing otherwise, so this seemed like the best place to begin, lying there like a blue viper across my cousin's abdomen.

Power of sugar

In a way the window here at Le Caribou could be nothing more than a screen with with all that I see projected upon it. Perhaps it is just a picture of the world come together in a mosaic like ants gathered to a sugar cube. Perhaps, as well, the image conspires exactly with the depicted, suth that the two are congruent. The only way to know would be if a bomb went off. But that seems rather extreme--in a few moments I will have to pay the bill one way or another.

Burn

Each page only holds so many words. There is only so much time. Only so many students will be fed at Le Caribou today. So long as you are writing in the Super Blue Conquerant you know you're alive. I can't se how it is any differnt for Karl. Everything written down is alive. That's wrong and I know it. What I know of the world so far. How many words would it take to save his life? One? Have I hit on it? Though these sorts of letters, like all letters, have a curtain form, limits beyond which one should not go. This is why we settle for consolation and why we cannot be consoled. Really the situation demands that we should exchange entire books or be content to burn ourselves.

It takes so long just to understand the basic situation. But there is no special place to find it. You can look out any window.