Gravity's Rainbow (111 page)

She has wandered away from him, down the beach. The sun is so bright today that the
shadows by her Achilles tendon are drawn sharp and black as seams up the heel of a
silk stocking. Her head, as always, is bent forward, away, the bare nape he’s never
stopped loving, will never see again, unprotected as her beauty, her innocence of
how forever in peril it moves through the World. She may know a little, may think
of herself, face and body, as “pretty” . . . but he could never tell her all the rest,
how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments
of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him. Was. He is losing more than single
Jessica: he’s losing a full range of life, of being for the first time at ease in
the Creation. Going back to winter now, drawing back into his single envelope. The
effort it takes to extend any further is more than he can make alone.

He hadn’t thought he’d cry when she left. But he cried. Snot by the cubic yard, eyes
like red carnations. Presently, every time his left foot hit the ground walking he’d
get a jolt of pain through half his skull. Ah, this must be what they mean by the
“pain of separation!” Pointsman kept showing up with armloads of work. Roger found
himself unable to forget Jessica, and caring less about Slothrop.

But one day Milton Gloaming popped in to deliver him from his unmoving. Gloaming was
just back from a jaunt through the Zone. He’d found himself on a task force with one
Josef Schleim, a defector of secondary brilliance, who had once worked for the IG
out of Dr. Reithinger’s office, VOWI—the Statistical Department of NW7. There, Schleim
had been assigned to the American desk, gathering for the IG economic intelligence,
through subsidiaries and licensees like Chemnyco, General Aniline and Film, Ansco,
Winthrop. In ’36 he came to England to work for Imperial Chemicals, in a status that
was never to be free from ambiguities. He’d heard of Slothrop, yes indeed . . . recalled
him from the old days. When Lyle Bland went out on his last transmural journey, there’d
been Green Reports flapping through the IG offices for weeks, Geheime Kommandosache,
rumors coupling and uncoupling like coal-tar molecules under pressure, all to do with
who was likely to take over the Slothrop surveillance, now that Bland was gone.

This was toward the beginning of the great struggle for the IG’s intelligence machinery.
The economic department of the foreign office and the foreign department of the economic
office were both after it. So were the military, in particular the Wehrwirtschaftstab,
a section of the General Staff that maintained OKW’s liaison with industry. The IG’s
own liaison with OKW was handled by Vermittlungsstelle W, under Drs. Dieckmann and
Gorr. The picture was further confused by the usual duplicate Nazi Party offices,
Abwehr-Organizations, set up throughout German industry after 1933. The Nazis’ watchdog
over the IG was called “Abteilung A” and was set up in the same office building as—in
fact, it appeared perfectly congruent with—the IG’s own Army liaison group, Vermittlungsstelle
W. But Technology, alas, braid-crowned and gold-thighed maiden, always comes up for
grabs like this. Most likely the bitching and bickering of Army vs. Party was what
finally drove Schleim over the hill, more than any moral feelings about Hitler. In
any case, he remembers the Slothrop surveillance being assigned to a newly created
“Sparte IV” under Vermittlungsstelle W. Sparte I was handling nitrogen and gasoline,
II dyes, chemicals, buna rubber, pharmaceuticals, III film and fibers. IV handled
Slothrop and nothing else, except—Schleim had heard tell—one or two miscellaneous
patents acquired through some dealings with IG Chemie in Switzerland. An analgesic
whose name he couldn’t recall, and a new plastic, some name like Mipolam . . . “Polimex,”
or something. . . .

“Sounds like that would’ve come under Sparte II,” was Gloaming’s only comment at the
time.

“A few directors were upset,” Schleim agreed. “Ter Meer was a Draufgänger—he and Hörlein
both, go-ahead fellows. They might have got it back.”

“Did the Party assign an Abwehr man to this Sparte IV?”

“They must have, but I don’t know if he was SD or SS. There were so many of them around.
I can remember some sort of rather thin chap with thick eyeglasses coming out of the
office there once or twice. But he wore civilian clothes. Couldn’t tell you his name.”

Well now what’n the bloody ’ell. . . .

“Surveillance?” Roger is fidgeting heavily, with his hair, his necktie, ears, nose,
knuckles, “IG Farben had Slothrop under surveillance? Before the War? What
for
, Gloaming.”

“Odd, isn’t it?” Cheerio
boing
out the door without another word, leaving Roger alone with a most disagreeable light
beginning to grow, the leading edge of a revelation, blinding, crescent, at the periphery
of his brain. IG Farben, eh? Mr. Pointsman has been chumming, almost exclusively these
days, with upper echelon from ICI. ICI has cartel arrangements with Farben. The bastard.
Why, he must have known about Slothrop all along. The Jamf business was only a front
for . . . well say what the hell is going
on
here?

