Authors: Thomas Pynchon
“Just you and me, podner?” sez Bodine. “Ain’t that kind of cutting it a little close?”
“Listen,” Roger chuckling unhealthily at what’s also just occurred to him, “we can’t
even bring those big rubber cocks along. Tonite, we’re going to have to use our
wits!
”
“Tell you what, I’ll just send a motorcycle out to Putzi’s, round us up a goon squad,
and—”
“You know what? You’ve lost your sense of adventure. Yeh. You didn’t use to be like
this, you know.”
“Look old buddy,” pronouncing it in Navy Dialect: budd
ih
, “c’mon, budd
ih
. Putcherself in my shoes.”
“I might, if they weren’t . . .
that. . .
shade of yellow—”
“Just a humble guy,” the swarthy doughboy of the deep scratching in his groin after
an elusive crab with a horn finger, rippling the ballooning pleats and fabric of his
trousers, “just a freckleface kid from Albert Lea, Minnesota, down there on Route
69 where the speed limit’s lickety-split all night long, just tryin’ t’ make it in
the Zone here, kind of a freckleface kid used a safety pin through a cork for a catwhisker
and stayed up listened to the voices coast to coast before I was 10 and none of them
ever recommended gettin’ into any of them
gang wars
, budd
ih.
Be glad you’re still so fuckin’ naïve, Rog, wait’ll you see your first European-gangster
hit, they like to use 3 rounds: head, stomach, and heart. You dig that
stomach?
Over here stomach’s no second-class organ, podner ’n’ that’s a good autumn kind of
thought to keep in mind.”
“Bodine, didn’t you desert?
That’s
a death-sentence, isn’t it?”
“Shit, I can square
that.
But I’m only a cog. Don’t go thinking I know everything. All I know is my trade.
I can show you how to wash coke and assay it, I can feel a gem and tell you from the
temperature if it’s a fake—the fake won’t suck as much heat from your body, ‘glass
is a reluctant vampire,’ ancient dealers’ saying, a-and I can spot funny-money easy
as E on an eye chart, I got one of the best visual memories in the Zone—” So, Roger
drags him off, monologuing, in his zoot suit, to the Krupp wingding.
Coming in the door, first thing Bodine notices is this string quartet that’s playing
tonight. The second violin happens to be Gustav Schlabone, Säure Bummer’s frequent
unwelcome doping partner, “Captain Horror,” as he is affectionately but not inaccurately
known around Der Platz—and playing viola is Gustav’s accomplice in suicidally depressing
everybody inside 100 meters’ radius wherever they drop in (who’s that tapping and
giggling at
your
door, Fred and Phyllis?), André Omnopon, of the feathery Rilke mustaches and Porky
Pig tattoo on stomach (which is becoming the “hep” thing lately: even back in the
Zone of the Interior the American subdebs all think it’s swoony). Gustav and André
are the Inner Voices tonight. Which is especially odd because on the program is the
suppressed quartet from the Haydn Op. 76, the so-called “Kazoo” Quartet in G-Flat
Minor, which gets its name from the
Largo, cantabile e mesto
movement, in which the Inner Voices are called to play kazoos instead of their usual
instruments, creating problems of dynamics for cello and first violin that are unique
in the literature. “You actually need to shift in places from a spiccato to a détaché,”
Bodine rapidly talking a Corporate Wife of some sort across the room toward the free-lunch
table piled with lobster hors d’oeuvres and capon sandwiches—“less bow, higher up
you understand, soften it—then there’s also about a thousand ppp-to-fff blasts, but
only the one, the notorious One, going the other way. . . .” Indeed, one reason for
the work’s suppression is this subversive use of sudden fff quieting to ppp. It’s
the touch of the wandering sound-shadow, the Brennschluss of the Sun. They don’t want
you listening to too much of that stuff—at least not the way Haydn presents it (a
strange lapse in the revered composer’s behavior): cello, violin, alto and treble
kazoos all rollicking along in a tune sounds like a song from the movie
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, “You Should See Me Dance the Polka,” when suddenly in the middle of an odd bar the
kazoos
just stop completely
, and the Outer Voices fall to plucking a non-melody that tradition sez represents
two 18th-century Village Idiots vibrating their lower lips. At each other. It goes
on for 20, 40 bars, this feeb’s pizzicato, middle-line Kruppsters creak in the bowlegged
velvet chairs, bibuhbuhbibuhbuh this does not sound like
Haydn
, Mutti! Reps from ICI and GE angle their heads trying to read in the candlelight
the little programs lovingly hand-lettered by Utgarthaloki’s partner in life,
Frau
Utgarthaloki, nobody is certain what her first name is (which is ever so much help
to Stefan because it keeps them all on the defensive with her). She is a blonde image
of your mother dead: if you have ever seen her travestied in beaten gold, the cheeks
curving too far, deformed, the eyebrows too dark and whites too white, some zero indifference
that in the end is truly evil in the way They’ve distorted her face, then you know
the look: Nalline Slothrop just before her first martini is right here, in spirit,
at this Kruppfest. So is her son Tyrone, but only because by now—early Virgo—he has
become one plucked albatross. Plucked, hell—
stripped.
