GRAVITY RAINBOW (87 page)

The storm has blown away, the breeze is mild today and the sky lies overhead in a perfect interference-pattern, mackerel gray and blue. Someplace military machines are rooting and clanking. Men and women are hollering near and far in Russian. Otto and Slothrop dodge them down alleys flanked by the remains of half-timbered houses, stepped out story by story, about to meet overhead after centuries of imperceptible toppling. Men in black-billed caps sit on stoops, watching hands for cigarettes. In a little square, market stalls are set up, wood frames and old, stained canvas shimmering when the breeze passes through. Russian soldiers lean against posts or benches talking to girls in dirndls and white knee-socks, all nearly still as statues. Market wagons stand unhitched with tongues tilted to the ground and floors covered with burlap and straw and traces of produce. Dogs sniff among the mud negatives of tank treads. Two men in dark old blue uniforms work their way along with hose and broom, cleaning away garbage and stone-dust with salt water pumped up from the harbor. Two little girls chase round and round a gaudy red kiosk plastered with chromos of Stalin. Workers in leather caps, blinking, morning-faced, pedal down to the docks with lunchboxes slung on handle bars. Pigeons and seagulls feint for scraps in the gutters. Women with empty string bags hurry by light as ghosts. A lone sapling in the street sings with a blockful of birds you can't see.

Just as Geli said, out on the steel-littered promenade, kicking stones, watching the water, eyes idly combing the beach for the odd watch or gold eyeglass frame, waiting for whoever will show up, is The Man. About 50, bleak and neutral-colored eyes, hair thick at the sides of his head and brushed back.

Slothrop flashes the plastic knight. Der Springer smiles and bows.

"Gerhardt von Goll, at your service." They shake hands, though Slothrop's is prickling in an unpleasant way.

Gulls cry, waves flatten on the strand. "Uh," Slothrop sez, "I have this kind of trick ear, you'll have to-you say Gerhardt von what now?" This mackerel sky has begun to look less like a moire, and more like a chessboard. "I guess we have a friend in common. Well, that Margherita Erdmann. Saw her last night. Yup…"

"She's supposed to be dead." He takes Slothrop's arm, and they all begin to stroll along the promenade.

"W-well you're supposed to be a movie director."

"Same thing," lighting American cigarettes for everybody. "Same problems of control. But more intense. As to some musical ears, dissonance is really a higher form of consonance. You've heard about Anton Webern? Very sad."

"It was a mistake. He was innocent."

"Ha. Of course he was. But mistakes are part of it too-everything fits. One
sees how
it fits, ja? learns patterns, adjusts to rhythms, one day you are no longer an actor, but free now, over on the other side of the camera. No dramatic call to the front office-just waking up one day, and knowing that Queen, Bishop, and King are only splendid cripples, and pawns, even those that reach the final row, are condemned to creep in two dimensions, and no lower will ever rise or descend-no:
flight has been given only to the Springer!"

"Right, Springer," sez Otto.

Four Russian privates come wandering out of a bank of ruined hotel-fronts, laughing across the promenade, over the wall down to the water where they stand throwing smooth stones, kicking waves, singing to each other. Not much of a liberty town, Swinemunde. Slothrop fills von Goll in on Margherita, trying not to get personal. But some of his anxiety over Bianca must be coming through. Von Goll shakes his arm, a kindly uncle. "There now. I wouldn't worry. Bianca's a clever child, and her mother is hardly a destroying goddess."

"You're a comfort, Springer."

The Baltic, restless Wehrmacht gray, whispers along the beach. Von Goll tips an invisible Tyrolean to old ladies in black who've come out in pairs to get some sun. Otto goes chasing seagulls, hands out in front of him silent-movie style looking to strangle, but always missing his bird. Presently they are joined by a party with a lumpy nose, stoop, week's growth of orange and gray whiskers, and oversize leather trenchcoat with no trousers on underneath. His name is Narrisch- the same Klaus Narrisch that aerodynamics man Horst Achtfaden fingered for the Schwarzkommando, the very same. He is carrying by the neck an unplucked dead turkey. As they thread their way among chunks big and little of Swinemunde and the battle for it last spring, townspeople begin to appear out of the ruins, and to straggle close on von Coil's landward flank, all eying this dead bird. Springer reaches inside his white suit jacket, comes out with a U.S. Army.45, and makes a casual show of checking its action. His following promptly dwindles by a half.

