GRAVITY RAINBOW (34 page)

the ballad of tantivy mucker-maffick

Oh Italian gin is a mother's curse,

And the beer of France is septic,

Drinking Bourbon in Spain is the lonely domain

Of the saint and the epileptic.

White lightning has fueled up many a hearse

In the mountains where ridge-runners dwell-

It's a brew begot in a poison pot,

And mulled with the hammers of Hell!

(Refrain):
Oh-Tantivy's been drunk in many a place, From here to the Uttermost Isle, And if he should refuse any chance at the booze, May I die with an hoary-eyed smile!

There are what sound like a hundred-but most likely only two- Welshmen singing, tenor from the south and bass from the north of the country, you see, so that all conversation sub rosa or not is effectively drowned out. Exactly what Slothrop wants. He leans in Katje's direction.

"Meet me in my room," she whispers, "306, after midnight." "Gotcha." And Slothrop is upright in time to join in again right on bar one:

He's been ossified in oceans of grog,

In the haunts of the wobbly whale- He's been half-seas over from Durban to Dover, Wiv four shaky sheets to the gale. For in London fog or Sahara's sun, Or the icebound steeps of Zermatt, Loaded up for a lark to 'is Plimsoll mark He's been game to go off on a bat!

Yes, Tantivy's been drunk in many a place… c.

After dinner Slothrop gives Tantivy the high-sign. Their dancers go off arm in arm to the marble lounges where the toilet stalls are equipped with a network of brass voice-tubes, all acoustic, to make stall-to-stall conversation easier. Slothrop and Tantivy head for the nearest bar.

"Listen," Slothrop talking into his highball glass, bouncing words off of ice cubes so they'll have a proper chill, "either I'm coming down with a little psychosis here, or something funny is going on, right?"

Tantivy, who is feigning a relaxed air, breaks off humming "You Can Do a Lot of Things at the Sea-side That You Can't Do in Town" to inquire, "Ah, yes, do you really think so?"

"Come on, that octopus."

"The devilfish is found quite commonly on Mediterranean shores. Though usually not so large-is it the
size
that bothers you? Don't Americans
like
-"

"Tantivy, it was no accident. Did you hear that Bloat? 'Don't kill it!' He had a crab
with
him, m-maybe inside that musette bag, all set to lure that critter away with. And where'd he go tonight, anyhow?"

"I think he's out on the beach. There's a lot of drinking."

"He drinks a lot?"

"No."

"Look, you're his friend-"

Tantivy moans. "God, Slothrop,
I
don't know. I'm your friend too, but there's always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with…"

"Paranoia's ass. Something's up, a-and you know it!"

Tantivy chews ice, sights along a glass stirring rod, rips up a small napkin into a snowstorm, all sorts of bar business, he's an old hand. But at last, in a soft voice, "Well, he's receiving messages in code."

"Ha!"

"I saw one in his kit this afternoon. Just a glimpse. I didn't try to look closer. He is with Supreme Headquarters, after all-I suppose that could be it."

"No, that's not it. Now what about
this
-" and Slothrop tells about his midnight date with Katje. For a moment they might almost be back in the bureau at ACHTUNG, and the rockets falling, and tea in paper cups, and everything right again…

"Are you going?"

"Shouldn't I? You think she's dangerous?"

"I think she's delightful. If I hadn't Francoise, not to mention Yvonne to worry about, I'd be racing you to her door."

"But?"

But the clock over the bar only clicks once, then presently again, ratcheting time minutewise into their past.

"Either what you've got is contagious," Tantivy begins, "or else they've an eye on me too."

They look at each other. Slothrop remembers that except for Tantivy he's all alone here. "Tell me."

"I wish I could. He's changed-but I couldn't give you a single bit of evidence. It's been since… I don't know. Autumn. He doesn't talk politics any more. God, we used to get into these- He won't discuss his plans after he's demobbed either, it's something he used to do all the time. I thought the Blitz might have got him rattled… but after yesterday, I think it must be more. Damn it, it makes me sad."

"What happened?"

