Is something wrong? Must I worry? This marks the second letter I have received from you which I cannot understand. What is this about bears? First you told me of your frankly disturbing dream about some sort of vampire dog, and now you force me to listen to stories about some contraption for the training of dancing bears. What am I to think?
Are the children alright? Are you sick?
I'm sorry to write in such a furious fashion, but I have trouble sitting here locked up like your dancing bear with no way to help you. It makes me angry and nervous to think of ways in which I might be able to assist you but cannot because of distance and circumstance. And my poor mother, dragged across the whole of the country, counting poles as the train passes. I wait here chewing at chips of paint which have fallen from the wall, imagining means of escape which are all, finally, beyond me. I think of flying away or digging a hole beneath the prison. Can you see me inching my way through the ground, a fat and fine slug? A tight squeeze, I'm sure! Even so, I realize that my escape would be at best a temporary measure, and at that, only a sorry absence from this room. For real freedom, there is no such kind. All of Italy is surely a prison to me now, the air I breath bars.
I'm sorry.
You know, though still unsure, I can perhaps see where your bear becomes interesting. In fact, I've been, beneath my knowledge, imagining myself as something like the bear, connected to strings and pulling some other person in the next cell, someone else I have never seen. I imagine the slowly lifting arm in the next room, and can almost hear the scratching of pen on paper . . . quiet now, like sand dropped on a thin pan . . . can you hear it? And the eyes, can we imagine how the eyes move. You talk of elastics and fur cuffs--do the eyes require suction cups, a delicate network of valves and tubes connected to the finest of vacuums? Shhh, I can hear the engine (ah, that's my stomach rumbling). Are there rather rollers behind the eyes, a four wheel system which could account for nearly universal motion? The hand I can imagine, but is my hand moving? Is my friend, the trainer, actually writing this letter? Most certainly.
I grow weary my dear. Please excuse this letter. I love you.
Tell the children the same.
A warm hug.
Antonio
In Janruary of 1949, three men disappeared from the Hutchapawnee Federal State Penitentiary. They remained missing for 25 years. The mystery was solved when legislation demanded that the cells be refurbrished. The men were found, covered in a deep pitch and wedged into the ceiling of their cell. Their bodies were perfectly maintained.
