Gravity's Rainbow (120 page)

In-the-re-frig er a-tor!

O no-no-no, no-no-no!

Chiquita Banana sez we shouldn’t! Somethin’ awful’ll happen! Who would do that? It
couldn’t be Mom, and Hogan’s in
love
with Chiquita Banana, Tyrone’s come in the room plenty of times found his brother
with banana label glued on his erect cock for ready reference, lost in masturbatory
fantasies of nailing this cute but older Latin lady
while she’s wearing her hat
, gigantic fruit-market hat and a big saucy smile ¡Ay, ay, how passionate you Yankees
are! . . . a-and it couldn’t’ve been Pop, no Pop wouldn’t, but if it (is it getting
cold in here?) wasn’t any of us, then (what’s happening to the Spike Jones record
of “Right in the Führer’s Face” playing back out in the living room, why’s the sound
fading?) . . . unless I did it without knowing (look around, something’s squeaking
on its hinges) and maybe that means I’m going crazy (what’s this
brightening the bulblight
, what’s—) SLAM well whoever it is that’s been wantonly disregarding United Fruit’s
radio commercials has also just closed young Tyrone in that icebox, and now he’ll
have to count on Myrtle to get him out. Embarrassing as heck.

“Good thinking, boss man.”

“Gee, M.M., I don’t know what happened. . . .”

“Do you ever? Grab on to my cape.”

Whoosh—

“Whew. Well,” sez Slothrop, “uh, are we all . . . ?”

“That Radiant Hour’s probably light-years away by now,” sez Myrt, “and
you
have a snot icicle hanging outa your nose.” Marcel springs to the controls of the
mobile building, keys in to Central Control a request for omnidirectional top-speed
clearance, which sometimes comes through and sometimes not, depending on a secret
process among the granters of permission, a process it is one of the 4’s ongoing mandates
to discover and impart to the world. This time they get Slow Crawl, Suburban Vectors,
lowest traffic status in the Raketen-Stadt, invoked only once in recorded history,
against a homosexual child-murdering Indian liked to wipe off his organ afterwards
on the Flag and so on—“Shit!” hollers Maximilian at Slothrop, “Slow Crawl, Suburban
Vec
tors! whut th’ fuck we s’posed to
do
man,
swim
or some shit?”

“Uh, Myrtle . . .” Slothrop approaches gold-snooded M.M. a little deferent, “uh, do
you think you could . . .” Jesus they run through this same routine every time—doesn’t
Myrtle wish Sniveling Slothrop would cut this wishy-washy malarkey ’n’ be a
man
fer once! She lights a cigarette, lets it droop from one corner of her mouth, juts
out the opposite hip and sighs, “On the beam,” exasperated already with this creep—

And
Los!
the miracle is done, they’re now zipping along the corridor-streets of the Raketen-Stadt
like some long-necked sea monster. Little kids boil up like ants on the webby arches
of viaducts high over the city dripping stone like Spanish moss petrified in mid-collapse,
kids up over the airy railings and onto the friendly back of the sleek city-cruising
monster. They climb window to window, too full of grace ever to fall. Some of them,
naturally, are spies: that honey-curled little cutie in the blue checked pinafore
and blue knee-socks, up there under the gargoyle at the window listening in to Maximilian,
who began drinking heavily as soon as the building started to move, and is now carrying
on a long denunciation of Marcel under the thin scholarly disguise of trying to determine
if the Gallic Genius can truly be said to have any “soul.” Young lady under gargoyle
is taking it all down in shorthand. These are valuable data for the psychological
warfare effort.

