GRAVITY RAINBOW (93 page)

"But what if they
did
shoot him?"

"No. They weren't supposed to."

"Springer, this ain't the fuckin'
movies
now, come on."

"Not yet. Maybe not quite yet. You'd better enjoy it while you can. Someday, when the film is fast enough, the equipment pocket-size and burdenless and selling at people's prices, the lights and booms no longer necessary,
then…
then…"
We now come in sight of mythical Ru-
gen off our starboard bow.
Its chalk cliffs are brighter than the sky. There is mist in the firths, and among the green oaks. Along the beaches drift pearl patches of fog.

Our captain, Frau Gnahb, heads into the Greifswalder Bodden, to comb the long firths for her quarry. After an hour
(comical bassoon solos over close-ups of the old recreant guzzling some horrible fermented potato-mash lobotomy out of a jerrican, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, belching)
of fruitless search, our modern-day pirates head out to sea
again, and up the eastern coast of the island.

Light rain has been falling. Otto breaks out slickers, and a Thermos of hot soup. Clouds, a dozen shades of gray, go scudding along the sky. Great misty heaps of rock, steep cliffs, streams in deep gorges, gray and green and spires of white chalk in the rain, go passing-the Stubbenkammer, the King's Seat, and presently, off to port, Cape Arkona where waves crash at the base of the cliffs and on top the groves of white-trunked trees are blowing…
The ancient Slavs put
up a temple here, to Svetovid, their god of fertility and war. Old Svetovid did business under quite a number of aliases! Three-headed Triglav, five-headed Porevit, SEVEN-faced Rugevit! Tell that to your boss next time he talks about "wearing two hats!" Now, as Arkona slides away off our port quarter
-

"There she is," Otto calls from the top of the pilot house. Far far away, hauling out to sea from behind the Wissow Klinken (the pale limestone latchkey with which Providence today is probing the wards of Slothrop's heart), barely visible in the rain, dips a tiny white ghost of a ship…

"Get a bearing," Frau Gnahb grabbing the wheel and bracing her feet. "We want a
collision course!"
Otto crouches by the pelorus, shivering.

"Here, Slothrop."

Luger? Box of rounds? "What…"

"Came this morning with the egg delivery."

"You didn't mention-"

"He may be a little exercised. But he's a realist. Your friend Greta and I knew him in Warsaw, in the old days."

"Springer-tell me Springer, now, what ship is that?" Springer hands him some binoculars. In fine gold lettering, behind the golden jackal on the wraith-white bow, is the name he already knows. "O… K.," trying to see through the rain into Springer's eyes, "you knew I was aboard. You're setting me up, now, right?"

"When were
you
on board?"

"Come on-"

"Look-Narrisch was going after the package today. Not you. We didn't even
know
you. Do you have to see conspiracies in everything? I don't control the Russians, and I didn't deliver him-"

"You're really pushing that innocence today, ain't you?"

"Quit bickering, idiots," hollers Frau Gnahb, "and clear-for
action!"

Lazy and spectral pitches the
Anubis,
growing no clearer as they close with her. Springer reaches a megaphone out of the pilot house, and bawls, "Good day, Procalowski-permission to come aboard."

The answer is a gunshot. Springer hits the deck, slicker in rattling yellow flow, lies on his back with the megaphone pointing up funnel-ing rain in his mouth: "We'll have to without permission, then-" Motioning Slothrop over, "Get ready to board." To Frau Gnahb, "We'll want to lash on."

"Fine but," one look at the evil leer now lighting up Otto's mother's face and it's clear that she didn't come out today for money, "when do I get to, to
ram
her?"

Alone on the sea with the
Anubis.
Slothrop has begun to sweat, unpleasantly. The green rocky coast of Rugen backdrops them, rising and falling through the squall.
Zonggg
another shot rattlesnaking off of a bulkhead. "Ram," orders the Springer. The storm comes down in earnest. Gleeful Frau Gnahb, humming through her teeth, spins the wheel, spokes blurring, prow swinging over aiming for midships. The blank side of the
Anubis
rushes in-is the Frau gonna bust on through it like a paper hoop? Faces behind portholes, cook peeling potatoes outside the galley, drunk in a frock coat sleeping on the rainy deck and sliding as the ship rolls… ah-ja, ja, a huge blue-flowered bowl of shredded potatoes at her elbow, a window, cast-iron flowers on spiral vine all painted white, a mild smell of cabbage and dishrags from under the sink, an apron bow snug and tight above her kidneys and lambs about her legs and ja little, oh, ja, here comes little-ah-here conies
here-comes
LITTLE-AHH-

