Authors: Thomas Pynchon
“The more V-2s over there waiting to be fired over here,” Captain Prentice said, “obviously,
the better his chances of catching one. Of course you can’t say he’s not paying a
minimum dues. But aren’t we all.”
“Well,” Roger nodding when she told him later, eyes out of focus, considering this,
“it’s the damned Calvinist insanity again. Payment. Why must they always put it in
terms of exchange? What’s Prentice want, another kind of Beveridge Proposal or something?
Assign everyone a Bitterness Quotient! lovely—up before the Evaluation Board, so many
points earned for being Jewish, in a concentration camp, missing limbs or vital organs,
losing a wife, a lover, a close friend—”
“I knew you’d be angry,” she murmured.
“I’m not angry. No. He’s right. It is cheap. All right, but what does he want then—”
stalking now this stuffed, dim little parlor, hung about with rigid portraits of favorite
gun dogs at point in fields that never existed save in certain fantasies about death,
leas more golden as their linseed oil ages, even more autumnal, necropolitical, than
prewar hopes—for an end to all change, for a long static afternoon and the grouse
forever in blurred takeoff, the sights taking their lead aslant purple hills to pallid
sky, the good dog alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion over his head always
just about to come—these hopes so patently, defenselessly there that Roger even at
his most cheaply nihilistic couldn’t quite bring himself to take the pictures down,
turn them to the wallpaper—“what do you all expect from me, working day in day out
among raving lunatics,” Jessica sighing oh gosh, curling her pretty legs up into the
chair, “they believe in survival after death, communication mind-to-mind, prophesying,
clairvoyance, teleportation—they
believe,
Jess! and—and—” something is blocking his speech. She forgets her annoyance, comes
up out of the fat paisley chair to hold him, and
how does she know,
warm-skirted thighs and mons pushing close to heat and rouse his cock, losing the
last of her lipstick across his shirt, muscles, touches, skins confused, high, blooded—know
so exactly what Roger meant to say?
Mind-to-mind,
tonight up late at the window while he sleeps, lighting another precious cigarette
from the coal of the last, filling with a need to cry because she can see so plainly
her limits, knows she can never protect him as much as she must—from what may come
out of the sky, from what he couldn’t confess that day (creaking snow lanes, arcades
of the ice-bearded and bowing trees . . . the wind shook down crystals of snow: purple
and orange creatures blooming on her long lashes), and from Mr. Pointsman, and from
Pointsman’s . . . his . . . a bleakness whenever she meets him. Scientist-neutrality.
Hands that—she shivers. There are chances now for enemy shapes out of the snow and
stillness. She drops the blackout curtain. Hands that could as well torture people
as dogs and never feel their pain . . .
A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight’s traffic whispering in the yards
and lanes. A motorcycle out on the trunk road, snarling cocky as a fighter plane,
bypasses the village, heading up to London. The great balloons drift in the sky, pearl-grown,
and the air is so still that this morning’s brief snow still clings to the steel cables,
white goes twisting peppermint-stick down thousands of feet of night. And the people
who might have been asleep in the empty houses here, people blown away, some already
forever . . . are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night,
of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of sheep huddled so
vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the Star’s awful radiance? or of
songs so funny, so lovely or true, that they can’t be remembered on waking . . . dreams
of peacetime. . . .
“What was it like? Before the war?” She knows she was alive then, a child, but it’s
not what she means. Wireless, staticky Frank Bridge Variations a hairbrush for the
tangled brain over the BBC Home Service, bottle of Montrachet, a gift from Pirate,
cooling at the kitchen window.
“Well, now,” in his cracked old curmudgeon’s voice, palsied hand reaching out to squeeze
her breast in the nastiest way he knows, “girly, it depends
which
war you
mean,
” and here it comes, ugh, ugh, drool welling at the corner of his lower lip and over
and down in a silver string, he’s so clever, he’s practiced all these disgusting little—
“Don’t be ridic, I’m serious, Roger. I don’t remember.” Watches dimples come up either
side of his mouth as he considers this, smiling at her in an odd way.
It’ll be like this when I’m thirty
. . . flash of several children, a garden, a window, voices
Mummy, what’s
. . . cucumbers and brown onions on a chopping board, wild carrot blossoms sprinkling
with brilliant yellow a reach of deep, very green lawn and his voice—
“All
I
remember is that it was silly. Just overwhelmingly silly. Nothing happened. Oh, Edward
VIII abdicated. He fell in love with—”
“I know that, I can read magazines. But what was it
like?