Halfway up to London (Pointsman has repossessed the Jaguar, so Roger’s on a motorcycle
from the PISCES pool, which consists now only of the cycle and one Morris with virtually
no clutch) it occurs to him that Gloaming was sent around deliberately by Pointsman,
as some obscure tactic in this Nayland Smith campaign he seems to be into (Pointsman
owns a matched set of all the books in Sax Rohmer’s great Manichaean saga, and is
apt these days to pop in at any time, usually while Roger is sleeping or trying to
take a quiet shit, and actually
stand
there, in front of the toilet, reading aloud a pertinent text). Nothing is beyond
Pointsman, he’s worse than old Pudding was, no shame at all. He would use anyone—Gloaming,
Katje Borgesius, Pirate Prentice, no one is (Jessica) exempt from his (
Jessica?
) Machiavellian—

Jessica. Oh. Yes ofcourseofcourse Mexico you fucking
idiot
 . . . no wonder the 137th gave him the runaround. No wonder her orders came from
Too High. He had even, lamb frolicking about the spit, asked
Pointsman
to see what he could do. . . . Fool. Fool.

He arrives at Twelfth House on Gallaho Mews in a homicidal state of mind. Bicycle
thieves run down the back streets, old pros wheeling them three abreast at a good
pace. Young men with natty mustaches preen in the windows. Children loot the dustbins.
Courtyard corners are drifted with official papers, the shed skin of a Beast at large.
A tree has inexplicably withered in the street to a shingly black corpse. A fly lands
belly-up on the front fender of Roger’s motorcycle, thrashes ten seconds, folds its
veined and sensitive wings, and dies. Quick as that. First one Roger has ever seen.
P-47s fly over in squadron box formations, four checkmarks apiece RedWhiteBlueYellow
on the unamended form of the whitish sky, squadron after squadron: it is either some
military review, or another war. A plasterer is busy around the corner, smoothing
over a bomb-scarred wall, plaster heaped on his hawk luscious as cream cheese, using
an unfamiliar trowel inherited from a dead friend, still, these first days, digging
holes like an apprentice, the shiny knife-edge not yet broken to his hand, the curl
of it a bit more than his own strength could have ever brought it to . . . Henry was
a larger bloke. . . . The fly, who was not dead, unfolds its wings and zooms off to
fool somebody else.

All right Pointsman
stomping into Twelfth House, rattling the corkboards down the seven hallways and
flights, receptionists making long arms for the telephone
dammit now where are you
—

Not in his office. But Géza Rózsavölgyi is, and tries to give Roger a hard time. “You
are
ma
-king a
spec
-tacle of your-
self
, young
man.
”

“Shurrup you Transylvanian twit,” snarls Roger, “I’m looking for the boss, see, one
funny move out of you and it’s your last taste of O-negative, Jackson, those fangs
won’t even be able to gum
oatmeal
when I’m through wiv you—” Alarmed Rózsavölgyi, retreating around the water cooler,
tries to pick up a swivel chair to defend himself with. The seat falls off, and Rózsavölgyi
is left with only the base, which happens, embarrassingly, to be shaped like a cross.

“Where is he,” Mexican standoff, Roger gritting his teeth
do not succumb to hysteria, it is a counter-productive luxury you cannot, in your
present great vulnerability, afford. . . .
“Come on you sod, tell me or you’ll never see the inside of a coffin again—”

In runs a short but spunky secretary, bit of a chubbette here, and commences belting
Roger in the shins with the excess-profits tax records from 1940 to ’44 of an English
steel firm which happened to share a patent with Vereinigte Stahlwerke for an alloy
used in the liquid-oxygen couplings for the line running aft to the S-Gerät in A4
number 00000. But Roger’s shins are not set up for this kind of information. The secretary’s
glasses fall off. “Miss Müller-Hochleben,” reading her nametag, “you look
beastly
without your glasses. Put ssem back on, at vunce!” this comic Nazi routine being
inspired by her surname.

“I can’t find them,” German accent all right, “I don’t see too well.”
“Well
, we’ll see if we can’t
help
you here—ah! what’s this? Miss Müller-Hochleben!”

“Ja. . . .”

“What do they look like, these eyeglasses?”

“They are white—”

“With clever little
rhinestones
all around the rims, Fräulein? eh?”

“Ja, ja, und mit—”

“And running down all the earpieces too, a-and
feathers?
”

“Ostrich feathers. . . .”