OTTO!
slams her boat into the
Anubis,
a most godawful earsplit-ting
Otto…

"Stand by." Springer's on his feet. Procalowski is turning away and increasing engine speed. Frau Gnahb moves up again on the yacht's starboard quarter, wallowing in her wake. Otto passes out grappling hooks, long in Hanseatic service, iron, pitted, functional-looking, as Mutti puts it all ahead full. Couples have wandered out under awnings on the
Anubis
to watch the fun, pointing, laughing, gaily waving. Girls, their nude breasts beaded with rain, blow kisses while the band plays a Guy Lombardo arrangement of "Running Between the Raindrops."

Up the slippery ladder goes salty and buccaneering Slothrop, hefting his grappling hook, letting out line, keeping an eye on that Otto- wind up, spin like a lasso, wheeee-clank. Springer and Otto at bow and stern are grappling on at the same time, hauling in as the vessels hit, bounce, hit… but the
Anubis,
softwhite, has slowed, sprawled, allowed… Otto gets line around chocks forward and up around the scrimshawed railing of the yacht-then dashes aft, sneakers splashing, ribbed footprints left behind then rained out, to repeat the lashing there. A newly-arranged river roars, white and violent, backward between the two ships. Springer is already up on the yacht's main deck. Slothrop tucks Luger in belt and follows.

Springer with the classic gangster head-move gestures him up to the bridge. Slothrop moves through groping hands, greetings in broken Russian, puffs of alcoholic breath, around to the ladder on the port side-climbing, edging quietly onto the bridge. But Procalowski is only sitting in the captain's chair smoking one of Springer's
amis
with his cap tilted back, and Springer's just at the punch line to one of his giant repertoire of German toilet jokes.

"What the devil, Gerhardt," Procalowski waving a thumb. "The Red Army's working for you too?"

"Hello again, Antoni." The three silver stars on each of his epaulets twinkle howdy, but it's no good.

"I don't know you." To the Springer: "All right. It's in the engine room. Starboard side, down behind the generator," which is Slothrop's cue to leave.

At the bottom of the ladder he meets Stefania coming along the passageway. "Hi. Sorry we have to meet again this way."

"Hello, I'm Stefania," shuttering a fast smile as she passes, "there's liquor next deck up, enjoy yourself," already gone, out in the rain. What?

Slothrop steps down through a hatchway, starts to climb down toward the engineering spaces. Somewhere above him three bells strike, slowly, a little hollow, with a slight echo. It's late…
late.
He remembers where he is.

Just as he touches the deck, all the lights go out. Air blowers whine down to stillness. The engine room is down one more deck. Will he have to do this in the dark?

"I can't," out loud.

"You can," replies a voice close to his ear. He can feel its breath. He is smashed expertly at the base of the neck. Light loops through the pitch dark. His left arm has gone numb. "I'll leave you the other one," the voice whispers, "for climbing down to the engine room."

"Wait-" It feels like the pointed toe of a dancing-pump, in out of nowhere to hover a second and stroke the soft underside of his chin- then it flicks up, slamming his teeth shut on his tongue.

The pain is awful. He tastes blood. Sweat gathers next to his eyes.

"Move, now." When he hesitates he is pinched on the back of the neck. Oh, it hurts… he holds to the ladder, night-blind, starting to cry… then he thinks of the Luger, but before he can get to it he's been kicked viciously between hip and groin. The gun falls to the steel deck. Slothrop is down on one knee, groping, when the shoe descends lightly on his fingers. "You will need this hand for holding on to the ladder, remember?
Remember?"
Then the shoe is lifted, but only to kick him under the armpit. "Up, up."

Slothrop gropes to the next ladder, makes his stiff one-armed way down onto it. He feels the steel hatch-opening rise around him. "Don't try to come back up till you've done what you have to do."

"Thanatz?" Slothrop's tongue hurts. The name comes out clumsily. Silence. "Morituri?" No answer. Slothrop moves one foot up one rung.

"No, no. I'm still here."

