Gravity's Rainbow (89 page)

Low, burned-out buildings now, ash images of camouflage nets burned onto the concrete
(they had only a minute to glow, like a bürger’s silk mantle—to light this coastal
indoors, this engineers’ parlor full of stodgy shapes and neutral tones . . . didn’t
it only flare? no need to put right, nothing monitory, no new levels to be reached . . .
but who would that be, watching so civil and mild over the modeltop? face all in these
chromo sunset colors, eyes inside blackrim lenses which, like the flaring nets, now
are seen to have served as camouflage for who but the Bicycle Rider in the Sky, the
black and fatal Edwardian silhouette on the luminous breast of sky, of today’s Rocket
Noon, two circular explosions inside the rush hour, in the death-scene of the sky’s
light. How the rider twirls up there, terminal and serene. In the Tarot he is known
as The Fool, but around the Zone here they call him Slick. It’s 1945. Still early,
still innocent. Some of it is).

Charred helpless latticework: what was wooden now only settles, without strength.
Green human shapes flash in the ruins. The scale is very confusing, along here. The
troops look larger than they should. A zoo? a shooting gallery? Why, some of both.
Frau Gnahb wallows in closer to land, proceeds up the marshy shoreline at half speed.
Signs of occupation increase: lorry-parks, tents, a corral teeming with horses pied,
sorrel, snow-white, red as blood. Wild summer ducks up exploding, wet and showery,
out of green reeds—they swing aft over the boat and descend in its wake, where they
bob quacking in two-foot excursions. High in the sunlight, a white-tailed eagle is
soaring. Smooth-lipped bomb and shell craters hold blue sea water. Barracks have had
their roofs blown away: spinal and ribwise and sunwhite the bones of these creatures
that must have held in their time half the Jonahs of falling Europe. But trees, beech
and pine, have begun to grow in again where spaces were cleared and leveled for housing
or offices—up through cracks in the pavement, everywhere life may gain purchase, up
rushes green summer ’45, and the forests are still growing dense on the upland.

Passing now the great blackened remains of the Development Works, most of it strewn
at ground level. In series, some ripped and broken, others largely hidden by the dunes,
Närrisch reverently telling them one by one, come the concrete masses of the test
stands, stations of the cross, VI, V, III, IV, II, IX, VIII, I, finally the Rocket’s
own, from which it stood and flew at last, VII and X. Trees that once screened these
from the sea now are only stalks of charcoal.

Pulling around the northern curve of the peninsula, test-stand wall and earthworks
receding—moving now past Peenemünde-West, the Luftwaffe’s old territory. Far away
to starboard, the cliffs of the Greifswalder Oie shimmer through the blue haze. Concrete
launching-ramps used to test the V-1 or buzzbomb point at the sea. Runways pocked
with craters, heaped with rubble and wrecked Messerschmitts swing by, down the peninsula:
over the skull’s arc, south again toward the Peene, there—above the rolling hills,
miles off the port bow, the red brick tower of the cathedral in Wolgast, and closer
in the half-dozen stacks of the power station, smokeless over Peenemünde, have survived
the lethal compression-loads of March. . . . White swans drift in the reeds, and pheasants
fly over the tall pines inland. A truck motor snarls somewhere into life.

Frau Gnahb brings her boat around in a tight turn, through an inlet, to the dock.
The summer calm lies over everything: rolling-stock inert on its tracks, one soldier
sitting against an orange-topped oil drum trying to play an accordion. Maybe only
fooling around. Otto lets go of his chorus girl’s hand. His mother cuts the engines,
and he steps broadly to the dock and jogs along, making fast. Then there’s a brief
pause: Diesel fumes, marsh birds, quiet idleness. . . .

Somebody’s staff car, racketing around the corner of a cargo shed, slides to a stop,
bouncing forth out of its rear door a major even fatter than Duane Marvy, but with
a kindlier and dimly Oriental face. Gray hair like sheep’s wool comes twisting down
all around his head. “Ah! von Göll!” arms outstretched, wrinkled eyes shiny with—is
it real tears? “von Göll, my dear friend!”

“Major Zhdaev,” Springer nods ambling over the brow, as behind the major now this
truckload of troops in fatigues seems to be pulling up here, kind of odd they should
be toting those submachine guns and carbines just for some stevedoring. . . .

