Authors: Thomas Pynchon
“Where’d you see that one, hey? Remember when he gets in bed w-with that
goat?
“Oh, don’t ask . . .” This time it is a good-natured coordinated quickie, both kind
of drowsy, covered with sticky feathers . . . after coming they lie close together,
too liquefied to move, mm, damask and pile, it’s so cozy and just as red as a womb
in here. . . . Curled holding her feet in his, cock nestled in the warm cusp between
her buttocks, Slothrop trying earnestly to breathe through his nose, they drop off
to sleep.
Slothrop wakes to morning sunlight off of that Mediterranean, filtered through a palm
outside the window, then red through the tablecloth, birds, water running upstairs.
For a minute he lies coming awake, no hangover, still belonging Slothropless to some
teeming cycle of departure and return. Katje lies, quick and warm, S’d against the
S of himself, beginning to stir.
From the next room he hears the unmistakable sound of an Army belt buckle. “Somebody,”
he observes, catching on quickly, “must be robbing my pants.” Feet patter by on the
carpet, close to his head. Slothrop can hear his own small change jingling in his
pockets. “Thief!” he yells, which wakes up Katje, turning to put her arms around him.
Slothrop, managing now to locate the hem he couldn’t find last night, scoots from
under the tablecloth just in time to see a large foot in a two-tone shoe, coffee and
indigo, vanish out the door. He runs into the bedroom, finds everything else he had
on is gone too, down to shoes and skivvies.
“My clothes!” running back out past Katje now emerging from the damask and making
a grab for his feet. Slothrop flings open the door, runs out in the hall, recollects
that he is
naked
here, spots a laundry cart and grabs a purple satin bedsheet off of it, drapes it
around him in a sort of toga. From the stairway comes a snicker and the pad-pad of
crepe soles. “Aha!” cries Slothrop charging down the hall. The slippery sheet will
not stay on. It flaps, slides off, gets underfoot. Up the stairs two at a time, only
to find at the top another corridor, just as empty. Where is everybody?
From way down the hall, a tiny head appears around a corner, a tiny hand comes out
and gives Slothrop the tiny finger. Unpleasant laughter reaches him a split second
later, by which time he’s sprinting toward it. At the stairs, he hears footsteps heading
down. The Great Purple Kite races cursing down three flights, out a door and onto
a little terrace, just in time to see somebody hop over a stone balustrade and vanish
into the upper half of a thick tree, growing up from somewhere below. “Treed at last!”
cries Slothrop.
First you have to get into the tree, then you can climb it easy as a ladder. Once
inside, surrounded by pungent leaflight, Slothrop can’t see farther than a couple
of limbs. The tree is shaking though, so he reckons that that thief is in here someplace.
Industriously he climbs on, sheet catching and tearing, skin stuck by needles, scraped
by bark. His feet hurt. He’s soon out of breath. Gradually the cone of green light
narrows, grows brighter. Close to the top, Slothrop notes a saw-cut or something partway
through the trunk, but doesn’t stop to ponder what it might mean till he’s reached
the very top of the tree and clings swaying, enjoying the fine view of the harbor
and headland, paint-blue sea, whitecaps, storm gathering off at the horizon, the tops
of people’s heads moving around far below. Gee. Down the trunk he hears the sound
of wood beginning to crack, and feels vibration here in his slender perch.
“Aw, hey . . .” That
sneak.
He climbed
down
the tree, not up! He’s down there now, watching! They knew Slothrop would choose
up, not down—they were counting on
that
damned American reflex all right, bad guy in a chase always heads up—why up? and
they sawed the trunk nearly through, a-and now—
They?
They?
“Well,” opines Slothrop, “I had better, uh . . .” About then the point of the tree
cracks through, and with a great rustle and whoosh, a whirl of dark branches and needles
breaking him up into a few thousand sharp falling pieces, down topples Slothrop, bouncing
from limb to limb, trying to hold the purple sheet over his head for a parachute.
Oof. Nnhh. About halfway to the ground, terrace-level or so, he happens to look down,
and there observes many senior officers in uniform and plump ladies in white batiste
frocks and flowered hats. They are playing croquet. It appears Slothrop will land
somewhere in their midst. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine a tropical island,
a secure room, where this cannot be happening. He opens them about the time he hits
the ground. In the silence, before he can even register pain, comes the loud
thock
of wood hitting wood. A bright-yellow striped ball comes rolling past an inch from
Slothrop’s nose and on out of sight, followed a second later by a burst of congratulations,
ladies enthusiastic, footfalls heading his way. Seems he’s, unnhh, wrenched his back
a little, but doesn’t much feel like moving anyhow. Presently the sky is obscured
by faces of some General and Teddy Bloat, gazing curiously down.