As he edges downward, shaking, rung by rung, feeling prickles back into his arm. How can he go down? How can he go up? He tries to concentrate on the pain. His feet strike steel plate finally. Blindness. He moves to starboard, colliding at every step with shin-high edges, sharp projections…
I
don't want to… how can I… reach down behind
… bare hands… what if…

A sudden whine to his right-something mechanical-he jumps, breath sucking very cold between teeth, nerves in back and arms off and on, skittering… he reaches a cylindrical barrier… might be the generator… stoops and begins to- His hand closes on stiff taffeta. He jerks it away, tries to get up, slams his head against something sharp… he wants to crawl back toward the ladder, but has lost all sense of direction now… he squats, turning in a circle, slowly…
let it end letitend…
But his hands, pawing the deck, return to slippery satin.

"No." Yes: hooks and eyes. He breaks a fingernail, trying to lose them but they follow… lacing that moves, snake-sure, entangling, binding each finger…

"No.
…" He rises to a crouch, moves forward into something hanging from the overhead. Icy little thighs in wet silk swing against his face. They smell of the sea. He turns away, only to be lashed across the cheek by long wet hair. No matter which way he tries to move now… cold nipples… the deep cleft of her buttocks, perfume and shit and the smell of brine… and the smell of…
of…

When the lights come back on, Slothrop is on his knees, breathing

carefully. He knows he will have to open his eyes. The compartment reeks now with suppressed light-with mortal possibilities for light- as the body, in times of great sadness, will feel its real chances for pain: real and terrible and only just under the threshold… The brown paper bundle is two inches from his knee, wedged behind the generator. But it's what's dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight… and are the ladders back up and out really as empty as they look?

Back on the Frau's boat, Springer is out with a bottle of champagne courtesy of the
Anubis,
untwisting the bright wires and firing the cork in a farewell salvo. Slothrop's hands are shaking and he spills most of his. Antoni and Stefania watch from the bridge as the two vessels pull apart, Baltic sky visible through the backs of their eyes. Her white hair in filaments of foam, her cheeks sculptured fog… cloud-man, fogwife, they dwindle, aloof, silent, back into the heart of the storm.

The Frau heads south, along the other coast of Rugen, into the straits by way of the Bug. The storm keeps pace, as night comes down. "We'll put in at Stralsund," her scrawled face streaming with lube-green shadow, yellow light, as the oil-lantern sways in the pilot house.

Slothrop reckons he'll get off there. Head for that Cuxhaven. "Springer, you think you'll have those papers for me on time?"

"I can't guarantee anything," sez Gerhardt von Goll.

At Stralsund, on the quai, in the lamplight and the rain, they say good-by. Frau Gnahb kisses Slothrop, and Otto gives him a pack of Lucky Strikes. The Springer looks up from his green notebook and nods auf Wiedersehen over his pince-nez. Slothrop walks away, over the brow, into the wet Hafenplatz, sea-legs trying to balance rolling he's left behind, past booms and masts and strung tackle of derricks, past a crew on the night shift offloading the creaking lighters into wood wagons, bowed gray horses kissing the grassless stones… good-bys in his pockets warming his empty hands…

Where is the Pope whose staff will bloom for me? Her mountain vamps me back, with silks and scents, Her oiled, athletic slaves, her languid hints Of tortures transubstantiate to sky,

To purity of light-of bonds that sing, And whips that trail their spectra as they fall. At weather's mercy now, I find her call At every turn, at night's foregathering.

I've left no sick Lisaura's fate behind.

I made my last confession as I knelt,

Agnostic, in the radiance of his jewel…

Here, underneath my last and splintering wind,

No song, no lust, no memory, no guilt:

No pentacles, no cups, no holy Fool…

Brigadier Pudding died back in the middle of June of a massive
E. coli
infection, whining, at the end, "Me little Mary hurts…" over and over. It was just before dawn, as he had wished. Katje stayed on at "The White Visitation" for a while, roaming the demobbed corridors, smoky and still at the ends of all the emptied lattices of cages in the laboratory, herself part of the ash-colored web, the thickening dust and fly-pocked windows.

One day she found the cans of film, stacked carelessly by Webley Silvernail in what had been a music room, occupied now only by a disintegrating Wittmaier harpsichord no one played, quills and stops broken shamefully, strings left to sharp, flat, or corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing relentlessly into all the rooms. Pointsman happened that day to be up in London, working out of Twelfth House, lingering at alcoholic luncheons with his various industrialists. Was he forgetting her? Would she be free? Was she, already?