Infinite Jest (152 page)

‘Psychosis live on the radio used to read an Eve Arden beauty brochure all the time
where Eve Arden says: “The importance of a mask is to increase your circulation,”
quote.’

‘The truth is nobody can
always
tell, Boo. Some types are just too good, too complex and idiosyncratic; their lies
are too close to the truth’s heart for you to tell.’

‘I can’t ever tell. You wanted to know. You’re right. It never crosses my mind.’

‘…’

‘I’m the type that’d buy land, I think.’

‘You remember my hideous phobic thing about monsters, as a kid?’

‘Boy do I ever.’

‘Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants
or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters
might be the type of liar where there’s simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing
away.’

‘But then how do you know they’re monsters, then?’

‘That’s the monstrosity right there, Boo, I’m starting to think.’

‘Golly Ned.’

‘That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.’

‘Can I ask you how it is being in that thing?’

‘Thing?’

‘You
know
. Don’t play
dumb
and
embarrass
me.’

‘A wheelchair is a thing which: you prefer it or do not prefer, it is no distance.
Difference. You are in the chair even if you do not prefer it. So it is better to
prefer, no?’

‘I can’t believe I’m
drinking
. There’s all these people in the House they’re always worried they’re going to
drink
. I’m in there for
drugs
. I’ve never had more than a beer
ever
in my
life
. I only came in here to throw up from getting
mugged
. Some street guy was offering to be a witness and he would
not
leave me alone. I didn’t even have any
money
. I came in here to
vomit
.’

‘I know what it is you are meaning.’

‘What’s your name one more time?’

‘I call myself Rémy.’

‘This is a
beautiful thing
as Hester would say. I don’t feel horrid anymore. Ramy I feel
better
than I feel, felt in ever so I don’t know
how long
. This is like
novocaine of the soul
. I’m like: why was I spending all that time doing one-hitters when
this
is really what
I
call feeling
better
.’

‘Us, I do not take any drugs. I drink infrequently.’

‘Well you’re
making up for lost time
I have to say.’

‘When I drink I have many drinks. This is how it is for my people.’

‘My mom won’t even have it in the
house
. She said it’s what made her father drive into
concrete
and wipe out his
entire family
. Which like I’m so tired of hearing it. I came in here—what is this place?’

‘This, it is Ryle’s Inman Square Club of Jazz. My wife is dying at home in my native
province.’

‘There’s this thing in the
Big Book
they make us every Sunday we have to
drag
ourselves out of bed at the absolute crack of
dawn
and sit in a circle and read out of it and half the people can barely even
read
and it’s
excruciating
to listen to!’

‘You should make your voice lower, for in the hours of no jazz they enjoy low voices,
coming in for quiet.’

‘And there’s a thing about a car salesman trying to quit drinking, it’s about the
they call it the insanity of the first one, drink—he comes in a bar for a sandwich
and a glass of milk—are you hungry?’

‘Non.’

‘What am I saying I don’t have any
money
. I don’t even have my
purse
. This stuff makes you stupid but it makes you feel quite a bit
improved
. He wasn’t thinking of a drink and then all of a sudden he thinks of a drink. This
guy.’

‘Out of a blue place, in one flashing instant.’

‘
Exactly
. But the insanity is after all this time in
hospitals
and losing his
business
and his
wife
because of
drinking
he suddenly gets it into his head that one drink won’t hurt him if he puts it in
a glass of
milk
.’

‘Crazy in his head.’

‘So when this absolutely
reptilian
character you
saved
me from by sitting down, rolling over, whatever.
Sor
-ry. When he says can he buy me a drink the book flashes in my mind and for sort of
as it felt like a
joke
I ordered Kahlua and milk.’

‘Me, I come in for nights I am tired, after the music has packed away, for the quiet.
I use the telephone here as well, sometimes.’

‘I mean even before the mugging I was walking along soberly deciding how to kill myself,
so it seems a little silly to worry about drinking.’

‘You have a certain expression of resemblance of my wife.’