“
Male
ostrich feathers, dyed a stunning peacock blue, sprouting off the edges?”

“That is my eyeglasses, ja,” sez the groping secretary, “where are they, please?”

“Right
here!
” bringing his foot down CRUNCH, smashing them to bright arctic gatherings all over
Pointsman’s rug.

“I-
say,
” offers Rózsavölgyi from a far corner: the one corner of the room, by the way, which
is not brightly lit, yes kind of an optic anomaly here, just a straight, square room,
no odd-shaped polyhedrons in Twelfth House . . . and still, this strange, unaccountable
prism of shadow in the corner . . . more than one visitor has popped in to find Mr.
Pointsman not at his desk where he ought to be but standing in the shadow-corner—most
disturbingly
facing into it. . . .
Rózsavölgyi is not himself that fond of the Corner, he’s tried it a few times but
only came out shaking his head: “Mis-ter
Poin
tsman, I-don’t
like
it in there, at
all.
What
poss
-ible kind, of a
thrill
can
an
-yone
get
, from
such
an un-
whole
some experience. Eh?” raising one crookedly wistful eyebrow. Pointsman had only looked
apologetic, not for himself but
to
something for Rózsavölgyi, and said gently, “This is one spot in the room where I
feel alive,” well bet your ass one or two memos went up toward Ministerial level over
that
one. If they reached the Minister himself, it was probably as office entertainment.
“Oh yes, yes,” shaking his wise old head of sheep’s wool, high, almost Slavic cheekbones
crinkling his eyes up into an inattentive but polite laughter, “yes Pointsman’s famous
Corner, yes . . . wouldn’t be surprised if it was
haunted
, eh?” Reflex laughs from the underlings present, though only grim smiles from the
overlings. “Get the S.P.R. in, to have a look,” giggles someone with a cigar. “
The
poor bloke will think he’s back in the
War
again.” “Hear, hear,” and, “That’s a good one, all right,” ring through the layering
smoke. Practical jokes are all the rage among these particular underlings, a kind
of class tradition.

“You say
what,
” Roger has been screaming for a while.

“I-
say,
” sez Rózsavölgyi, again.

“You say, ‘I say’? Is that it? Then you should have said, ‘I say, “I say.”’”

“I did.”

“No, no—you said, ‘I say,’
once
, is what you—”

“A-
ha!
But I
said
it
again.
I-
said
it . . .
twice.
”

“But that was after I asked you the question—you can’t tell me the two ‘I say’s were
both part of the same statement,” unless, “that’s asking me to be unreasonably,” unless
it’s really true that, “credulous, and around
you
that’s a form of,” that we’re the
same person
, and that the whole exchange was ONE SINGLE THOUGHT yaaaggghhh and that means, “insanity,
Rózsavölgyi—”

“My glasses,” snivels Fräulein Müller-Hochleben, now crawling around the room, Mexico
scattering the glass splinters with his shoe so that now and then the unfortunate
girl will cut a hand or a knee, beginning to trail dark little feathers of blood for
inches at a time, eventually—assuming she were to last long enough—dotting in Pointsman’s
rug like the train of a Beardsley gown.

“You’re doing
fine
, Miss Müller-Hochleben!” cries Roger encouragingly, “and as for
you
, you—” but is stopped on noticing how Rózsavölgyi now is nearly invisible in the
shadow, and how the whites of his eyes are actually
glowing
white, jittering around in the air, winking-out-coming-back . . . it is costing Rózsavölgyi
an effort to stay in this shadow-corner. It is not, at all, his sort of place. For
one thing, the rest of the room seems to be at more of a distance, as through the
view-finder on a camera. And the walls—they don’t appear to be . . . well,
solid
, actually. They flow: a coarse, a viscous passage, rippling like a standing piece
of silk or nylon, the color watery gray but now and then with a surprise island in
the flow, some color absolutely foreign to this room: saffron spindles, palm-green
ovals, magenta firths running comblike into jagged comicbook-orange chunks of island
as the wounded fighter-plane circles, jettisons the tanks, then the silver canopy,
sets the flaps to just above a stall, wheels up as the
blue
(suddenly, such a violent blue!) rushes in just before impact throttle closed
uhhnnhh!
oh shit the
reef
, we’re going to smash up on the—oh. Oh, there’s no reef? We-we’re
safe?
We are! Mangoes, I see mangoes on that tree over there! a-and there’s a girl—there’s
a
lotta
girls! Lookit, they’re all gorgeous, their tits point straight out, and they’re all
swingin’ those grass skirts, playin’ ukuleles and singing (though why are the voices
so hard and tough, so nasally like the voices of an American chorus line?)—