Dearest Shell,
It will take me a little while to tell you.
It’s two in the morning. You’re sleeping between the green-striped sheets we bought together and I know exactly how your body looks. You are lying on your side, knees bent like a jockey, and you’ve probably pushed the pillow off the bed and your hair looks like calligraphy, and one hand is cupped beside your mouth, and one arm leads over the edge like a bowsprit and your fingers are limp like things that are drifting.
It’s wonderful to be able to speak to you, my darling Shell. I can be peaceful because I know what I want to say.
I’m afraid of loneliness. Just visit a mental hospital or factory, sit in a bus or cafeteria. Everywhere people are living in utter loneliness. I tremble when I think of all the single voices raised, lottery-chance hooks aimed at the sky. And their bodies are growing old, hearts beginning to leak like old accordions, trouble in the kidneys, sphincters going limp like old elastic bands. It’s happening to us, to you under the green stripes. It makes me want to take your hand. And this is the miracle that all the juke-boxes are eating quarters for. That we can protest this indifferent massacre. Taking your hand is a very good protest. I wish you were beside me now.
I went to a funeral today. It was no way to bury a child. His real death contrasted violently with the hush-hush sacredness of the chapel. The beautiful words didn’t belong on the rabbi’s lips. I don’t know if any modern man is fit to bury a person. The family’s grief was real, but the air-conditioned chapel conspired against its expression. I felt lousy and choked because I had nothing to say to the corpse. When they carried away the undersized coffin I thought the boy was cheated.
I can’t claim any lesson. When you read my journal you’ll see how close I am to murder. I can’t even think about it or I stop moving. I mean literally. I can’t move a muscle. All I know is that something prosaic, the comfortable world, has been destroyed irrevocably, and something important guaranteed.
A religious stink hovers above this city and we all breathe it. Work goes on at the Oratoire St. Joseph, the copper dome is raised. The Temple Emmanuel initiates a building fund. A religious stink composed of musty shrine and tabernacle smells, decayed wreaths and rotting bar-mitzvah tables. Boredom, money, vanity, guilt, packs the pews. The candles, memorials, eternal lights shine unconvincingly, like neon signs, sincere as advertising. The holy vessels belch miasmal smoke. Good lovers turn away.
I’m not a good lover or I’d be with you now. I’d be beside you, not using this longing for a proof of feeling. That’s why I’m writing you and sending you this summer’s journal. I want you to know something about me. Here it is day by day. Dearest Shell, if you let me I’d always keep you four hundred miles away and write you pretty poems and letters. That’s true. I’m afraid to live any place but in expectation. I’m no life-risk.
At the beginning of the summer we said: let’s be surgical. I don’t want to see or hear from you. I’d like to counterpoint this with tenderness but I’m not going to. I want no attachments. I want to begin again. I think I love you, but I love the idea of a clean slate more. I can say these things to you because we’ve come that close. The temptation of discipline makes me ruthless.
I want to end this letter now. It’s the first one I didn’t make a carbon of. I’m close to flying down and jumping into bed beside you. Please don’t phone or write. Something wants to begin in me.
LAWRENCE
Shell sent three telegrams that he didn’t answer. Five times he allowed his phone to ring all night.
One morning she awakened suddenly and couldn’t catch her breath. Lawrence had done exactly the same thing to her as Gordon — the letters, everything!