"They're hungrier today," observes Narrisch.

"True," replies the Springer, "but today there are fewer of them."

"Wow," it occurs to Slothrop, "that's a shitty thing to say."

Springer shrugs. "Be compassionate. But don't make up fantasies about them. Despise me, exalt them, but remember, we define each other. Elite and preterite, we move through a cosmic design of darkness and light, and in all humility, I am one of the very few who can comprehend it
in toto.
Consider honestly therefore, young man, which

side you would rather be on. While they suffer in perpetual shadows, it's… always-"

bright days (fox-trot)

– bright days for the black mar-ket,

That silver 'n' gold makes-it shine!

From the Cor-al Sea to, the sky, blue, Baltic,

Money's the mainspring, that makes it
all
tick-like a

Blinkin' beacon, there's a pricetag peekin'

From each decolletage dee-vine-

Be she green or scar-let, even Mom's a har-lot, it's the

Good Lord's grand design…

A-and it's sunny days-for, the black, black ma(a)rket,

Cause silver and gold makes it shii-iine!

Narrisch and Otto joining in here on three-part harmony, while the idle and hungry of Swinemunde look on, whitefaced as patient livestock. But their bodies are only implied: wire racks for prewar suits and frocks, too ancient, too glossy with dirt, with passage.

Leaving the promenade, they pause at a street corner while a detachment of Russian infantry and horsemen marches by. "Gee, they're pouring in," notes Otto. "Where's the circus?"

"Up the coast, kid," sez Narrisch.

"What's up the coast," inquires Slothrop.

"Look out,"
warns Narrisch,
"he's a spy."

"Don't call me 'kid,' " Otto snarls.

"Spy's ass," sez Slothrop.

"He's all right," Springer pats them all on the shoulders, Herr Gemutlich here, "the word's been out on him for a while. He isn't even armed." To Slothrop: "You're welcome to come along with us, up the coast. It might be interesting for you." But Slothrop is no dummy. He notices how he is getting funny looks from everybody now, including that Springer.

Among the cargo headed up the coast are six chorus girls, wearing feathers and spangles under old cloth coats to save trunk space, a small pit band at different levels of alcoholic slumber, manymany cases of vodka, and a troupe of performing chimpanzees. Otto's nautical-piratical mother has one of these chimps cornered inside the pilot house, where they are going at it, the Frau with her insults, the chimp reaching now and then trying to slap her with this floppy banana peel. Ulcerous impresario G. M. B. Haftung is trying to get Otto's atten-

tion. He has a record of always making his appeals to the wrong personnel. "That's Wolfgang in there! He'll murder her!" Wolfgang's his prize chimp, somewhat unstable, does a fair Hitler imitation but has this short attention span.

"Well," vaguely, "he'd better watch out for my Mom."

Framed here in her lozenge of hatchway, it's much clearer just how extensively this old woman has been around: she is leaning, lilting, big sweet smile just as toothy as can be, right into that Wolfgang,
cooing
at him: "Deine Matter…"

"Say,
she's
never seen one of those critters before," Slothrop turning to Otto, surprising the youth with a faceful of, call it amiable homicide, "has she-"

"Ach, she's fantastic. She knows by instinct-
exactly how
to insult
anybody.
Doesn't matter, animal, vegetable-I even saw her insult a
rock
once."

"Aw, now-"

"Really! Ja. A gigantic clummmp of felsitic debris, last year, off the coast of Denmark, she criticized its," just about to fall into one of those mirthless laughs we edge away from, "its
crystalline structure,
for twenty minutes. Incredible."

Chorus girls have already pried open a case of vodka. Haftung, brushing hair that grows only in memory across the top of his head, rushes over to scream at them. Boys and girls, all ages, tattered and thin, trail across the brow, stevedoring. Against the fair sky, chimps swing from spars and antenna, above them seagulls glide by and stare. Wind rises, soon a whitecap here and there will start to flicker out in the harbor. Each child carries a bale or box of a different shape, color, and size. Springer stands by, pince-nez clipped in front of agate eyes, checking off his inventory in a green morocco book, snails in garlic sauce, one gross… three cases cognac… tennis balls, two dozen… one Victrola… film,
Lucky Pierre Runs Amok,
three reels… binoculars, sixty… wrist-watches… u.s.w., a check-mark for each child.