Scattered all over the Zone. It’s doubtful if he can ever be “found” again, in the
conventional sense of “positively identified and detained.” Only feathers . . . redundant
or regenerable organs, “which we would be tempted to classify under the ‘Hydra-Phänomen’
were it not for the complete absence of hostility. . . . “—Natasha Raum, “Regions
of Indeterminacy in Albatross Anatomy,”
Proceedings of the International Society of Confessors to an Enthusiasm for Albatross
Nosology
, Winter 1936, great little magazine, they actually sent a correspondent to
Spain
that winter, to cover that, there are issues devoted entirely to analyses of world
economics, all clearly relevant to problems of Albatross Nosology—does so-called “Night
Worm” belong among the Pseudo-Goldstrassian Group, or is it properly considered—indications
being almost identical—a more insidious form of Mopp’s Hebdomeriasis?
Well, if the Counterforce knew better what those categories concealed, they might
be in a better position to disarm, de-penis and dismantle the Man. But they don’t.
Actually they do, but they don’t admit it. Sad but true. They are as schizoid, as
double-minded in the massive presence of money, as any of the rest of us, and that’s
the hard fact. The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem
is a white albatross, each local rep has a cover known as the Ego, and their mission
in this world is Bad Shit. We do know what’s going on, and we let it go on. As long
as we can see them, stare at them, those massively moneyed, once in a while. As long
as they allow us a glimpse, however rarely. We need that. And how they know it—how
often, under what conditions. . . . We ought to be seeing much popular-magazine coverage
on the order of The Night Rog and Beaver Fought Over Jessica While She Cried in Krupp’s
Arms, and drool over every blurry photo—
Roger must have been dreaming for a minute here of the sweaty evenings of Thermidor:
the failed Counterforce, the glamorous ex-rebels, half-suspected but still enjoying
official immunity and sly love, camera-worthy wherever they carry on . . . doomed
pet freaks.
They will use us. We will help legitimize Them, though They don’t need it really,
it’s another dividend for Them, nice but not critical. . . .
Oh yes, isn’t that
exactly
what They’ll do. Bringing Roger now, at a less than appropriate time and place here
in the bosom of the Opposition, while his life’s first authentic love is squirming
only to get home and take another wad of Jeremy’s sperm so they’ll make their day’s
quota—in the middle of all that he has to walk (
ow
, fuck) right into the interesting question, which is worse: living on as Their pet,
or death? It is not a question he has ever imagined himself asking seriously. It has
come by surprise, but there’s no sending it away now, he really does have to decide,
and soon enough, plausibly soon, to feel the terror in his bowels. Terror he cannot
think away. He has to choose between his life and his death. Letting it sit for a
while is no compromise, but a decision to live, on Their terms. . . .
The viola is a ghost, grainy-brown, translucent, sighing in and out of the other Voices.
Dynamic shifts abound. Imperceptible lifts, platooning notes together or preparing
for changes in loudness, what the Germans call “breath-pauses,” skitter among the
phrases. Perhaps tonight it is due to the playing of Gustav and André, but after a
while the listener starts actually hearing the pauses instead of the notes—his ear
gets tickled the way your eye does staring at a recco map until bomb craters flip
inside out to become muffins risen above the tin, or ridges fold to valleys, sea and
land flicker across quicksilver edges—so the silences dance in this quartet. A-and
wait’ll those
kazoos
come on!
That’s the background music for what is to transpire. The plot against Roger has been
formulated with shivering and giddy glee. Seaman Bodine is an unexpected bonus. Going
in to dinner becomes a priestly procession, full of secret gestures and understandings.
It is a very elaborate meal, according to the menu, full of relevés, poissons, entremets.
