Infinite Jest (135 page)

The addicted man rose slowly and carried the burning ashtray with him nearer to Marathe, trying to kneel. His Blue Jeans of Levi #501 were strangely torn in spots with tattered white strings which showed the pallor of the knees; the torn holes had the size and perimeter-damage of holes that Marathe recognized had been made by shotgun-blasts of the high gauge. Marathe was mentally memorizing every detail of all things, for both his reports. The addicted man kneeling before him, he leaned in closer, trying to remove something he believed was on his lip. Close in, the expression that through the veil had appeared as glaring corrected itself: the expression was more truly that the man's eyes had the vacant intensity of those who have violently died.

The man whispered: 'You real?' Marathe looked through the veil at his facial square. 'Are you real?' again the man whispered. All the time leaning more and more in, slowly.

'You're real I can tell ain't you,' the man whispered. Quickly he looked behind him at the uproaring room before leaning once more in. 'Listen then.’

Marathe kept his hands calmly in his lap, his machine pistol bolstered securely to his right stump beneath the blanket. The whispering man's searching fingers were leaving small bits of filth on the lip.

"s these poor fuckers' — the man gestured slightly with indicating the room — 'most of them ain't real. So watch your six. Most of these fuckers are—: metal people.’

'I am Swiss," Marathe experimentally said. It was the second of his lines of introduction.

'Walking around, make you think they're alive.' The addicted man had the way with subtleness of looking all around himself which Marathe associated with intelligence professionals. One of his eyes had an exploded vein within it. 'But that's just the layer,' he said. He leaned in so far Marathe could see pores through the veil. 'There's a micro-thin layer of skin. But underneath, it's metal. Heads full of parts. Under a organic layer that's micro-thin.' The eyes of men violently dead were also the eye of a fish in a vendor's crushed ice, studying nothing. The man's smell suggested livestock on a hot day, a goatish, even through the smoke of the room. Trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid was a material, M. Broullîme had lectured to pass times in long surveillances, a chemical material in the sweat of grave mental illness. Marathe, he had no trouble timing his breath so his exhalation matched the addicted man's, who leaned more in.

'There's one way to tell,' he said. 'Get right up close. Like right up flush next to: you can hear a whir. Micro-faint. This whirring. It's the processors' gears. It's their flaw. Machines always whir. They're good. They can quiet down the whir.’

'I have no six.’

'But they can't — can not — eliminate it.’

T am Swiss, seeking residential treatment with desperation.’

'Not under no micro-thin tissue-layer they can't.' If the gaze were not vacant the gaze would be grim, frightened. Marathe distantly remembered the emotion fear.

'Did you hear what she said?' the ironic man on the divan laughed. 'Potable means drinkable. It's not even the same root. Did you hear what she said?’

The man's breath, it smelled of trans-3-methyl acid as well. 'I'm clueing y'in,' he whispered. 'They're there to fool you. The real ones of us're getting fooled. Nine-nine-plus per cent of the time.' The flesh of the knees through the holes in the Blue Jeans was the white of long death. 'But you, I could tell you were real.' He indicated the veil. 'No micro-thin layer. The metal ones — have faces.' The smoke of his cigarette in the ashtray rose in a motion of corkscrewing. 'Which this is why' — feeling the lip — 'why the ones on the T or in the street — they won't let you right up close. Try it. They'll never let you right up close. It's programming. They know to look scared and — like — offended and back away and move to another seat. The real advanced ones, they'll give you change, even, to let 'em back off. Try it. Get right — up — like this — close.' Marathe sat calmly behind the veil, feeling the veil move with the man's breath, waiting patiently to inhale. The women with experiences in cults had smelled the odor of the man's trans-3 odor and relocated farther away upon the divan. The man's face smiled with one knowing side only of his mouth, acknowledging their movement away. He was so close that the nose of him touched the veil when Marathe finally inhaled. Marathe was prepared for death in all forms. The smells were trans-3-methyl-2 and of digested cheese and the under of an arm, from the facial skin. Marathe ignored impulses to impale the eyesockets with one two-finger motion. The man had his hand to his ear in a mime of to listen closely. His smile disclosed what might have once been teeth. 'Nothing,' he smiled. 'I knew. Not a sound.’

'The Swiss, we are a quiet people, and reserved. In addition, I am deformed.’

The man waved his cigarette with impatience. 'Listen up. This is why. You're how come I was here. I only thought it was the habit. They can fool you.' He scrubbed at the lip of his mouth. 'I'm here to tell you. Listen. You ain't here.’

'I have emigrated from my native Swiss.’