For the first time now it becomes apparent that the 4 and the Father-conspiracy do
not entirely fill their world. Their struggle is not the only, or even the ultimate
one. Indeed, not only are there many
other
struggles, but there are also
spectators
, watching, as spectators will do, hundreds of thousands of them, sitting around this
dingy yellow amphitheatre, seat after seat plunging down in rows and tiers endless
miles, down to the great arena, brown-yellow lights, food scattered on the stone slopes
up higher, broken buns, peanut shells, bones, bottles half-filled with green or orange
sweet, fires in small wind-refuges, set in angles where seats have been chiseled away,
shallow depressions in the stone and a bed of cherry embers where old women are cooking
hashes of the scavenged bits and crumbles and gristly lumps of food, heating them
in thin frying pans of gray oil-water bubbling, as the faces of children gather around
to wait for food, and in the wind the dark young man, the slippery young knife who
waits for your maid outside the iron gate each Sunday, who takes her away to a park,
a stranger’s automobile and a shape of love you can never imagine, stands now with
his hair untended in the wind, his head averted from the fire, feeling the cold, the
mountain cold, at his temples and high under his jaw . . . while beside other fires
the women gossip, one craning over now and then to look miles downward at the stage,
to see if a new episode’s come on yet—crowds of students running by dark as ravens,
coats draped around shoulders, back out into a murky sector of seats which traditionally
are never entered (being reserved for the Ancestors), their voices fading still very
intense, dramatic, trying to sound good or at least acceptable. The women go on, playing
cards, smoking, eating. See if you can borrow a blanket from Rose’s fire over there,
it’s gonna be cold tonight. Hey—and a pack of Armies while you’re out—and come right
back, hear me? Of course the cigarette machine turns out to be Marcel, who else, in
another of his clever mechanical disguises, and inside one pack is a message for one
of the spectators. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want Them to know about the summer of 1945.
Meet me in the Male Transvestites’ Toilet, level L16/39C, station Metatron, quadrant
Fire, stall Malkuth. You know what time. The usual Hour. Don’t be late.”

What’s this? What’re the antagonists doing here—infiltrating their own audience? Well,
they’re not, really. It’s somebody else’s audience at the moment, and these nightly
spectacles
are
an appreciable part of the darkside-hours life of the Rocket-capital. The chances
for any paradox here, really, are less than you think.

Maximilian is way down in the bottom of the orchestra pit posing as the C-melody saxophone
player, complete with Closet Intellectual Book,
The Wisdom of the Great Kamikaze Pilots
, with illustrations by Walt Disney—screaming, hairy-nosed, front teeth in white dihedral,
slant-eyed (long, elaborate
curlicued
shapes) round black licorice dog-nosed
Japs
, zoomin’ through ev’ry page! and any time he’s not playing that saxophone, you can
be sure Maximilian will be, to the casual observer, immersed in this diffuse, though
rewarding, work. Myrtle meantime is back in the candycane control room, manning the
switchboard and ready to swoop in at any time to save the others, who are sure (through
their own folly if nothing else) to be in deep trouble soon. And Slothrop himself
lurks in the Transvestites’ Toilet, in the smoke, the crowds, the buzzing fluorescent
lights, piss hot as melted butter, making notes of all the dealing going on among
the stalls, bowls ’n’ urinals (you’ve got to look butch but not
that
butch and another thing no metal showing at any
vital spots
, she’ll knock off ten marks for every one she sees, and the only bonuses she gives
are spelled out here: blood drawn on first try, that’s an extra 20—) wondering if
the cigarette-pack message got through and if they’ll come in person or if Pop’ll
send a hit man to try for a first-round KO.

Well, there is the heart of it: the monumental yellow structure, out there in the
slum-suburban night, the never-sleeping percolation of life and enterprise through
its shell, Outside and Inside interpiercing one another too fast, too finely labyrinthine,
for either category to have much hegemony any more. The nonstop revue crosses its
stage, crowding and thinning, surprising and jerking tears in an endless ratchet:

T
HE
L
OW-
F
REQUENCY
L
ISTENER

The German U-boats communicated on a wave length of 28,000 meters, which is down around
10 kc. A half-wave antenna for that’d halfta be 9 miles high, or long, and even folded
here and there it is still some antenna. It is located at Magdeburg. So is the headquarters
of the German branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. So, for a time, is Slothrop, attempting
to get through to the Argentine anarchist U-boat, now in unknown waters. The reason
why is no longer clear to him. He was either visited again in some way by Squalidozzi,
or he came upon Squalidozzi one day by accident, or he found, in some lint-picking
attentionless search through pockets, rags or bedroll, the message he was given, back
at the green edge of Aries, at the Café l’Éclipse long ago in Geneva. All he knows
is that finding Squalidozzi, right now, is his overriding need.

