Infinite Jest (153 page)

‘But still, something about her moved you to fall madly in love. Her gratitude and
humility and acceptance and that kind of quiet dignity really horribly handic—birth-defected
people usually have.’

‘It was not mad. I had already chosen. The unclamping of the brakes of the fauteuil
and
schüssch
ing to the Autoroute—this was the love. I had chosen loving her above my lost legs
and this half a self.’

‘And she looked at your missing limbs and didn’t even see them and chose you right
back—result: passionate love.’

‘There was for this woman in the embanking no possible choosing. Without the containing
helmet all energies in her were committed to the shaping of the oral cavity in a shape
that allowed breathing, which was a task of great enormity, for her head it had also
neither muscles nor nerves. The special hat had found itself dented in upon one side,
and I had not the ability to shape my wife’s head into a shape that I could stuff
the sac of her head into the hat, and I chose to carry her over my shoulders in a
high-speed rolling to the nearest Swiss hôpital specializing in deformities of grave
nature. It was there I learned of the other troubles.’

‘I think I’d like a couple more Kahlua and milks.’

‘There was the trouble of the digestive tracking. There were seizures also. There
were progressive decays of circulation and vessel, which calls itself restenosis.
There were the more than standard accepted amounts of eyes and cavities in many different
stages of development upon different parts of the body. There were the fugue states
and rages and frequency of coma. She had wandered away from a public institution of
Swiss charitable care. Worst for choosing to love was the cerebro-and-spinal fluids
which dribbled at all times from her distending oral cavity.’

‘And but your passionate love for each other dried up her cerebro-spinal drool and
ended the seizures and there were certain hats she looked so good in it just about
drove you mad with love? Is that it?’

‘Garçon!’

‘Is the madly-in-love part coming up?’

‘Katherine, I had too believed there was no love without passion. Pleasure. This was
part of the pain of the no legs, this fear that for me there would be no passion.
The fear of the pain is many times worse than the pain of the pain, n’est ce—?’

‘Ramy I don’t think I’m like thinking this is a feel-better story at
all
.’

‘I tried to leave the soft-head and cerebro-spinally incontinent woman, m’épouse au
future, behind at the hôpital of grave nature and to wheel off into my new life of
uncaged acceptance and choice. I would roll into the fraying of battle for my despoiled
nation, for now I saw the point not of winning but of choosing merely to fight. But
I had travelled no more than several revolutions of the fauteuil when the old despair
of before choosing this no-skull creature rose up once again inside me. Within several
revolutions there was no point again and no legs, and only fear of the pain that made
me not choose. Pain rolled me backwards to this woman, my wife.’

‘You’re saying this is
love?
This isn’t love. I’ll know when it’s love because of the way it’ll
feel
. It won’t be about spinal fluid and despair believe you
me,
Bucko. It’ll be about your eyes meet across someplace and both your knees give out
and from that second forward you know you’re not going to be
alone
and in
hell
. You’re not half the guy I started to think you might have been, Ray.’

‘I had to face: I had chosen. My choice, this was love. I had chosen I think the way
out of the chains of the cage. I needed this woman. Without her to choose over myself,
there was only pain and not choosing, rolling drunkenly and making fantasies of death.’

‘This is love? It’s like you were
chained
to her. It’s like if you tried to get on with your own life the pain of the clinical
depression came back. It’s like the clinical depression was a shotgun nudging you
down the wedding aisle. Was there a wedding aisle? Could she even get down a wedding
aisle?’

‘My wife’s wedding helmet was of the finest nickel mined and molded by friends in
the nickel mines of southwest Switzerland. Each of us, we were rolled down the aisle
in special conveyings. Hers with special pans and drains, for the fluids. It was the
happiest day ever for me, since the train. The cleric asked did I choose this woman.
There was a long time of silence. My whole very being came to a knifelike point in
that instant, Katherine, my hand holding tenderly the hook of my wife.’

‘
Hook?
As in
hand-hook?
’

‘I have been knowing since the wedding night her death was coming. Her restenosis
of the heart, it is irreversible. Now my Gertraude, she has been in a comatose and
vegetating state for almost one year. This coma has no exit, it is said. The advanced
Jaarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart is said by the public-aid cardiologists of Switzerland
to be her chance for life. With it they say my wife can live for many more years in
a comatose and vegetated state.’