Right. Before anyone can move, they’ve leaped out and made a cordon around Zhdaev
and the Springer, pieces at the ready. “Do not be alarmed,” Zhdaev waving and beaming,
strolling backward to the car with his arm around the Springer, “we are detaining
your friend for a bit. You may proceed with your work and go. We’ll see that he gets
safely back to Swinemünde.”

“What the devil,” Frau Gnahb comes growling out of the pilot house. Haftung shows
up, twitching, putting hands in various pockets and taking them out again: “Who are
they arresting? What about my contract? Will anything happen to us?” The staff car
pulls away. Enlisted men begin filing on board.

“Shit,” ponders Närrisch.

“You think it’s a bust?”

“I think Tchitcherine is responding with interest. Just as you said.”

“Aw, now—”

“No, no,” hand on sleeve, “he’s right. You’re harmless.”

“Thanks.”

“I warned him, but he laughed. ‘Another leap, Närrisch. I have to keep leaping, don’t
I?’”

“Well what do you want to do now, cut him loose?”

There is some excitement amidships. The Russians have thrown back a tarp to reveal
the chimps, who are covered with vomit, and have also broken into the vodka. Haftung
blinks and shudders. Wolfgang is on his back, sucking at a gurgling bottle he is clutching
with his feet. Some of the chimps are docile, others are looking for a fight.

“Somehow . . .” Slothrop
does
wish the man would quit talking this way, “I owe him—
that
much.”

“Well I don’t,” Slothrop dodging a sudden plume of yellow chimpanzee vomit. “He ought
to be able to take care of himself.”

“His talk’s grandiose enough. But he’s not paranoid
in his heart
—in this line of work, that’s a disaster.”

One of the chimps now bites a Soviet corporal in the leg. The corporal screams, unslinging
his Tokarev and firing from the hip, by which time the chimp has leaped for a halyard.
A dozen more of the critters, many carrying vodka bottles, head en masse for the gangplank.
“Don’t let them get away,” Haftung hollers. The trombone player sticks his head sleepily
out a hatch to ask what’s happening and has his face walked over by three sets of
pink-soled feet before grasping the situation. Girls, spangles aflame in the afternoon
sun, feathers all quivering, are being chased forward and aft by drooling Red Army
personnel. Frau Gnahb pulls on her steam whistle, thereby spooking the rest of the
chimps, who join the stampede to shore. “Catch them,” Haftung pleads, “somebody.”
Slothrop finds himself between Otto and Närrisch, being pushed ashore over the brow
by soldiers chasing after chimps or girls, or trying to wrangle the cargo ashore.
Among splashes, cursing, and girlish shrieks from the other side of the boat, chorus
girls and musicians keep appearing and wandering back and forth. It is difficult to
perceive just what the fuck is happening here.

“Listen.” Frau Gnahb leaning over the side.

Slothrop notices a canny squint. “You have a plan.”

“You want to pull a diversionary feint.”

“What? What?”

“Chimps, musicians, dancing girls. Decoys all over. While the three of
you
sneak in and grab Der Springer.”

“We can hide,” Närrisch looking around gangster-eyed. “Nobody’ll notice. Ja, ja! The
boat can take off, as if
we
were
on board!
”

“Not me,” sez Slothrop.

“Ha! Ha!” sez Frau Gnahb.

“Ha! Ha!” sez Närrisch.

“I’ll lie to at the northeast corner,” this madmother continues, “in the channel between
the little island and that triangular part that’s built up on the foreshore.”

“Test Stand X.”

“Catchy name. I think there’ll be enough of a tide by then. Light a fire. Otto! Cast
me off now.”

“Zu Befehl, Mutti!”

Slothrop and Närrisch go dash behind a cargo shed, find a boxcar, and hide inside.
Nobody notices. Chimps are running by in several directions. The soldiers chasing
them seem by now to be really pissed off. Someplace the clarinet player is blowing
scales on his instrument. The boat’s motor sputters up into a growl, and screws go
churning away. A while later, Otto and his girl come climb in the boxcar, out of breath.

“Well, Närrisch,” Slothrop might as well ask, “where’d they take him, do you think?
eh?”

“From what I could see, Block Four and that whole complex to the south were deserted.
My guess is the assembly building near Test Stand VII. Under that big ellipse. There
are underground tunnels and rooms—ideal for a headquarters. Looks like most of it
survived pretty well, even though Rossokovsky had orders to level the place.”

