Dearest Fräulein, tomorrow being Sunday, I have the prospect of writing the long letter I have allowed myself, and that has buoyed me through the day.

But I feel increasingly superstitious that if there is any untoward gap in my correspondence with you, if a day elapses without my keeping the postal service primed, the whole mysterious network may atrophy; the postman may lose his way, your letterbox heal up . . . so I have written today as well.

It has not been easy to do so, nor indeed to write anything for most of the day, having had a fitful nervous headache and general prostration. The spring sun,though welcome, has made my room excessively warm. I tried to open the window, but the catch had jammed and refused to give, the streaks in the dust mocking me unmercifully, until in desperation I let fly with Kränkel’s Jurisprudence, breaking clear through the pane.

That helped, for resuming my desk, I felt a little more composed, and within a short while of idleness, hit upon the idea of expanding an outline I have for a story into something larger, and setting the whole thing in America. What do you think of that?

I can see endless possibilities, endless problems, but as yet, no satisfying end, though that, for me, is no great difficulty.

Hope you are as excited as I.

Will write tomorrow, God willing.

Your: Franz K.

. . . believing as I do in the utmost importance of these disclosures.

For thus is confirmed the speculations of the Italian, Petrus Martyr, spilling from Castile.

Indeed, el Almirante himself was forced, by the weight of waters from the great river, to concede its being a vast land, que son otro mundo.

Yet he, Colonus, refused his own evidence and clung to Asia. And so the fog resettled.

But there now can be no doubt; the breach is made, the wind sweeps through.

The letters are proofed, and I am at work on a preface, a fit presentation, the whole to form a Cosmographiae Introductio. Then there is the map. I have plans for an edition of one thousand, to disseminate the more speedily these momentous discoveries.

For new worlds mean new maps. I yield to no man in veneration of Ptolomy, but we can no longer be tethered. What if Fra Mauro had not departed from Ptolomy and drawn Africa peninsulate?

Would there have been the zeal for striking south to the Indies?

We cosmographers must lead, not follow.

I have rehearsed the objections. Go to the maps, you say. See how the lands fit together, how Europe nestles the African coast, the Indies cradle the Ocean, the continents conjoined in one habitable earth. If this new land be not part of Asia but isolate, ocean-ringed, it would be excrescent, a canker on an apple.

But your logic confounds you. For if the globe even proximates to AlFraganus’ calculations, and the full value of the degree be allowed, what wastes of water this would entail.

Islands, you say. Yet if islands be admitted, why not continents?

Indeed, symmetry requires it. For do not the continents conjoined in one make the globe top-heavy? Surely a counterpoise be necessary to balance the sphere? Thus it may be that this new continent will prove to bulk large as Africa, or the Indies, or the old world together.

But all this is redundant dispute. By this man’s audacity we have it confirmed: his vision is now our vision, and it seems to me fitting that this new world now bear his name.

A Beauteous Land as we stood before it. And we could not but spontaneouslie breake forth into hymns and thanksgivings for having been spared by the Graciousness of God, over these many leagues of sea, wracked by sickness and ague, storm-tossed, wherein we bore up only by the joining of many Psalms; and thence overland, following, as it were, a pillar of cloud and of fire, stumbling, yet with heads erect, and with the help of our brethren of these colonies, coming, by little and little to the very peaks of Pisgah.

At first morrow we ventured into the valley, meeting an abundance of brush and wood-gaile, tracts and freshets, and much sassafras. Driving deeper, the bush became vine-tangled, and haunted of fowl and deer.

Indeed if it were not for signs of careful habitation, we could think ourselves in very Eden, and voiced the like to our brethren, yet they replied that it is only by dint of effort and determined onslaught that this Paradise presents itself, and a testimonie to the Divine Curse that by the sweat of our brow will we eat our bread; and this we now readily see.

They have, too, apprised us of reports of much opposition on the part of savages to the South and West, and we were put in mind of the Amorites and Perizzites, and are even now girding ourselves for the task.

Rainwashed, the air was fresh, with a rawness to it that stung the nostrils.

The view was such as I could not describe. I had recourse only to naming: here are trees, here are rocks, here is water . . . And a sense of sweetness . . . birdsong, distant . . .

I struck camp and gathered tinder. Some was yet green and whistled and bubbled. I determined to press on and whether or no I found the Ohio, would allow myself to be drawn on, even to the risk of losing myself.

Thus ended that day, and I lay down wearied with wonder.

Awake early, my tent still wetted with dew. In the fur of ashes a few embers glowed and I fanned them into quickness and set the coffee pot. I broke fast but lightly, keen to be away.

Sun behind me, my shadow strained forward, and I lengthened my stride to keep up. I felt the full weight of my solitude, not as loneliness, but as something forceful, vital, male to the land’s virginity. Each crack of twig in the sharp silence stirred me as I broke the path.

I saw myself at first as some Greek hero, but reject this now as fanciful, outworn. The land is new, old stories will not do.

Am I equal?

Spent the best part of an hour stalking a buck. As it grazed I plunged, enfolding it and striking with my knife. The blood pumped, and ruddied the grass, and I felt, as earth drank it in, that it could have been my own, and would almost have been glad.

Yet it was not: I am hale, laying hold and set to master in the vertical shadows.