‘Your wife is
dying
. Jesus I’m sitting here
laughing
and your wife is
dying
. I think it’s that I haven’t felt
decent
in
so freaking
long, do you know what I’m saying? I’m not talking like
good,
I’m not talking like
pleasure,
I wouldn’t want to go overboard with this thing, but at least at like
zero,
even, what do they call it Feeling No Pain.’

‘I know of this meaning. I am spending a day to find someone I think my friends will
kill, all the time I am awaiting the chance to betray my friends, and I come here
and telephone to betray them and I see this bruised person who strongly resembles
my wife. I think: Rémy, it is time for many drinks.’

‘Well
I
think you’re
nice
. I think you just about saved my
life
. I’ve spent like nine weeks feeling so bad I wanted to just about
kill myself,
both getting high and not. Dr. Garton never mentioned
this
. He talked plenty about
shock
but he never even freaking
mentioned
Kahlua and milk.’

‘Katherine, I will tell you a story about feeling so bad and saving a life. I do not
know you but we are drunk together now, and will you hear this story?’

‘It’s not about Hitting Bottom ingesting any sort of Substance and trying to Surrender,
is it?’

‘My people, we do not hit the bottoms of women. I am, shall we say, Swiss. My legs,
they were lost in the teenage years being struck by a train.’

‘That must have
smarted
.’

‘I would have temptation to say you have no idea. But I am sensing you have an idea
of hurting.’

‘You have no
idea
.’

‘I am in early twenty years, without the legs. Many of my friends also: without legs.’

‘Must have been an
awful
train crash.’

‘Also my own father: dead when his Kenbeck pacemaker came within range of a misdialed
number of a cellular phone far away in Trois Rivières, in a freakish occurrence of
tragedy.’

‘My dad emotionally abandoned us and moved to Portland, which is in Oregon, with his
therapist.’

‘Also in this time, my Swiss nation, we are a strong people but not strong as a nation,
surrounded by strong nations. There is much hatred of our neighbors, and unfairness.’

‘It all started when my mom found a picture of his therapist in his wallet and goes
“What’s
that
doing in here?” ’

‘It is, for me, who I am weak, so painful to be without legs in the early twenty years.
One feels grotesque to people; one’s freedom is restricted. I have no chances now
for jobs in the mines of Switzerland.’

‘The Swiss have gold mines.’

‘As you say. And much beautiful territory, which the stronger nations at the time
of losing my legs committed paper atrocities to my nation’s land.’

‘Frucking
bastards
.’

‘It is a long story to the side of this story, but my part of the Swiss nation is
in my time of no legs invaded and despoiled by stronger and evil hated and neighboring
nations, who claim as in the
Anschluss
of Hitler that they are friends and are not invading the Swiss but conferring on
us gifts of alliance.’

‘Total
dicks
.’

‘It is to the side, but for my Swiss friends and myself without legs it is a dark
period of injustice and dishonor, and of terrible pain. Some of my friends roll themselves
off to fight against the invasion of paper, but me, I am too painful to care enough
to fight. To me, the fight seems without point: our own Swiss leaders have been subverted
to pretend the invasion is alliance; we very few legless young cannot repel an invasion;
we cannot even make our government admit that there is an invasion. I am weak and,
in pain, see all is pointless: I do not see the meaning of choosing to fight.’

‘You’re
depressed
is what you are.’

‘I see no point and do no work and belong to nothing; I am alone. I think of death.
I do nothing but frequently drink, roll around the despoiled countryside, sometimes
dodging falling projectiles of invasion, thinking of death, bemoaning the depredation
of the Swiss land, in great pain. But it is myself I bemoan. I have pain. I have no
legs.’

‘I’m Identifying every step of the way with you, Ramy. Oh
God,
what did I
say?
’

‘And us, our Swiss countryside is very hilly. The fauteuil, it is hard to push up
many hills, then one is braking with all the might to keep from flying out of control
on the downhill.’

‘Sometimes it’s like that walking, too.’