"Oh. A sort of-not a threat. Or not a serious one. I mentioned, only joking, that I was keen on your Katje. And Bloat became very cold, and said, 'I'd stay clear of that one if I were you.' Tried to cover it with a laugh, as if he had his eye on her too. But that wasn't it. I-I don't have his confidence any more. I'm- I feel I'm only useful to

him in a way I can't see. Being tolerated for as long as he can use me.

The old University connection. I don't know if you ever felt it at Harvard… from time to time back in Oxford, I came to sense a peculiar

structure
that no one admitted to-that extended far beyond Turl Street, past Cornmarket into covenants, procuring, accounts due… one never knew who it would be, or when, or how they'd try to collect it… but I thought it only idle, only at the fringes of what I was
really
up there for, you know…"

"Sure. In that America, it's the first thing they tell you. Harvard's there for other reasons. The 'educating' part of it is just sort of a front."

"We're so very innocent here, you see."

"Some of you, maybe. I'm sorry about Bloat."

"I still hope it's something else."

"I guess so. But what do we do right now?"

"Oh I'd say-keep your date, be careful. Keep me posted. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have an adventure or two to tell you about, for a change. And if you need help," teeth flashing, face reddening a bit, "well, I'll help you."

"Thanks, Tantivy." Jesus, a British ally. Yvonne and Francoise peek in, beckoning them outside. On to the Himmler-Spielsaal and chemin-de-fer till midnight. Slothrop breaks even, Tantivy loses, and the girls win. No sign of Bloat, though dozens of officers go drifting in and out, brown and distant as rotogravure, through the evening. Nor any sight of his girl Ghislaine. Slothrop asks. Yvonne shrugs: "Out with your friend? Who knows?" Ghislaine's long hair and tanned arms, her six-year-old face in a smile… If it turns out she does know something, is she safe?

At 11:59 Slothrop turns to Tantivy, nods at the two girls, tries to chuckle lewdly, and gives his friend a quick, affectionate punch in the shoulder. Once, back in prep school, just before sending him into a game, young Slothrop's football coach socked him the same way, giving him confidence for at least fifty seconds, till being trampled flat on his ass by a number of red-dogging Choate boys, each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino.

"Good luck," says Tantivy, meaning it, hand already reaching for Yvonne's sweet chiffon bottom. Minutes of doubt, yes yes… Slothrop ascending flights of red-carpeted stairway (Welcome Mister Slothrop Welcome To Our Structure We Hope You Will Enjoy Your Visit Here), malachite nymphs and satyrs paralyzed in chase, evergreen, at the silent landings, upward toward a single staring bulb at the top…

At her door he pauses long enough to comb his hair. Now she

wears a white pelisse, with sequins all over, padded shoulders, jagged white ostrich plumes at the neckline and wrists. The tiara is gone:

in the electricity her hair is new snowfall. But inside a single scented candle burns, and the suite is washed in moonlight. She pours brandy in old flint snifters, and as he reaches, their fingers touch. "Didn't know you were so daffy about that golf!" Suave, romantic Slothrop.

"He was pleasant. I was being pleasant to him," one eye kind of squinched up, forehead wrinkled. Slothrop wonders if his fly's open.

"And ignore me. Why?" Clever pounce there, Slothrop-but she only evaporates before the question, re-forms in another part of the room…

"Am I ignoring you?" She's at her window, the sea below and behind her, the midnight sea, its individual waveflows impossible at this distance to follow, all integrated into the hung stillness of an old painting seen across the deserted gallery where you wait in the shadow, forgetting why you are here, frightened by the level of illumination, which is from the same blanched scar of moon that wipes the sea tonight…

"I don't know. But you're fooling around a lot."

"Perhaps I'm supposed to be."

"As 'Perhaps we were meant to meet'?"

"Oh, you think I'm more than I am," gliding to a couch, tucking one leg under.

"I know. You're only a Dutch milkmaid or something. Closet full o' those starched aprons a-and wooden shoes, right?"

"Go and look." Spice odors from the candle reach like nerves through the room.

