Best regards,
Maxim Jakubowski
Dear Maxim,
I was shopping in Bellevue the other day (it’s on the other side of the lake from Seattle; they have some good shopping malls there) and was browsing through this large bookstore full of old and used books. Somehow I’d remembered you telling me you had written fantasy. Lo and behold, on the first shelf I look at, there you were. A paperback copy of Beyond Lands of Never!
Your story touched me in strange ways.
Tell me about yourself, about London.
Yours,
Katherine
Dear Katherine,
What is there to say? I’m a book junkie through and through, I live surrounded by books both at the shop and home. They mean so much to me, and I collect madly, even when there is no longer space on my shelves and floors. There’s no logic to it, even though I sadly know that I shall never get around to reading even a quarter of the books I hoard.
London is London.
The Charing Cross Road is a bookworm’s paradise still, though some of the smaller, quainter bookstores have long moved on because of costs. I’m lucky these particular premises became available. Outside, it’s spring already and the weather and the women outside are in bloom, which puts joy in my heart, but tramps who reek of drink and piss at night on the doorstep darken the view. It’s like another world, hidden behind the facade of the books, one where life and the recession act out their depressing charade, and so many people are out of work and pester you for money for booze, and gypsy women with round-faced children on the underground beg or pretend to be refugees from Bosnia, and pitiful buskers strum out-of-tune guitars and nasally serenade crowds with chainsaw massacre versions of ‘Norwegian Wood’. Sometimes, I wonder.
I’ve asked Thalia in mail order to send you those John Dickson Carr locked room novels you’d enquired about some time ago. They’ve now come back into stock.
What about you?
Regards,
Maxim
Dear Maxim,
London sure sounds interesting. Like all nice places, it has I see a dark side. Here, we have Capitol Hill, once bohemian and flowery, now grunge capital of the world, with men and women looking pale and miserable and proud to be ugly. It’s the young men in their silly shorts and unattractive hairy legs even in the deep of winter who get to me. I can take the hair, the greyness of their clothes, but it’s the legs, I can’t help from giggling.
There certainly is a weird fascination about locked room mysteries. Surely lessons in how to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. Though some of Carr’s plots are fiendishly complicated and unwieldy, to say the least.
Last weekend I went to visit friends who live three hours south in Portland, Oregon. I’d been to State University there with Lisa, we even shared an apartment for two years; now she’s married to this French photographer who she swears is cheating on her. Jean-Paul had to go on some fashion assignment on Sunday morning, so Lisa suggested we go to this nude beach in the Willamette Valley. I was somewhat taken aback, it’s something I’d never thought about doing ever before. But I was reminded of that character in that short story of yours who dreams of topless women on foreign beaches and the thousands of breasts on display in all shapes and sizes. So I said yes, why not? It was a weird experience, but pleasurable. There weren’t that many people around. The beach was down in a deep canyon and the river level was very low. At first I felt self-conscious and remained topless, but close by there was a family with some young kids and it all looked so natural, so after an hour or so, I took my bottom off. A day to remember.
You’re to blame, of course.
I want to know more about your London.
Love,
Kate
Dear Kate,
I feel pleased and confused that you’re telling me so much of yourself.
Yes, I can imagine you on the nude beach, with green hills and mountains surrounding the river bed canyon. I close my eyes and turn to crime. A criminal voyeur of the imagination. I try to conjure up the image of your hair in the wind (long? Dark auburn shades?), the shape of your body, the curve of your breasts, the roundness of your buttocks. Yes, you must have looked quite beautiful and I accept the blame, all responsibility. It would have been nice to have been there, but then again I’ve been putting on weight these last years, and the spectacle might not have been as edifying, I fear…
London?
It’s really unlike any other city. More like a collection of most diverse villages scattered together, with various focal points, the City for business, the West End for shopping and entertainment, Soho for food and now much neutered vice, parks and gardens galore, not many skyscrapers like American cities, all low-key, neutral, like a curtain that conceals shadowy truths. People often think of London as foggy, Dickensian, old. Not any more. It’s a city with octopus-like extensions in all green directions, suburban, dull, exotic, safe, sordid, but for me still full of secrets.
And when the sun comes out the women are in bloom like nowhere else. Objects of fantasy, bodies of reality, voices, flesh.
I could imagine you here, you know.
But enough of my digressions…
I hope I haven’t shocked you. Sometimes words escape and trap me. But it’s better to be honest about it, I suppose. I get carried away on the waves of writing, letters, words take on a life of their own, move from brain to typewriter with too much ease. This is how I betray myself.
Kind regards,
Maxim
Dear Maxim,
No, you didn’t shock me. Perhaps in a way I was secretly hoping you would be so direct. I understand. Really. Honesty can have its own rewards.
Listen. Or whatever one does when reading. I told you about my girlfriend Lisa, the one I went nude sunbathing with in Portland. You remember? Well, I’d told her that I was having this correspondence with you, that you wrote really sweet letters, so I suppose she remembered your name. So, the other morning, the post is dumped on the outside porch and I open the door and there was this thick envelope there. She’d found this book of yours for a few cents at Goodwill (it’s a giant thrift warehouse, where you can find all sorts of crazy things), it’s one you’d never told me about. She’d read it and said it was absolutely weird and disgusting, that I had to see it for myself.
Gee, my mind is still in a whirl. I’d never come across something that made me so randy before. Lisa says it’s the bit about the cystitis and pissing all blue that grossed her out, but I didn’t mind so much; well, it’s sometimes a fact of-life, isn’t it, even if it’s somewhat unpalatable? What got to me, though, was the bit about the ice. I’d never heard about anything like that before, for sure. I’ve got a healthy fascination and interest in all things sexual, well I’ve read a lot, put it that way, but wow! the ice sure freaked me out. And made me feel all funny. I’m horribly fascinated. Whenever I’m in the kitchen, I give the refrigerator strange looks, you know. In a perverse way, it’s something I’d like to try just to judge what must be a curious mixture of pleasure and pain, but I’m sure it would be better with another, rather than alone, talk about solitary pleasures!
Did it ever happen to you, or as with all things bizarre did you read about it in a book and put it in your story?
I realize this correspondence is moving in strange directions. Forgive me.
Eager and curious for more.