“What’s this ‘Überraschungbraten’ here?” Seaman Bodine asks righthand dinner companion
Constance Flamp, loose-khakied newshound and toughtalkin’ sweetheart of ev’ry GI from
Iwo to Saint-Lô.
“Why, just what it sez, Boats,” replies “Commando Connie,” “that’s German for ‘surprise
roast.’”
“I’m hep,” sez Bodine. She has—maybe not meaning to—gestured with her eyes—perhaps,
Pointsman, there is such a thing as the kindness-reflex (how many young men has she
seen go down since ’42?) that now and then, also beyond the Zero, survives extinction. . . .
Bodine looks down at the far end of the table, past corporate teeth and polished fingernails,
past heavy monogrammed eating-tools, and for the first time notices a stone barbecue
pit, with two black iron hand-operated spits. Servants in their prewar livery are
busy layering scrap paper (old SHAEF directives, mostly), kindling, quartered pine
logs, and coal, luscious fist-sized raven chunks of the kind that once left bodies
up and down the sides of the canals, once, during the Inflation, when it was actually
held that mortally dear, imagine. . . . At the edge of the pit, with Justus about
to light the taper, as Gretchen daintily laces the fuel with GI xylene from down in
the dockyards, Seaman Bodine observes Roger’s head, being held by four or six hands
upside down, the lips being torn away from the teeth and the high gums already draining
white as a skull, while one of the maids, a classic satin-and-lace, impish, torturable
young maid, brushes the teeth with American toothpaste, carefully scrubbing away the
nicotine stains and tartar.
Roger’s eyes are so hurt and pleading. . . .
All around, guests are whispering. “How quaint, Stefan’s even thought of head cheese!”
“Oh, no, it’s
another
part
I’m
waiting to get my teeth in . . .” giggles, heavy breathing, and what’s that pair
of very blue peg pants all ripped . . . and what’s this staining the jacket, and what,
up on the spit, reddening to a fat-glazed crust, is turning, whose face is about to
come rotating around, why it’s—
“No ketchup, no ketchup,” the hirsute bluejacket searching agitatedly among the cruets
and salvers, “seems to be no . . . what th’ fuck kind of a place is this,
Rog
,” yelling down slantwise across seven enemy faces, “hey, budd
ih
you find any
ketchup
down there?”
Ketchup’s a code word, okay—
“Odd,” replies Roger, who clearly has seen exactly the same thing down at the pit,
“I was just about to ask
you
the same question!”
They are grinning at each other like fools. Their auras, for the record, are green.
No shit. Not since winter of ’42, in convoy in a North Atlantic gale, with accidental
tons of loose 5-inch ammo rolling all over the ship, the German wolf pack invisibly
knocking off sister ships right and left, at Battle Stations inside mount 51 listening
to Pappy Hod tell disaster jokes, really funny ones, the whole gun crew clutching
their stomachs hysterically, gasping for air—not since then has Seaman Bodine felt
so high in the good chances of death.
“Some layout, huh?” he calls. “Pretty good food!” Conversation has fallen nearly silent.
Politely curious faces are turning. Flames leap in the pit. They are not “sensitive
flames,” but if they were they might be able now to detect the presence of Brigadier
Pudding. He is now a member of the Counterforce, courtesy of Carroll Eventyr. Courtesy
is right. Séances with Pudding are at least as trying as the old Weekly Briefings
back at “The White Visitation.” Pudding has even more of a mouth on him than he did
alive. The sitters have begun to whine: “Aren’t we
ever
to be rid of him?” But it is through Pudding’s devotion to culinary pranksterism
that the repulsive stratagem that follows was devised.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Roger elaborately casual, “I can’t seem to find any
snot soup
on the menu. . . .”
“Yeah, I could’ve done with some of that
pus pudding
, myself. Think there’ll be any of that?”
“No, but there might be a scum soufflé!” cries Roger, “with a side of—
menstrual marmalade!
”
“Well I’ve got eyes for some of that rich, meaty smegma stew!” suggests Bodine. “Or
howbout a
clot casserole?
”
“I say,” murmurs a voice, indeterminate as to sex, down the table.
“We could plan a better meal than
this
,” Roger waving the menu. “Start off with afterbirth appetizers, perhaps some clever
little
scab sandwiches
with the crusts trimmed off of course . . . o-or booger biscuits! Mmm, yes, spread
with mucus mayonnaise? and topped with a succulent bit of slime sausage. . . .”