Jan. 4

Dear Professor ____,

I am an inmate here in a prison in ____ and I got your name from an engaging op-ed article of yours in the Times some weeks ago. I am writing to ask if you would please consider arranging a one year subscription to the Times for me.

I apologize if you find my request offensive but I enjoy literate material and feel the newspaper an excellent alternative to a college classroom. An inmate here in the facility has a subscription and once in a while an issue will trickle into my hands, which is how I came across your piece and the enclosed order form. I should add that I don’t skim through the Times but spend a few hours reading almost everything in it the way I would were I on a deserted island and had nothing but the paper to read. Only drawback is that the paper engages time I’d otherwise spend reading literature and other books. Thomas Jefferson stopped reading newspapers so he could devote more time to books, and Thoreau makes an interesting point in Walden with regard to reading news.

“. . . and I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned or one vessel wrecked or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher, all “news,” as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

True, perhaps, yet I am certain that a daily reading of all the news that’s fit to print would see me a wiser-old woman over their tea.

In any event, Prof. ____, please allow me a bit more of your time to tell you something about myself. I am black (actually biracial: my mother’s white, father black) and I was born in London, England in 19—. I came to the U.S. in 19— and grew up in ______, which is where I committed the crime of Murder. Committed the crime on a pristine spring day in May 19— when I was 16 and have rued the moment ever since. I went into my crime as delusional and emotionally wrought as Raskalnikov and instantly regretted my act much the way Camus’s Meursault does. “I pulled the trigger four times and it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.” I was arrested for my crime in May 19— and have since been in prison.

I enrolled in a college program while in a maximum security prison (I am now in a medium security) during the 1980s, and although I didn’t earn my BA in the humanities because of a governor initiated end to higher education in New York’s prisons—I fell a year short—I realized a love of learning and am a firm believer in John Henry Newman’s espousal of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Of course I could go on but I’ve probably taken up enough of your time as it is. Thank you ever so much for your time and consideration, Professor; and even if you toss the Times order form in the trash with the thought, “My name’s ____, not Trump,” please don’t hesitate to write me if you’re so inclined. Remember, I appreciate literate material, no matter the source.  

Sincerely,

X¹

Jan. 10

I can’t stop thinking about the letter. I almost dropped it in the recycling bin immediately before opening it, noting the return address from a correctional facility, but something about the postmark slowed my hand. A strange reason, but in retrospect it had to be that way. I’ve since read it five times, and am now resorting to diarywriting (whilst attempting to convince myself it will go somewhere real).

The worst part is that all I can think is how I’ve never seen the phrase “ever so much” on the outside of a Jane Austen novel, let alone penned by an inmate. Which is most likely unfair of me, but honestly. And Thoreau. I’d forgotten about that part of Walden . . . repressed it, most likely.

After reading the letter for the second time, I looked up that op-ed and read it over again, noting familiar words and an unfamiliar title (damn newspaper editors), the faint whiff of pretension that the ink takes on after a while, but nothing illustrative. Maybe this guy’s just very bored, or very busy.

And yet?


Jan. 19

Strange, how the crime of murder seems paltry compared with the crime of forbidding education. So much for rehabilitation, so much for the necessary good of the justice system, so much for society and all its construction. (Stranger still, how I can’t stop obsessing over this thing. I can laugh at myself, but there’s something arresting about it.)

Strange, how suddenly my overactive sympathy is directed toward a murderer, a murderer asking me for money. A murderer asking me for money whilst quoting Thoreau. Thoreau didn’t do his own laundry. Thoreau didn’t do his own laundry, and Emerson went to jail on principle while Thoreau watched the sunrise and starscapes and didn’t read the news.

I spoke with Janet yesterday on the phone, the first time in months, and I could feel the incredulous slant of her eyes through the walls and wiring. Of course it’s a scam, she told me, of course this person sends identical letters to everyone he can think of. “He” might not even exist, she told me. Strange how a part of me knows she’s right—the rational part, I suppose—and the rest is too caught up in curiosity to care.

It has to be a scam—what inmate, what 16-year-old murderer, could write more elegantly than my students? And yet. I’m so tempted to write back.


Feb. 7

Dear X,

I appreciate your letter more than, perhaps, one might expect, although I do not have the means to grant your request. I am a professor, as you know.

I am intrigued, though. I am intrigued not just by your eloquence, but by your story. I seek you out for understanding because I cannot find it here where I am surrounded by mountains and trees and false idealism born of myopia and pride. Maybe you can help. You claim to appreciate literate material, and I claim to be literate.

Write back if you are so inclined. But please, no more Thoreau. I am sending you some Emerson instead. Just photocopies because I can get them free from the College, and I never part with a book. The words are the same, though, and it is the words that matter.

Sincerely,

Prof. _____

Feb. 13

It’s snowing again, the sort of snow that’s sharp and stinging, but it isn’t hail. Weather like this and I’m always cold, I’m chilled by its crystalpoints and indifference. By murder at 16, by the instant of heat and then the years and years of cold, of cellwall cold and shivering.

I google his name absently and search for clues, and I can’t help feeling like an intruder but at the same time I can’t stop. There’s something odd about his case, about his story—or maybe I just don’t want to believe. They never found the body.

Janet called again and wanted to have lunch; I gave the expected excuse which consisted of classes to teach and papers to grade, but my heart wasn’t in it (and neither was hers). I think she’s guessed the nature of my obsession (though perhaps not its extent): she asked if I’d responded to the letter, and even over the phone I couldn’t lie to her. She thinks I’m crazy, but at least I didn’t send the money.

Sometimes I think she may be right, but most of the time I can’t bring myself to care (which may be proving both our points).