. . . . . . most successful tour of that land, giving, as I travelled, impromptu demonstrations of the phrenological science, and finding myself well satisfied at the diversity of subjects. Yet a caveat is in order as to certain traits within the national character, if I may put it so.

A coin has been struck, commemorative of the Revolution in France, bearing the impress of the head of Liberty. Having one pressed upon me, I could not restrain my fingers from a little phrenological diagnosis.

She is unsound, sir.

Her forehead, small, recedes alarmingly. She exhibits gross development of the base and posterior regions of the brain. Her hair is in loose disorder, and her countenance is expressive of the passional rather than of a calm wisdom and morality.

This an emblem of aspiration!

If you are truly mindful of visiting there, you will not be disappointed—only beware.

Heed the bumps, sir, heed the bumps.

What’s the word? Voluptuous. Yeah, that’s it. Voluptuous. Like a honeyed woman. That was Hawk’s sound. But it wan’t my sound. I din’t want none of that dicty cack. I wanted somethin that would wrench my guts out.

See I started with a dream. Aint no halfway decent honker that don’t start with a dream.

Dream of a sound.

An it began to come. I began to ged it. I was workin the car-lots, woodsheddin every night an weekends, an I began to ged it.

So I started giggin. Local gigs at first, but we began to get known. Only, the drummer was a whitie, we found it hard to get bookins. So I dropped out, teamed up with a band in Chicago and we began to go.

Man, that was somethin. On the stand, plant your feet, and blow. On a good night, you find the current, find the thermal, and you’re glidin.

Don’t happen every night. An the nights it din’t happen came more an more often. The dream faded, I lost it. It’s like your star blacks out.

But I could still sorta feel it. So I started jammin, every night till four or five, then just noodlin on my own till seven, eight. Practised my circlar breathin.

But it wan’t comin. I still had my technique, I could still play, but I knew I was just rappin, coastin, gettin no place.

So I took a bus.

I thought, if I could get back to, sorta earth myself in the blues, I could get tuned in again.

I travelled. Did I travel. Back to Chicago, across to San Fran, down to Orleans. Cross the Jordan.

Set out in the plantations, I could just hear it, risin outa the land like creosote from old beams.

Then my first bust. In Jackson. Penned for nine months takin the cure. Learned to be more careful when I came out, who I spoke to.

Occupational hazard? I han’t thought about that. No, it’s just part of life, man.

I’ll tell you the occupational hazards for a honker. Losin your dream, an losin your teeth.

The rest, liquor, powder, it’s just life, man.

The bus sped on through the sage and scrub, the beat of the wheels felt, not heard.

We stopped at the Reservation and alighted, the heat hitting us like pitch. We shuffled round the kiosks buying blankets and beads until the whistle blew and we got back on.

We were handed sandwiches in plastic, but they were hard to open. Some of us gave up, foiled and hungry, and waited for Tacitah.

We reached it by noon, with an hour to kill before the rodeo.

The corral was pineboard, sanded and sprinkled. The horses were of oiled wood and stainless steel, buffed, and burnished, horsehair manes flying. The silver tooling on the pommels dazzled under the lamps.

The riders were in chaps and spurs, and several stayed the course.

We were given steak and beans and souvenirs.

That night, our dreams were all of chrome.

Outside the darkness tightens. In this tent of neon light, I allow myself a little thrill of spurious fear, spurious safety. Like feeling the threat of the beast outside while knowing it to be a film. The table-shadow cuts across my leg.

A woman in a tight red dress, wrinkled over her hips, head turned from me. She swings on a stiletto and heads for the dark. I salute her with my coffee-cup, though we never even nodded.

One of Hopper’s Nighthawks.

The chrome-bellied urns chuff quietly. I catch sight of myself in one, monstrously distended, a Sydney Greenstreet. I turn up my collar. The old gloss, half panic, half exhilaration. Weightless.

Put on my Clark Kent spectacles, my Clark Gable hat. Order another coffee. Lean low over the table, my spectacles touching the rim of the cup. Wait while they fog over, get up, swim my way out into the two-dimensional dark.

Do you see it, Buzz? . . . Do you see it, Buzz? . . . Buzz, Buzz, see it? Isn’t that something? Looks like a tattooed apple. So sorta, compact, sorta snug.

Man, look at that. Ribboning out ‘cross there.

That’s the Great Wall of China, Buzz.

The Great Wall of China was finished off at its northernmost corner.

The sentence buzzes round my head like a blowfly, unable as yet to find its way out into the healthy realms of Art. It will do so in time, but in the meantime, the torment, the agony. I was awake all last night, dreaming of walls.

Imagine not a castle wall, but a wall round a city, a state, an empire. The glorious claustrophobic freedom! For what is one’s natural response to a wall? To climb over?

Is it not rather, to burrow under? Mark the insects, the foxes. And in the burrowing, what riches of deprivation, of dark impenetrable secrets.

And when the wall crumbles, falls, and we blink like moles at the streaming vistas, will we not retain our burrowing instincts, return to the roots of our bruised raptures, carry up to the light a little of the ferment of the worms?

It will come. I feel the blowfly circling, and when it is safely out onto the page, you, my dearest, will be the first to read it.

Have we not outgrown him even yet?

And what if he too were to have proved an invention?