”
“Just . . . just damned silly, that’s all. Worrying about things that don’t—Jess,
can’t you really remember?”
Games, pinafores, girl friends, a black alley kitten with white little feet, holidays
all the family by the sea, brine, frying fish, donkey rides, peach taffeta, a boy
named Robin . . .
“Nothing that’s really gone, that I can’t ever find again.”
“Oh. Whereas
my
memories—”
“Yes?” They both smile.
“One took lots of aspirin. One was drinking or drunk much of the time. One was concerned
about getting one’s lounge suits to fit properly. One despised the upper classes but
tried desperately to behave like them. . . .”
“And one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way—” Jessica breaking down in a giggle as he
reaches for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can’t bear to be tickled
in. She hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back
of the sofa but making a nice recovery, and by now she’s ticklish all over, he can
grab an ankle, elbow—
But a rocket has suddenly struck. A terrific blast quite close beyond the village:
the entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed—the casement window blown inward,
rebounding with a wood squeak to slam again as all the house still shudders.
Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible
train rushes away close over the rooftop. . . .
They sit still as the painted dogs now, silent, oddly unable to touch. Death has come
in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says
try to tickle me.
• • • • • • •
(1)
TDY Abreaction Ward
St. Veronica’s Hospital
Bonechapel Gate, E1
London, England
Winter, 1944
The Kenosha Kid
General Delivery
Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Dear Sir:
Did I ever bother you,
ever
, for anything, in your life?
Yours truly,
Lt. Tyrone Slothrop
General Delivery
Kenosha, Wisc., U.S.A.
few days later
Tyrone Slothrop, Esq.
TDY Abreaction Ward
St. Veronica’s Hospital
Bonechapel Gate, E1
London, England
Dear Mr. Slothrop:
You never did.
The Kenosha Kid
(2) Smartass youth: Aw, I did all them old-fashioned dances, I did the “Charleston,”
a-and the “Big Apple,” too!
Old veteran hoofer: Bet you never did the “Kenosha,” kid!
(2.1) S.Y.: Shucks, I did all them dances, I did the “Castle Walk,” and I did the
“Lindy,” too!
O.V.H.: Bet you never did the “Kenosha Kid.”
(3) Minor employee: Well, he has been avoiding me, and I thought it might be because
of the Slothrop Affair. If he somehow held me responsible—
Superior (haughtily): You! never did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant that
you
. . .
(3.1) Superior (incredulously): You? Never! Did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant
that
you
. . .?
(4) And at the end of the mighty day in which he gave us in fiery letters across the
sky all the words we’d ever need, words we today enjoy, and fill our dictionaries
with, the meek voice of little Tyrone Slothrop, celebrated ever after in tradition
and song, ventured to filter upward to the Kid’s attention: “You never did ‘
the,
’ Kenosha Kid!”
These changes on the text “You never did the Kenosha Kid” are occupying Slothrop’s
awareness as the doctor leans in out of the white overhead to wake him and begin the
session. The needle slips without pain into the vein just outboard of the hollow in
the crook of his elbow: 10% Sodium Amytal, one cc at a time, as needed.
(5) Maybe you did fool the Philadelphia, rag the Rochester, josh the Joliet. But you
never did the Kenosha kid.
(6) (The day of the Ascent and sacrifice. A nation-wide observance. Fats searing,
blood dripping and burning to a salty brown . . .) You did the Charlottesville shoat,
check, the Forest Hills foal, check. (Fading now . . .) The Laredo lamb. Check. Oh-oh.
Wait. What’s this, Slothrop? You never did the Kenosha kid. Snap to, Slothrop.
Got a hardon in my fist,
Don’t be pissed,
Re-enlist—
Snap—to, Slothrop!
Jackson, I don’t give a fuck,
Just give me my “ruptured duck!”
Snap—to, Slothrop!
No one here can love or comprehend me,
They just look for someplace else to send . . . me . . .
Tap my head and mike my brain,
Stick that needle in my vein,
Slothrop, snap to!
PISCES: We want to talk some more about Boston today, Slothrop. You recall that we
were talking last time about the Negroes, in Roxbury. Now we know it’s not all that
comfortable for you, but do try, won’t you. Now—where are you, Slothrop? Can you see
anything?
Slothrop: Well no, not
see
exactly . . .
Roaring in by elevated subway, only in Boston, steel and a carbon shroud over the
ancient bricks—
Rhy-thm’s got me,
Oh baby dat swing, swing, swing!