Still whispering: 'You ain't here. These fuckers are metal. Us — us that are real — there's not many — they're fooling us. We're all in one room. The real ones. One room all the time. Everything's pro — jected. They can do it with machines. They pro — ject. To fool us. The pictures on the walls change so's we think we're going places. Here and there, this and that. That's just they change the pro — jections. It's all the same place all the time. They fool your mind with machines to think you're moving, eating, cooking up, doing this and that.’

'I have come desperately here.’

'The real world's one room. These so-called people, so-called' — with again the flourish — 'they're everybody you know. You've met 'em before, hunnerts times, with different faces. There's only 26 total. They play different characters, that you think you know. They wear different faces with different pictures they pro — ject on the wall. You get me?’

'This Recovery House was recommended highly.’

'You follow? Count. Coincidence? There's 26 here, counting the one without feet on the stairs. Coincidence? Chance? This here's every machine that's played everbody you ever met. Are you hearin' me? They fool us. They take the machines in the back room and they — like —’

The visible door of the locked Office opened and an addicted patient emerged with a person in authority holding a clipboard. The addicted patient limped and leaned far to a side, though was attractive in the blond stereotype of the U.S.A. image-culture.

'— change them. The thin organic layers. All the different people you know. So-called. They're the same machines’

'Physically challenged foreign person with unpronounceable name!' the authority called with the clipboard.

'I am being indicated,' Marathe said, bending to release the clamps on his fauteuil's wheels.

'— why I'm in this pro — jection, to clue you. So that now you know.’

Marathe manipulated the fauteuil to the right with its trusty left wheel. 'I must be excused to plead for treatment.’

'Get right up close.’

'Good night,' over his left shoulder. The inutile woman seemed to twitch slightly in her heavy fauteuil as he passed.

'You only think you're goin' someplace!' the addicted man called, still one-half kneeling.

Marathe rolled up to the person in authority as slowly as possible, hunched deep into the sportcoat and pathetically tacking. With significance, the large and clipboarded woman seemed without faze at the veil of U.H.I.D. Marathe extended a large hand in greeting which he made tremble. 'Good night.’

The insane-smelling man on the carpet called out after: 'Make sure and pet the dogs!’

Joelle used to like to get really high and then clean. Now she was finding she just liked to clean. She dusted the top of the fiberboard dresser she and Nell Gunther shared. She dusted the oval top of the dresser's mirror's frame and cleaned off the mirror as best she could. She was using Kleenex and stale water from a glass by Kate Gompert's bed. She felt oddly averse to putting on socks and clogs and going down to the kitchen for real cleaning supplies. She could hear the noise of all the post-meeting nighttime residents and visitors and applicants down there. She could feel their voices in the floor. When the dental nightmare tore her upright awake her mouth was open to scream out, but the scream was Nell G. down in the living room, whose laugh always sounds like she's being eviscerated. Nell preempted Joelle's own scream. Then Joelle cleaned. Cleaning is maybe a form of meditation for addicts too new in recovery to sit still. The 5-Woman's scarred wood floor had so much grit all over she could sweep a pile of grit together with just an unappliquéd bumper sticker she'd won at B.Y.P. Then she could use damp Kleenex to get up most of the pile. She had only Kate G.'s little bedside lamp on, and she wasn't listening to any YYY tapes, out of consideration for Charlotte Treat, who was unwell and missed her Saturday Night Lively Mtng. on Pat's OK and was now asleep, wearing a sleep mask but not her foam earplugs. Expandable foam earplugs were issued to every new Ennet resident, for reasons the Staff said would clarify for them real quick, but Joelle hated to wear them — they shut out exterior noise, but they made your head's pulse audible, and your breath sounded like someone in a space suit — and Charlotte Treat, Kate Gompert, April Cortelyu, and the former Amy Johnson had all felt the same way. April said the foam plugs made her brain itch.

It had started with Orin Incandenza, the cleaning. When relations were strained, or she was seized with anxiety at the seriousness and possible im-permanence of the thing in the Back Bay's co-op, the getting high and cleaning became an important exercise, like creative visualization, a preview of the discipline and order with which she could survive alone if it came to that. She would get high and visualize herself solo in a dazzlingly clean space, every surface twinkling, every possession in place. She saw herself being able to pick, say, dropped popcorn up off the rug and ingest it with total confidence. An aura of steely independence surrounded her when she cleaned the co-op, even with the little whimpers and anxious moans that exited her writhing mouth when she cleaned high. The place had been provided nearly gratis by Jim, who said so little to Joelle on their first several meetings that Orin kept having to reassure her that it wasn't disapproval — Himself was missing the part of the human brain that allowed for being aware enough of other people to disapprove of them, Orin had said — or dislike. It was just how The Mad Stork was. Orin had referred to Jim as 'Himself or 'The Mad Stork' — family nicknames, both of which gave Joelle the creeps even then.