The Keeper of the Antenna is a Jehovah’s witness named Rohr. He’s just out of the
Ravensbrück camp after being in since ’36 (or ’37, he can’t remember). With that much
camp time in, he’s politically reliable enough for the local G-5 to put him, nights,
in control of the network of longest wavelength in the Zone. Although this could be
accidental, more likely there is some eccentric justice lately begun to operate out
here which it would behoove Slothrop to look into. There are rumors of a War Crimes
Tribunal under way in Nürnberg. No one Slothrop has listened to is clear who’s trying
whom for what, but remember that these are mostly brains ravaged by antisocial and
mindless pleasures.

But the only people—if any—apt to be communicating these days on 28,000 meters (the
distance from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde to the Hafenstraße in Greifswald, where
Slothrop in early August may see a particular newspaper photo), except for freak Argentine
anarchists, are the undenazified Nazis still wandering around in unaccounted-for submarines
holding their own secret shipboard tribunals against enemies of the Reich. So the
closest thing in the Zone to an early Christian is put on to listen for news of unauthorized
crucifixions.

“Someone the other night was dying,” Rohr tells him, “I don’t know if he was inside
the Zone or out at sea. He wanted a priest. Should I have got on and told him about
priests? Would he’ve found any comfort in that? It’s so painful sometimes. We’re really
trying to be Christians. . . .”

“My folks were Congregationalist,” Slothrop offers, “I think.” It’s getting harder
to remember either of them, as Broderick progresses into Pernicious Pop and Nalline
into ssshhhghhh . . . (into what?
What
was that word? Whatever it is, the harder he chases, the faster it goes away).

M
OM
S
LOTHROP’S
L
ETTER TO
A
MBASSADOR
K
ENNEDY

Well
hi
Joe how’ve ya
been.
Listen: Jew-zeppy—we’re getting edgy about our youngest again. Would you try bothering
a few of those jolly old London connections just
once more?
(Promise!!) Even if it’s old news it’ll be good news for Poppy and I. I still remember
what you said when the awful word about the PT boat came in, before you knew how Jack
was. I’ll never forget your words then. It’s every parent’s dream, Joe, that it is.

Oh, and Hozay (whoops, don’t mind that, the pen just skidded as you can see! Naughty
Nalline’s on her
third
martini, we’ll have you know). Poppy and I heard your wonderful speech at the GE
plant over in Pittsfield the other week. You’re in the groove, Mister K! How true!
we’ve
got
to modernize in Massachusetts, or it’ll just keep getting worse and worse. They’re
supposed to be taking a strike vote
here
next week. Wasn’t the WLB set up to
prevent
just that? It isn’t starting to break down, is it, Joe? Sometimes, you know these
fine Boston Sundays, when the sky over the Hill is
broken
into clouds, the way white bread appears through a crust you hold at your thumbs
and split apart. . . . You know, don’t you? Golden clouds? Sometimes I think—ah, Joe,
I think they’re pieces of the Heavenly City falling down. I’m sorry—didn’t mean this
to get so gloomy all so sudden, it’s just . . . but it
isn’t
beginning to fall apart, is it, my old fellow Harvard-parent? Sometimes things aren’t
very clear, that’s all. Things
look
like they’re going against us, and though it always turns out fine at the end, and
we can always look
back
and say oh of course it
had
to happen that way, otherwise
so
-and-so wouldn’t have happened—still,
while
it’s happening, in my heart I keep getting this terrible fear, this empty place,
and it’s very hard at such times really to believe in a Plan with a shape bigger than
I can see. . . .

Oh, anyway. Grumpy old thoughts away! Shoo! Martini Number Four, comin’ up!

Jack’s a fine boy. Really I love Jack like Hogan and Tyrone, just like a son, my own
son. I even love him like I
don’t
love my sons, ha-ha! (she croaks) but then I’m a wicked old babe, you know that.
No hope for the likes of me. . . .

O
N THE
P
HRASE “
A
SS
B
ACKWARDS”

“Something I have never understood about your language, Yankee pig.” Säure has been
calling him “Yankee pig” all day now, a hilarious joke he will not leave alone, often
getting no further than “Yank—” before collapsing into some horrible twanging phthisic
wheeze of a laugh, coughing up alarming ropy lungers of many colors and marbling effects—green,
for example, old-statue green at leafy dusk.

“Sure,” replies Slothrop, “you wanna learn English, me teachee you English. Ask me
anything, kraut.” It is exactly the kind of blanket offer that’s always getting Slothrop
in trouble.