Feb. 15

Still no response. And I find myself wondering why this puzzles me, why I expect one. He asks for a several-hundred-dollar news subscription and I send a few (badly) photocopied pages of “Self-Reliance.” And it’s probably a scam, but I can’t dismiss it. There’s something wrong here.

Or maybe I’ve finally lost it. I’m on leave next semester. Why does part of me want to append that sentence with finally?


Mar. 1

There’s something wrong here: there’s no body.

There can’t be a murder without a body.

My fingernails prickle with waiting, my synapses pace and burn with it; it’s exhausting to retain some vestige of rationality. Exhausting and pointless, really. Waiting, waiting: the air is thick with emptiness and I find myself scribbling gibberish rather than acknowledging the truth.
My library time is spent in the archives with smudgemarks on my fingers and I can feel my eyes degenerating in the dim. It seems like cheating to use a computer—see, I don’t even make sense to myself anymore!—so I don’t.


Mar. 2

Dear X,

I hope this letter finds you well, or as well as one can hope given the circumstances. And I apologize for my frankness; I apologize, but I have to know.

I don’t understand. You reference Raskalnikov, you mention Meursault, but who are you? Why did you do it? Where’s the body?

Yours hopefully,

Prof. _____

Mar. 14

Dear X,

Perhaps I’m being unfair. I ask for the details of your most private and painful past, and I have given you little more than a name and a copy of some words that aren’t mine. (Beautiful words, but they aren’t mine.)

I teach philosophy in literature—Borges, Blanchot, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche. Etc. I have the unfortunate tendency to find philosophy in everything, which is perhaps the reason why your letter never leaves my mind. I am white, middle-class, single, healthy, the sole offspring of dead parents, a failed poet who since learned the error of my ways. I have never killed someone.

Maybe that’s why you intrigue me—I have never killed someone, and yet? How do I know that I never will? And what will I do with the body?

I don’t know if my hesitation stems from a refusal to believe in the prospect of my own transgression, or from the (unfounded?) belief that someone with such devotion to language and learning could, in an act of passion, banish words forever.

Pardon me for being cryptic; it’s my weakness (and, I think, yours too: where is the body?).

Yours, as always,

Prof. _____

Mar. 20

Lately I’ve spent more time reading court transcripts and witness reports than my students’ essays, and I feel like a traitor—not to them, but to this shadow-person who may or may not exist, who may or may not have read my words, who may or may not have killed a man at the age of 16. I’m delving into the shadows of a life that I have no right to see, and I tell myself it’s because I want to help him but I know it’s really just the guilt. Guilt? Why? I’m not the murderer here; I have no hidden bodies.

That’s the problem with this case, the tangible version of the metaphysical problem that’s been lingering in peripheral vision, peripheral thought, for the past month. They never found the body. A scared kid with the dregs of legal-aid. Black. (No, biracial.) No witnesses.

But no body.

(You can’t have a murder without a body.)


Mar. 31

What if it’s the fault of memory—memory, that manipulative matrix upon which experiences are stretched and tanned and flavored. Memory, that controls us with the illusion of control. Maybe there is no murder, in which case his entire life is a lie, and a lie which he’s been forced to live and breathe and dream until it isn’t even a lie because it’s become the truth. Or maybe there is, in which case maybe my life is a lie—but a lie can only become a lie if it isn’t recognized as such.

I feel like a detective, but a failed one, because the only clues I have are the scraps of irritation at the edges of my mind; the only clues I have are the clues that aren’t there. He claims to have been Raskalnikov, but what if?

“Delusional and emotionally wrought”—why does that seem like such an apt description at the moment?


Apr. 4

It’s snowing again. The buds all blanketed in death, birthed too early, infant bodies frozen like mummies wrapped in icesheets.

I can’t help thinking: why me? Maybe she’s right (of course she’s right); maybe he sends the letter to everyone within reach; but what if that’s not true? I’m looking for patterns and meanings where there probably are none, but I am human after all and that’s what humans do.

Right?


Apr. 6

No response.


Apr. 7

No response.


Apr. 8

No body; no response.


Apr. 9

Sometimes I wonder: did I ever even send the letters?

(No response.)


Apr. 10

Nothing.


Apr. 15

I’m sitting with my back against the tombstone of the one he killed and the ice slowly numbing my legs and I can’t escape the feeling that there’s nothing under me. Not just nothing, the loss of feeling, the cold; but Nothing.

Sometimes it’s like peering through a fog, and then the fog clears, and I can’t believe I’m still here wondering what I’m wondering and searching for what I’m searching for. What am I searching for? I’m searching for nothing, and Nothing.

I wonder if I’m crazy, but at the same time I know I’m right. Which is, I suppose, what being crazy means.

I’m waiting: I’m waiting for that which cannot be awaited.

I’m quoting Blanchot in my head, and the seriousness of it, the frightening familiarity of it, makes me want to laugh, but it’s too cold. It’s April, and it’s too cold, and my mind no longer makes sense to me.

Or maybe I’m finally making sense. Maybe this is what he meant.

Or maybe I’m just searching for patterns that don’t exist.


Apr. 20

I’m searching for bodies that don’t exist.


Apr. 21

Dear X,
I believe you.
No, not that which they’ve made you believe, which you’ve made yourself believe: I believe in you.
I believe there is no body.

___
It’s still too cold.
It’s still too cold, and there’s been no response.
There’s been no response, and sometimes I wonder if I ever sent the letters.
Sometimes I wonder, but it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter: I’m always already waiting.


____________________
¹ This is a real letter. I've blacked out the names and dates, which was childish perhaps but amusing.