Yeah de rhythm got me
Just a-thinkin’ that whole-wide-world-can-sing,
Well I never ever heard-it, sound-so-sweet,
Even down around the corner-on, Ba-sin Street,
As now dat de rhythm’s got me, chillun let’s
Swing, swing, swing,
Come on . . . chillun, let’s . . . swing!
Black faces, white tablecloth, gleaming
very sharp knives
lined up by the saucers . . . tobacco and “gage” smoke richly blended, eye-reddening
and tart as wine, yowzah gwine smoke a little ob dis hyah sheeit gib de wrinkles in
mah
brain
a process! straighten ’em all raht out, sho nuf!
PISCES: That was “sho nuf,” Slothrop?
Slothrop: Come on you guys . . . don’t make it too . . .
White college boys, hollering requests to the “combo” up on the stand. Eastern prep-school
voices, pronouncing
asshole
with a certain sphinctering of the lips so it comes out
ehisshehwle
. . . they reel, they roister. Aspidistras, giant philodendrons, green broad leaves
and jungle palms go hanging into the dimness . . . two bartenders, a very fair West
Indian, slight, with a mustache, and his running-mate black as a hand in an evening
glove, are moving endlessly in front of the deep, the oceanic mirror that swallows
most of the room into metal shadows . . . the hundred bottles hold their light only
briefly before it flows away into the mirror . . . even when someone bends to light
a cigarette, the flame reflects back in there only as dark, sunset orange. Slothrop
can’t even see his own white face. A woman turns to look at him from a table. Her
eyes tell him, in the instant, what he is. The mouth harp in his pocket reverts to
brass inertia. A weight. A jive accessory. But he packs it everywhere he goes.
Upstairs in the men’s room at the Roseland Ballroom he swoons kneeling over a toilet
bowl, vomiting beer, hamburgers, homefries, chef’s salad with French dressing, half
a bottle of Moxie, after-dinner mints, a Clark bar, a pound of salted peanuts, and
the cherry from some Radcliffe girl’s old-fashioned. With no warning, as tears stream
out his eyes, PLOP goes the harp into the,
aagghh,
the loathsome
toilet!
Immediate little bubbles slide up its bright flanks, up brown wood surfaces, some
varnished some lip-worn, these fine silver seeds stripping loose along the harp’s
descent toward stone-white cervix and into lower night. . . . Someday the U.S. Army
will provide him with shirts whose pockets he can button. But in these prewar days
he can rely only on the starch in his snow-white Arrow to hold the pocket stuck together
enough to keep objects from . . . But no, no, fool, the harp
has
fallen, remember? the low reeds singing an instant on striking porcelain (it’s raining
against a window somewhere, and outside on top of a sheet-metal vent on the roof:
cold Boston rain) then quenched in the water streaked with the last bile-brown coils
of his vomit. There’s no calling it back. Either he lets the harp go, his silver chances
of song, or he has to follow.
Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather seat. The Negroes
all over wasted Roxbury wait. Follow? “Cherokee” comes wailing up from the dance floor
below, over the hi-hat, the string bass, the thousand sets of feet where moving rose
lights suggest not pale Harvard boys and their dates, but a lotta dolled-up redskins.
The song playing is one more lie about white crimes. But more musicians have floundered
in the channel to “Cherokee” than have got through from end to end. All those long,
long notes . . . what’re they up to, all that time to do something inside of? is it
an Indian spirit plot? Down in New York, drive fast maybe get there for the last set—on
7th Ave., between 139th and 140th, tonight, “Yardbird” Parker is finding out how he
can use the notes at the higher ends of these very chords to break up the melody into
have
mercy what is it a fucking machine gun or something man he must be out of his
mind
32nd notes demisemiquavers say it very (demisemiquaver) fast in a Munchkin voice
if you can dig
that
coming out of Dan Wall’s Chili House and down the street—shit, out in all kinds of
streets (his trip, by ’39, well begun: down inside his most affirmative solos honks
already the idle, amused dum-de-dumming of old Mister fucking Death he self) out over
the airwaves, into the society gigs, someday as far as what seeps out hidden speakers
in the city elevators and in all the markets, his bird’s singing, to gainsay the Man’s
lullabies, to subvert the groggy wash of the endlessly, gutlessly overdubbed strings. . . .
So that prophecy, even up here on rainy Massachusetts Avenue, is beginning these days
to work itself out in “Cherokee,” the saxes downstairs getting now into some, oh really
weird shit. . . .