“You got a piece?” Närrisch shakes his head no. “Me neither. What kind of a black-market
operator are you, anyway? no piece.”

“I used to be in inertial guidance. You expect me to revert?”

“W-well what are we supposed to use, then? Our wits?”

Out the slats of the car, the sky is darkening, the clouds turning orange, tangerine,
tropical. Otto and his girl are murmuring in one corner. “Scrub that one,” Närrisch
with sour mouth. “Five minutes away from his mother, he’s a Casanova.”

Otto is earnestly explaining his views on the Mother Conspiracy. It’s not often a
sympathetic girl will listen. The Mothers get together once a year, in secret, at
these giant conventions, and exchange information. Recipes, games, key phrases to
use on their children. “What did yours use to say when she wanted to make you feel
guilty?”

“‘I’ve worked my fingers to the bone!’” sez the girl.

“Right! And she used to cook those horrible casseroles, w-with the potatoes, and onions—”

“And ham! Little pieces of ham—”

“You see, you see? That
can’t
be accidental! They have a contest, for Mother of the Year, breast-feeding, diaper-changing,
they
time
them, casserole competitions, ja—then, toward the end, they actually begin to use
the
children.
The State Prosecutor comes out on stage. ‘In a moment, Albrecht, we are going to
bring your mother on. Here is a Luger, fully loaded. The State will guarantee you
absolute immunity from prosecution. Do whatever you wish to do—anything at all. Good
luck, my boy.’ The pistols are loaded with blanks, natürlich, but the unfortunate
child does not know this. Only the mothers who get shot at qualify for the finals.
Here they bring in psychiatrists, and judges sit with stopwatches to see how quickly
the children will crack. ‘Now then, Olga, wasn’t it
nice
of Mutti to break up your affair with that long-haired poet?’ ‘We understand your
mother and you are, ah,
quite close
, Hermann. Remember the time she caught you
masturbating into her glove
? Eh?’ Hospital attendants stand by to drag the children off, drooling, screaming,
having clonic convulsions. Finally there is only one Mother left on stage. They put
the traditional flowered hat on her head, and hand her the orb and scepter, which
in this case are a gilded pot roast and a whip, and the orchestra plays
Tristan und Isolde.
”

• • • • • • •

They come out into the last of the twilight. Just a sleepy summer evening in Peenemünde.
A flight of ducks passes overhead, going west. No Russians around. A single bulb burns
over the entrance to the cargo shed. Otto and his girl wander hand in hand along the
dock. An ape comes scampering up to take Otto’s free hand. To north and south the
Baltic keeps unrolling low white waves. “What’s happening,” asks the clarinet player.
“Have a banana,” tuba player with his mouth full has a good-sized bunch stowed in
the bell of his ax.

Night is down by the time they get started. They head inland, Springer’s crashout
party, along the railroad tracks. Pine trees tower to either side of the cinder embankment.
Ahead fat pinto rabbits scurry, only their white patches visible, no reason to suppose
rabbits is what they are. Otto’s friend Hilde comes gracefully down out of the woods
with his cap that she’s filled to the brim with round berries, dusty blue, sweet.
The musicians are packing vodka bottles in every available pocket. That’s tonight’s
meal, and Hilde kneeling alone at the berry bushes has whispered grace for them all.
In the marshes now you can hear the first peepers start up, and the high-frequency
squeals of a bat out hunting, and some wind in the upper trees. Also, from farther
away, a shot or two.

“Are they firing at my apes?” Haftung chatters. “That’s 2000 marks apiece. How am
I ever going to get that back?”

A family of mice go dashing across the tracks, and right over Slothrop’s feet. “I
was expecting just a big cemetery. I guess not.”

“When we came we only cleared out what we needed to,” Närrisch recalls. “Most of it
stayed—the forest, the life . . . there are probably still deer up in there, someplace.
Big fellows with dark antlers. And the birds—snipes, coots, wild geese—the noise from
the testing drove them out to sea, but they’d always come back in when it was quiet
again.”

Before they reach even the airfield they have to scatter twice into the woods, first
for a security patrol, then for a steam-engine come puffing up from Peenemünde-East,
its headlight cutting through a fine nighthaze, some troops with automatics hanging
on to steps and ladders. Steel grinding and creaking by in the night, the men shooting
the breeze as they pass, no feeling of tension to it. “They might be after us anyway,”
Närrisch whispers. “Come on.”