St. Isadore of the Internet

Dear Don,

This continuous business of rain concerns me. Is there something within you that traps you in such ruinous environs? You are, as you must realize, au courant of your own prospects and intentions. Please don't allow yourself to block yourself. Rather, seek defection from these internal elements. Perhaps the face of the man who shadows you has a special aptitude for magnetizing you beneath this wet language of the heavens. At any rate, spend no more time praising the names of your most obvious assassins.

I am, you will be glad to hear, unusually well. The perpetual opening and shutting, slamming and slapping of doors that goes on here, the ceaseless rush of outgoing invectives and fatigued complaint, surprised whistles, panics on every side - all of this makes sleep probably slimmer than it has ever been before, and much less nourishing. The food brings pimples, and I am exhausted, and yet there seems a chance that I will be revived entirely. With your constant encouragement, I may well avoid dying in this wilderness of charred wax and wicked intentions, and spend the rest of my life beside a smoking fire, twisting tobacco and selling whiskey to the natives. It is true. I have had G&R investigate my passage on a merchant vessel. Maybe Brazil, someplace on the new world map free from the watchfulness, fatigue, and penetrations of Denmark's dull faces, eyes turned inwards, sallow in savage resignation, revulsed, if revulsed were not too definite a word. I would swim a very bad tract, narrow and terrible, clearly unsafe, just to be free of here.

One thing puzzles me, returning to this matter of your rain. Your letters to me (save for the one to my mother, which I have not yet laid eyes upon), have been exceptionally dry. As if come from the great Gobi desert or the famed savannas of Afrika. It doesn't make sense, senseless enough for me to suspect that you may be closer to me than I think. I am not against you, nor do I allow suspicion to rule my activities, but you should know that G&R are on the lookout for unusual men bearing dried pages skulking about the landscape of Denmark. Not to cause you any harm, dear friend, but to rescue you from your own drenched soul of derisive delusions! And to finally bring you into my company!

I do not remember now the details of the book you seek. Please remind me. As for paper, if I cannot find you any, I will have some made. I shall have the court artists fashion you a watermark. Because they do not know your face, be prepared for a certain blurriness. Destroying clarity is their business. It is their very mechanical precision that stands opposed to your legibility. You would be better represented by free marks or scrubbing, neither of which these men are likely to perform.

H.