“It’s Slothrop,” sez Bloat, “and he’s wearing a purple sheet.”
“What’s this my lad,” inquires the General, “costume theatricals, eh?” He is joined
by a pair of ladies beaming at, or perhaps through, Slothrop.
“Whom are you talking to, General?”
“That blighter in the toga,” replies the General, “who is lying between me and my
next wicket.”
“Why how extraordinary, Rowena,” turning to her companion, “do
you
see a ‘blighter in a toga’?”
“Goodness no, Jewel,” replies blithe Rowena. “
I
believe the General has been
drinking.”
The ladies begin to giggle.
“If the General made
all
his decisions in this state,” Jewel gasping for breath, “why there’d, there’d be
sauerkraut in the Strand!
” The two of them shriek, very loudly, for an unpleasant length of time.
“And your name would be Brun
hil
de,” the two faces now a strangled rose, “instead of—of Jewel!” They are clutching
each other for dear life. Slothrop glares up at this spectacle, augmented now by a
cast of dozens.
“We-e-e-ell, you see, somebody swiped all my clothes, and I was just on my way to
complain to the management—”
“But decided to put on a purple bedsheet and climb a tree instead,” nods the General.
“Well—I dare say we can fix you up with something. Bloat, you’re nearly this man’s
size, aren’t you?”
“Oh,” croquet mallet over his shoulder, posed like an advertising display for Kilgour
or Curtis, smirking down at Slothrop, “I’ve a spare uniform somewhere. Come along,
Slothrop, you’re all right, aren’t you. Didn’t break anything.”
“Yaagghh.” Wrapped in his tattered sheet, helped to his feet by solicitous croqueteers,
Slothrop goes limping after Bloat, off the turf and into the Casino. They stop first
at Slothrop’s room. He finds it newly cleaned, perfectly empty, ready for new guests.
“Hey . . .” Yanking out drawers empty as drums: every stitch of clothing he owns is
gone, including his Hawaiian shirt. What the fuck. Groaning, he rummages in the desk.
Empty. Closets empty. Leave papers, ID, everything, taken. His back muscles throb
with pain. “What is this, Ace?” going to check out the number on the door again, everything
now for form’s sake. He knows. Hogan’s shirt bothers him most of all.
“First put on something respectable,” Bloat’s tone full of head-masterish revulsion.
Two subalterns come crashing in carrying their valises. They halt goggling at Slothrop.
“Here mate, you’re in the wrong theatre of operations,” cries one. “Show a bit of
respect,” the other haw-haws, “it’s Lawrence of Arabia!”
“Shit,” sez Slothrop. Can’t even lift his arm, much less swing it. They proceed to
Bloat’s room, where they put together a uniform.
“Say,” it occurs to Slothrop, “where’s that Mucker-Maffick this morning?”
“I’ve no idea, really. Off with his girl. Or girls. Where’ve
you
been?”
But Slothrop’s looking around, tightening rectal fear belatedly taking hold now, neck
and face beading in a surge of sweat, trying to find in this room Tantivy shares with
Bloat some trace of his friend. Bristly Norfolk jacket, pinstripe suit, anything. . . .
Nothing. “Did that Tantivy move out, or what?”
“He may have moved in, with Françoise or What’s-her-name. Even gone back to London
early, I don’t keep a file on him, I’m not the missing-persons bureau.”
“You’re his friend. . . .” Bloat, with an insolent shrug, for the very first time
since they met, now looks Slothrop in the eyes. “Aren’t you? What are you?”
The answer’s in Bloat’s stare, the dim room become rationalized, nothing to it of
holiday, only Savile Row uniforms, silver hairbrushes and razor arranged at right
angles, a shiny spike on an octagonal base impaling half an inch of pastel flimsies,
all edges neatly squared . . . a piece of Whitehall on the Riviera.
Slothrop drops his eyes away. “See if I can find him,” he mumbles, retreating out
the door, uniform ballooning at the ass and too tight at the waist. Live wi’ the way
it feels mate, you’ll be in it for a while. . . .