‘So you’re down here like pressing your case to the Jaarvik IX people at Harvard or
wherever.’

‘It is for her I betray my friends and cell, the cause of my nation, which now that
victory and independence of the neighbors is possible I am betraying it.’

‘You’re spying and betraying Switzerland to try and keep alive somebody with a hook
and spinal fluid and no skull in an irreversible coma? And I thought
I
was disturbed. You’re making me totally reorient my idea of
disturbed,
mister.’

‘I am not telling for disturbing you, poor Katherine. I am telling of pain and saving
a life, and love.’

‘Well, Ray, far be it from far for me, but that’s not love: that’s low self-esteem
and self-abuse and Settling For Less, choosing a coma over your comrades. Assuming
you’re even not totally lying to get me into the
hay
or some fucked-up disturbed sicko shit like that.’

‘This—’

‘Which I’ve got to tell you, saying I
remind
you of her isn’t exactly the way to sweep my feet off, you know what I’m saying here?’

‘This is what is hard to tell. To ask any person to see. It is no choice. It is not
choosing Gertraude over the A.F.R., my companions. Over the causes. Choosing Gertraude
to love as my wife was necessary for the others, these other choices. Without the
choice of her life there are no other choices. I tried leaving at the commencement.
I got only very few revolutions of the fauteuil.’

‘Sounds more like a
gun to your head
than a choice. If you can’t choose the other way, there’s no choice.’

‘No, but this choice, Katherine: I made it. It chains me, but the chains are of my
choice. The other chains: no. The others were the chains of not choosing.’

‘Do you have a twin that just came in and sat down just to the left of you but is
also like about one-third overlapping on you?’

‘You are merely drunk. This will happen quickly if unused to alcohol. Nausea often
accompanies this. Do not be alarmed if there is visual doubling, losing balance, and
nausea of the stomach.’

‘The price of a like complete normal human digestive tract. I used to throw up every
morning without drinking. Rain and shine both.’

‘You think there is no love without the pleasure, the no-choice compelling of passion.’

‘I appreciate the
drinks
and all, but I don’t think I’m going to like memorize a lecture on
love
from somebody who marries somebody with cerebro-fluid spewing out of their
mouth,
no offense intended.’

‘As you say. My opinions are only that the love you of this country speak of yields
none of the pleasure you seek in love. This whole idea of the pleasure and good feelings
being what to choose. To give yourself away to. That all choice for you leads there—this
pleasure of not choosing.’

‘Don’t grudge me a little feeling good, of all people, Ray, asshole, shit-puddle,
Swisshead.’

‘…’

‘Is it better to throw up right away or try to wait before you throw up, Mr. Drinking
Expert?’

‘I am thinking: what if I were to claim we might leave and I could lead you only three
streets from here and show you something with this promise: you would feel more good
feeling and pleasure than ever before for you: you would never again feel sorrow or
pity or the pain of the chains and cage of never choosing. I am thinking of this offer:
you would reply to me what?’

‘
I voot make ze hreply zat
I’ve heard that one before, asshole, and from… from guys with a little more to them
south of the waist, if you follow.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘What I’d reply is I’m a
shitty lay
. As in
sex-partner
. I’ve only ever been sexual twice, and both times it was awful, and Brad Anderson
when I called and said why didn’t you call again Brad Anderson you know what he said?
He said I was a
lousy lay
and my
snatch
was sure awful
big
for somebody with such a
little flat ass,
Brad Anderson said.’

‘No. No. You are not understanding.’

‘That’s just what
I
said.’

‘You would say No Thank You, you are saying, but this is because you would not believe
my claim.’

‘…’

‘If my claim, it was true, you would say yes, Katherine, no?’

‘…’

‘Yes?’

‘Now you’re not on your side anymore, Hal, I can see. When you’re on your back you
don’t have a shadow.’

‘…’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Yes, Mario.’

‘I’m sorry if you’re sad, Hal. You seem sad.’