Presently all has been stowed below decks, chimps fall asleep, musicians wake up, girls surround Haftung and call him names, and pinch his cheeks. Otto makes his way along the side, hauling in lines as the children cast them off. As the last one is flung away, its eye-splice still in midair framing a teardrop vista of gutted Swinemunde, Frau Gnahb, sensing the release from land through her feet, gets under way in the usual manner, nearly losing a chimp over the fantail and sending Haftung's half-dozen lovelies sprawling in a winsome tangle of legs, bottoms and breasts.

Crosscurrents tug at the boat as it moves out the widening funnel of the Swine, toward the sea. Just inside the breakwaters, where it foams through breaches bombed underwater in the spring
look
out, Frau Gnahb, with no change of expression, swings her wheel full over, goes barreling straight at the Sassnitz ferry
whoosh
veers away just in time, cackling at passengers staggering back from the rail, gaping after her. "Please, Mother," silent Otto plaintive in the window of the pilot house. In reply the good woman commences bellowing a bloodthirsty

sea chanty

I'm the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody fucks

with me- And those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath

the sea.

And the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes, Singing, "Fuck ye not with Gory Gnahb and her desperate

enterprise!"

I'll tangle with a battleship, I'll massacre a sloop, I've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop- I've seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries, "Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnahb, and her desperate enterprise!"

Whereupon she grips her wheel and accelerates. They find themselves now leaping toward the side of a half-sunken merchantman: black concave iron splashed with red-lead, each crusted rivet and pitted plate closing in, looming over- The woman is clearly unbalanced. Slothrop shuts his eyes and hangs on to a chorus girl. With a whoop from the pilot house, the little boat is put over hard to port, missing collision by maybe a few coats of paint. Otto, caught daydreaming of death, staggers wildly by heading over the side. "It's her sense of humor," he points out, on the way past. Slothrop reaches out grabs him by the sweater, and the girl grabs Slothrop by the tail of his tuxedo.

"She gets into something a little illegal," Otto a moment later catching his breath, "you see what happens. I don't know what to do with her."

"Poor kid," the girl smiles.

"Aw," sez Otto.

Slothrop leaves them, always happy to see young people get together, and joins von Goll and Narrisch on the fantail. Frau Gnahb

has angled, wallowing, around to the northwest. Presently they are heading up the coast, through white-streaked, salt-smelling Baltic.

"Well. Where we going, fellas?" jovial Slothrop wants to know.

Narrisch stares. "That is the isle of Usedom," von Goll explains, gently. "It is bounded on one side by the Baltic Sea. It is also bounded by two rivers. Their names are the Swine, and the Peene. We were just on the Swine River. We were in Swinemunde. Swinemunde means 'mouth of the Swine River.' "

"All right, all right."

"We
are headed around the island of Usedom, to a place that is at the mouth of the Peene River."

"Let's see, so that would be called… wait… Peenemunde, right?"

"Very good."

"So?" There is a pause. "Oh. Oh,
that
Peenemunde."

Narrisch, as it turns out, used to work up there. He's apt to brood some at the idea of Russians occupying the place.

"There was a liquid-oxygen plant I had my eye on, too," Springer a little down with it himself, "I wanted to start a chain-we're still angling for the one in Volkenrode, at the old Goering Institute."

"There's a bunch of those LOX generators under Nordhausen," Slothrop trying to be helpful.

"Thanks. The Russians have that too, you'll recall. That's a problem: if it weren't so against Nature I'd say they don't know what they want. The roads heading east are jammed day and night with Russian lorries, full of material. All kinds of loot. But no clear pattern to it yet, beyond strip-it-and-pack-it-home."

"Jeepers," clever Slothrop here, "do you reckon they've found that
S-Geratyet,
huh, Mr. von Goll?"

"Ah, cute," beams the Springer.

"He's an OSS man," groans Narrisch, "tell you, we ought to rub him out."