He begins at the bar they talked in last night. It is empty except for a colonel with
a great twisted mustache, with his hat on, sitting stiffly in front of something large,
fizzing, opaque, and garnished with a white chrysanthemum. “Didn’t they teach you
at Sandhurst to salute?” this officer screams. Slothrop, hesitating only a moment,
salutes. “Damned O.C.T.U. must be full of Nazis.” No bartender in sight. Can’t remember
what— “Well?”
“Actually, what I am is, uh, is an American, I only borrowed the uniform, and well
I was looking for a Lieutenant, or actually Leftenant, Mucker-Maffick. . . .”
“You’re a what?” roars the colonel, pulling leaves from the chrysanthemum with his
teeth. “What kind of Nazi foolishness is that, eh?”
“Well, thank you,” Slothrop backing out of the room, saluting again.
“This is incredible!” the echo following him down the corridors to the Himmler-Spielsaal.
“It’s Nazi!”
Deserted in noon’s lull, here are resonant reaches of mahogany, green baize, hanging
loops of maroon velvet. Long-handled wood money rakes lie fanned out on the tables.
Little silver bells with ebony handles are turned mouth-down on the russet veneer.
Around the tables, Empire chairs are lined up precise and playerless. But some are
taller than the rest. These are no longer quite outward and visible signs of a game
of chance. There is another enterprise here, more real than that, less merciful, and
systematically hidden from the likes of Slothrop. Who sits in the taller chairs? Do
They have names? What lies on Their smooth baize surfaces?
Brass-colored light seeps in from overhead. Murals line the great room: pneumatic
gods and goddesses, pastel swains and shepherdesses, misty foliage, fluttering scarves. . . .
Everywhere curlicued gilt festoonery drips—from moldings, chandeliers, pillars, window
frames . . . scarred parquetry gleams under the skylight . . . From the ceiling, to
within a few feet of the tabletops, hang long chains, with hooks at the ends. What
hangs from these hooks?
For a minute here, Slothrop, in his English uniform, is alone with the paraphernalia
of an order whose presence among the ordinary debris of waking he has only lately
begun to suspect.
There may, for a moment, have been some golden, vaguely rootlike or manlike figure
beginning to form among the brown and bright cream shadows and light here. But Slothrop
isn’t to be let off quite so easy. Shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that
everything in this room is really being used for something different. Meaning things
to Them it has never meant to us. Never. Two orders of being, looking identical . . .
but, but . . .
Oh, THE WORLD OVER THERE, it’s
So hard to explain!
Just-like, a dream’s-got, lost in yer brain!
Dancin’ like a fool through that Forbid-den Wing,
Waitin’ fer th’ light to start shiver-ing—well,
Who ev-ver said ya couldn’t move that way,
Who ev-ver said ya couldn’t try?
If-ya find-there’s-a-lit-tle-pain,
Ya can al-ways-go-back-a-gain, cause
Ya don’t-ev-er-real-ly-say, good-by!
Why here? Why should the rainbow edges of what is almost on him be rippling most intense
here in this amply coded room? say why should walking in here be almost the same as
entering the Forbidden itself—here are the same long rooms, rooms of old paralysis
and evil distillery, of condensations and residues you are afraid to smell from forgotten
corruptions, rooms full of upright gray-feathered statues with wings spread, indistinct
faces in dust—rooms full of dust that will cloud the shapes of inhabitants around
the corners or deeper inside, that will settle on their black formal lapels, that
will soften to sugar the white faces, white shirt fronts, gems and gowns, white hands
that move too quickly to be seen . . . what game do They deal? What passes are these,
so blurred, so old and perfect?
“Fuck you,” whispers Slothrop. It’s the only spell he knows, and a pretty good all-purpose
one at that. His whisper is baffled by the thousands of tiny rococo surfaces. Maybe
he’ll sneak in tonight—no not at night—but sometime, with a bucket and brush, paint
FUCK YOU in a balloon coming out the mouth of one of those little pink shepherdesses
there. . . .
He steps back out, backward out the door, as if half, his ventral half, were being
struck in kingly radiance: retreating from yet facing the Presence feared and wanted.
Outside, he heads down toward the quay, among funseekers, swooping white birds, an
incessant splat of seagull shit. As I walk along the Bwa-deboolong with an independent
air . . . Saluting everybody in uniform, getting it to a reflex, don’t ask for extra
trouble, try for invisible . . . bringing his arm each time a bit more stupidly to
his side. Clouds now are coming up fast, out of the sea. No sign of Tantivy out here,
either.