‘Katherine, I am, in English,
moribund
. I have no legs, no Swiss honor, no leaders who will fight the truth. I am not alive,
Katherine. I roll from skiing lodge to tavern, frequently drinking, alone, wishing
for my death, locked inside my pain in the heart. I wish for my death but have not
the courage to make actions to cause death. I twice try to roll over the side of a
tall Swiss hill but cannot bring myself. I curse myself for cowardice and inutile.
I roll about, hoping to be hit by a vehicle of someone else, but at the last minute
rolling out of the path of vehicles on Autoroutes, for I am unable to will my death.
The more pain in my self, the more I am inside the self and cannot will my death,
I think. I feel I am chained in a cage of the self, from the pain. Unable to care
or choose anything outside it. Unable to see anything or feel anything outside my
pain.’

‘The billowing shaped black sailing wing. I am so totally Identifying it’s not even
funny
.’

‘My story it was one day at the top of a hill I had drunkenly labored for many minutes
to roll to the crest, and looking out over the downhill slope I see a small hunched
woman in what I am thinking is a metal hat far below at the bottom, attempting the
crossing of the Swiss Provincial Autoroute at the bottom, in the middle of the Provincial
Autoroute, this woman, standing and staring in the terror at one of the hated long
and shiny many-wheeled trucks of our paper invaders, bearing down upon her at high
speeds in the hurry to come despoil part of the Swiss land.’

‘Like one of those Swiss metal helmets? Is she scrambling crazily to get out of the
way?’

‘She is standing transfixed with horror of the truck—identically as I had been motionless
and transfixed by horror inside me, unable to move, like one of the many moose of
Switzerland transfixed by the headlights of one of the many logging-trucks of Switzerland.
The sunlight is reflecting madly on her metal hat as she is shaking her head in terror
and she is clutching her—pardon me, but her female bosom, as if the heart of her would
explode from the terror.’

‘And you think, Oh
fuck me,
just great, another horrible thing I’m going to have stand here and witness and then
go feel pain over.’

‘But the great gift of this time today at the hilltop above the Provincial Autoroute
is I do not think of me. I do not know this woman or love her, but without thinking
I release my brake and I am careening down the downhill, almost wipe-outing numerous
places on the bumps and rocks of the hill’s slope, and as we say in Switzerland I
schüssch
at enough speed to reach my wife and sweep her up into the chair and roll across
the Provincial Autoroute into the embanking ahead just ahead of the nose of the truck,
which had not slowed.’

‘Hang me upside-down and fuck me in both
ears
. You pulled yourself out of a clinical depression by being a freaking
hero
.’

‘We rolled and tumbled down the embanking on the Autoroute’s distant side, causing
my chair to tip and injuring a stump of me, and knocking away her thick metal hat.’

‘You saved somebody’s freaking
life,
Ramy. I’d give my left nut for a chance to pull myself out of the shadow of the wing
that way, Ramy.’

‘You are not seeing this. It was this frozen with the terror woman, she saved my life.
For this saved my life. This moment broke my moribund chains, Katherine. In one instant
and without thought I was allowed to choose something as more important than my thinking
of my life. Her, she allowed this will without thinking. She with one blow broke the
chains of the cage of pain at my half a body and nation. When I had crawled back to
my fauteuil and placed my tipped fauteuil aright and I was again seated I realized
the pain of inside no longer pained me. I became, then, adult. I was permitted leaving
the pain of my own loss and pain at the top of Switzerland’s Mont Papineau.’

‘Because suddenly you gazed at the girl without her metal hat and felt a rush of passion
and fell madly in love enough to get married and roll together off into the s—’

‘She had no skull, this woman. Later I am learning she had been among the first Swiss
children of southwestern Switzerland to become born without a skull, from the toxicities
in association of our enemy’s invasion on paper. Without the confinement of the metal
hat the head hung from the shoulders like the half-filled balloon or empty bag, the
eyes and oral cavity greatly distended from this hanging, and sounds exiting this
cavity which were difficult to listen.’