‘I smoke high-resin Bob Hope in secret by myself down in the Pump Room off the secondary
maintenance tunnel. I use Visine and mint toothpaste and shower with Irish Spring
to hide it from almost everyone. Only Pemulis knows the true extent.’

‘…’

‘I’m not the one C.T. and the Moms want gone. I’m not the one they suspect. Pemulis
publicly dosed his opponent at Port Washington. It was impossible to miss. The kid
was a devout Mormon. The dose was impossible to miss. Sales of Visine bottles of pre-adolescent
urine during quarterly tests have been noted, it turns out, and classed as a Pemulis
production.’

‘Selling Visine bottles?’

‘I’d be immune to expulsion anyway, obviously, as the Moms’s relative. But I’m suspected
of nothing other than ill-considered moral paralysis out there on I. Day. My urine
and Axhandle’s urine are just to establish a context of objectivity for Pemulis’s
urine. It’s Pemulis they want. I’m almost positive they’re going to give Pemulis the
Shoe by the end of the term. I don’t know whether Pemulis knows this or not.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Normally they’re after steroids, endocrine synthetics, mild ’drines, when they test.
The O.N.A.N.T.A. guy gave indications this one’ll be a full-spectrum scan. Gas chromatography
followed by electron-bombardment, with spectrometer readings on the resultant mass-fragments.
The real McCoy. The kind the Show uses.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Mike stands there and says what if hypothetically somebody was downwind from substances
and got exposed and so on. Claimed vague memories of a poppy-seed bagel. Not at all
Pemulis’s normal rococo type of lie. This one had a kind of weary earnestness. The
guy in the blazer said he’d go ahead and give us thirty days before a full-spectrum
scan. Mike had pointed out that there was an enormous lady from
Moment
due to arrive and snuffle around, making it a really unfortunate time for any outside-chance
inadvertent scandals for anybody. It was like the guy needed hardly any prodding to
give us time to clean out the system. O.N.A.N.T.A. doesn’t want to catch anybody,
really. Good clean fun and so on and so forth.’

‘…’

‘The ingenious layer to the lie was that the guy thought the thirty days’ grace was
for Pemulis. That it was what Pemulis needed. Pemulis could pass a urine test hanging
upside down in a high wind. Guy watching or not. He has a whole unpleasant catheterization
technique you don’t want to hear about. He’s checked it. And Tenuates are apparently
the Indy-type car of ’drines, he says; his own urine can be all innocent and pale
with two days’ warning, as long as he stays off the Bob.’

‘…’

‘Booboo, the thirty days was actually for me, and Mike let me stand there with my
Unit out and not say anything while he sold the urologist land and magazine subscriptions
and Ginsu knives. He did it for me, and I’m not even the one they want.’

‘You can tell me whatever you said.’

‘What I do in secret, Boo, Mike says no more than thirty days to get it all out for
sure. Cranberry juice, Calli tea, vinegar in water. Plus or minus a couple days. The
Bob Hope I smoke and hide, Boo, it’s fat-soluble. It stays in there, in the body’s
fat.’

‘Mrs. Clarke told Bridget the human brain is high in fat, Bridget said.’

‘Mario, if I get caught. If I come up dirty-urined in front of O.N.A.N.T.A., what
could C.T. do? It’s not just that I’d lose my even year in 18’s. He’d have to give
me the Shoe if he’d brought O.N.A.N.T.A. into it. And what about Himself’s memory?
I’m directly related to Himself. Not to mention Orin. And meanwhile here’s this
Moment
lady lumbering around looking for family linen.’

‘Troeltsch says she all she wants to do is soften Orin’s profile.’

‘The hideous thing is how brightly it’d come out, if I flunk a urine. E.T.A.’ll be
publicly hurt. Hence Himself’s memory, hence Himself.’

‘…’

‘And it’d
kill
the Moms, Mario. It’d be a terrible kertwang on the Moms. Not so much the Hope. The
secrecy
of it. That I hid it from her. That she’ll feel I had to hide it from her.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Something terrible will happen if she finds out I hid it from her.’

‘Thirty days is one calendar month of Calli tea and juice, you’re saying.’