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On the lagoon boats passed, boats of all kinds. How nice it would have been to see the Pilar arrive...

Papa should be happy but he isn't. Or at least not as much as he could be, after The Old Man and the Sea taxes came due. "We wish we had turned White Tower Inc. into a legally constituted corporation. We would have had some money. A corporation is treated kindly by the tax people. But if you are an individual they seem to think the sooner they can destroy you the better."

"The success of the book was exciting and then not at all exciting. When something is done and you can't do anything about it, it's better not to think about it anymore. Would you like to receive 3800 letters all on the same subject? I'm really sick of hearing about the book and I wish I could be with you and be able to talk about something else." "I can honestly say that I would prefer no one to mention the Old Man and the sea anymore. Now there are biographies. If you ever see one, don't pay attention to them. One of them is so full of symbolism that it would make you laugh. There is one, another will come out next month, proving that all the others are false and and twice false. I read them like a disease. But they just disgust me and I want to see you and write something new."

Something new. It was a great - even  and wonderful - effort to write that short and simple book, right Papa? "Then I started another thing in the book of the Sea. It is the part of the struggle and I do not want to write it because it is like a wound that has not yet closed. But now I open it and try to do it EVERYTHING because it should be in the book at this point. Written 1050 words on the first day, 1578 on the second, 1145 yesterday and today I am writing to you instead. Does it bother you a lot? My duty is to write that other thing but I am tired because it creates old emotions that you have to remember exactly and then complete with fantasy and today...