It'd been Orin who introduced her to his father's films. The Work was then so obscure not even local students of serious film knew the name. The reason Jim kept forming his own distribution companies was to ensure distribution. He didn't become notorious until after Joelle'd met him. By then she was closer to Jim than Orin had ever been, part of which caused part of the strains that kept the brownstone co-op so terribly clean.

She'd barely thought consciously of any Incandenzas for four years before Don Gately, who for some reason kept bringing them bubbling up to mind. They were the second-saddest family Joelle'd ever seen. Orin felt Jim disliked him to the precise extent that Jim was even aware of him. Orin had spoken about his family at length, usually at night. On how no amount of punting success could erase the psychic stain of basic fatherly dislike, failure to be seen or acknowledged. Orin'd had no idea how banal and average his same-sex-parent-issues were; he'd felt they were some hideous exceptional thing. Joelle'd known her mother didn't much like her from the first time her own personal Daddy'd told her he'd rather take Pokie to the pictures alone. Much of the stuff Orin said about his family was dull, gone stale from years of never daring to say it. He credited Joelle with some strange generosity for not screaming and fleeing the room when he revealed the banal stuff. Pokie had been Joelle's family nickname, though her mother'd never called her anything but Joelle. The Orin she knew first felt his mother was the family's pulse and center, a ray of light incarnate, with enough depth of love and open maternal concern to almost make up for a father who barely existed, parentally. Jim's internal life was to Orin a black hole, Orin said, his father's face any room's fifth wall. Joelle had struggled to stay awake and attentive, listening, letting Orin get the stale stuff out. Orin had no idea what his father thought or felt about anything. He thought Jim wore the opaque blank facial expression his mother in French sometimes jokingly called Le Masque. The man was so blankly and irretrievably hidden that Orin said he'd come to see him as like autistic, almost catatonic. Jim opened himself only to the mother. They all did, he said. She was there for them all, psychically. She was the family's light and pulse and the center that held tight. Joelle could yawn in bed without looking like she was yawning. The children's name for their mother was 'the Moms.' As if there were more than one of her. His younger brother was a hopeless retard, Orin had said. Orin recalled the Moms used to tell him she loved him about a hundred times a day. It nearly made up for Himself's blank stare. Orin's basic childhood memory of Jim had been of an expressionless stare from a great height. His mother had been really tall, too, for a girl. He'd said he'd found it secretly odd that none of the brothers were taller. His retarded brother was stunted to about the size of a fire hydrant, Orin reported. Joelle cleaned behind the filthy room's radiator as far as she could reach, being careful not to touch the radiator. Orin described his childhood's mother as his emotional sun. Joelle remembered her own personal Daddy's Uncle T.S. talking about how her own personal Daddy'd thought his own Momma 'Hung the God Damn Moon,' he'd said. The radiators on Ennet House's female side stayed on at all times, 24/7/365. At first Joelle had thought Mrs. Avril Incandenza's high-watt maternal love had maybe damaged Orin by bringing into sharper relief Jim's remote self-absorption, which would have looked, by comparison, like neglect or dislike. That it had maybe made Orin too emotionally dependent on his mother — why else would he have been so traumatized when a younger brother had suddenly appeared, specially challenged from birth and in need of even more maternal attention than Orin? Orin, late one night on the co-op's futon, recalled to Joelle his skulking in and dragging a wastebasket over and inverting it next to his infant brother's special crib, holding a heavy box of Quaker Oats high above his head, preparing to brain the needy infant. Joelle had gotten an A- in Developmental Psych, the semester before. And also dependent psychologically, Orin, it seemed, or even metaphysically — Orin said he'd grown up, first in a regular house in Weston and then at the Academy in Enfield, grown up dividing the human world into those who were open, readable, trustworthy, v. those so closed and hidden that you had no clue what they thought of you but could pretty damn well imagine it couldn't be anything all that marvelous or else why hide it? Orin had recounted that he'd started to see himself getting closed and blank and hidden like that, as a tennis player, toward the end of his junior career, despite all the Moms's frantic attempts to keep him from hiddenness. Joelle had thought of B.U.'s Nickerson Field's 30,000 voices' openly roared endorsement, the sound rising with the punt to a kind of amniotic pulse of pure positive noise. Versus tennis's staid and reserved applause. It had all been so easy to figure and see, then, listening, loving Orin and feeling for him, poor little rich and prodigious boy — all this was before she came to know Jim and the Work.