"O.K., I will!" He opens her closet, and in moonlight reflected from the mirror finds a crowded maze of satins, taffetas, lawn, and pongee, dark fur collars and trimming, buttons, sashes, passementerie, soft, confusing, womanly tunnel-systems that must stretch back for miles-he could be lost inside of half a minute… lace glimmers, eyelets wink, a crepe scarf brushes his face… Aha! wait a minute, the operational scent in here is carbon tet, Jackson, and this wardrobe here's mostly props. "Well. Pretty snazzy."

"If that's a compliment, thank you."

Let Them thank me, babe. "An Americanism."

"You're the first American I've met."

"Hmm. You must've got out by way of that Arnhem, then, right?"

"My, you're quick," her tone warning him not to go after it. He sighs, ringing the snifter with his fingernail. In the dark room, with the paralyzed and silent sea at his back, he tries singing:

Too soon to know (fox-trot)

It's still too soon,

It's not as if we'd kissed and kindled,

Or chased the moon

Through midnight's hush, as dancing dwindled

Into quiet dawns,

Over secret lawns…

Too soon to know

If all that breathless conversation

A sigh ago

Was more than casual flirtation

Doomed to drift away

Into misty gray…

How can we tell,

What can we see?

Love works its spells in hiding,

Quite past our own deciding…

So who's to say

If joyful love is just beginning,

Or if its day

Just turned to night, as Earth went spinning?

Darling, maybe so-

It's TOO SOON TO KNOW.

Knowing what is expected of her, she waits with a vapid look till he's done, mellow close-harmony reeds humming a moment in the air, then reaches out a hand, melting toward him as he topples in slow-motion toward her mouth, feathers sliding, sleeves furling, ascending bare arms finely moongrained slipping around and up his back, her tacky tongue nervous as a moth, his hands rasping over sequins… then her breasts flatten against him as her forearms and hands go away folding up behind her to find a zipper, bring it snarling down her spineline…

Katie's skin is whiter than the white garment she rises from.
Born
again…
out the window he can almost see the spot where the devilfish crawled in from the rocks. She walks like a ballerina on her toes, thighs long and curving, Slothrop undoing belt, buttons, shoelaces hopping one foot at a time, oboy oboy, but the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is still a dark side, her ventral side, her

face, that he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the entire eye space till whites are gone and there's only the red animal reflection when the light comes to strike
no telling when the light
-

She has sunk to the deep bed, pulling him along, into down, satin, seraphic and floral embroidery, turning immediately to take his erection into her stretched fork, into a single vibration on which the night is tuning… as they fuck she quakes, body strobing miles beneath him in cream and night-blue, all sound suppressed, eyes in crescents behind the gold lashes, jet earrings, long, octahedral, flying without a sound, beating against her cheeks, black sleet, his face above her unmoved, full of careful technique-is it for her? or wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on-she will move him, she will not be mounted by a plastic shell… her breathing has grown more hoarse, over a threshold into sound… thinking she might be close to coming he reaches a hand into her hair, tries to still her head, needing to see her face: this is suddenly a struggle, vicious and real- she will not surrender her face-and out of nowhere she does begin to come, and so does Slothrop.

For some reason now, she who never laughs has become the top surface of a deep, rising balloon of laughter. Later as she's about to go to sleep, she will also whisper, "Laughing," laughing again.

He will want to say, "Oh, They let you," but then again maybe They don't. But the Katje he's talking to is already gone, and presently his own eyes have closed.

Like a rocket whose valves, under remote control, open and close at prearranged moments, Slothrop, at a certain level of his re-entry into sleep, stops breathing through his nose and commences breathing through his mouth. This soon grows to snores that have been known to rattle storm windows, set shutters to swinging and chandeliers into violent tintinnabulation, yes indee-eed… At the first of these tonight, Katje wakes up belts him in the head with a pillow.

"None of that."

"Hmm."

"I'm a light sleeper. Every time you snore, you get hit with this," waving the pillow.

No kidding, either. The routine of snore, get belted with pillow, wake up, say hmm, fall back to sleep, goes on well into the morning. "Come on," finally, "cut it out."