GRAVITY RAINBOW (35 page)

"Mouth-breather!" she yells. He grabs his own pillow and swings it at her. She ducks, rolls, hits the deck feinting with her pillow, backing

toward the sideboard where the booze is. He doesn't see what she has in mind till she throws her pillow and picks up the Seltzer bottle.

The what,
The Seltzer Bottle?
What shit is this, now? What other interesting props have They thought to plant, and what other American reflexes are They after? Where's those
banana cream pies,
eh?

He dangles two pillows and watches her. "One more step," she giggles. Slothrop dives in goes to hit her across the ass whereupon she lets him have it with the Seltzer bottle, natch. The pillow bursts against one marble hip, moonlight in the room is choked with feathers and down and soon with hanging spray from jets of Seltzer. Slothrop keeps trying to grab the bottle. Slippery girl squirms away, gets behind a chair. Slothrop takes the brandy decanter off of the sideboard, un-stoppers it, and flings a clear, amber, pseudopodded glob across the room twice in and out of moonlight to splash around her neck, between her black-tipped breasts, down her flanks. "Bastard," hitting him with the Seltzer again. Settling feathers cling to their skins as they chase around the bedroom, her dappled body always retreating, often in this light, even at close range, impossible to see. Slothrop keeps falling over the furniture. "Boy, when I get my hands on
you!"
At which point she opens the door to the sitting room, skips through, slams it again so Slothrop runs right into it, bounces off, sez shit, opens the door to find her waving a big red damask tablecloth at him.

"What's this," inquires Slothrop.

"Magic!" she cries, and tosses the tablecloth over him, precisely wrinkling folds propagating swift as crystal faults, redly through the air. "Watch closely, while I make one American lieutenant disappear."

"Quit fooling," Slothrop flailing around trying to reach the outside again. "How can I watch closely when I'm in here." He can't find an edge anyplace and feels a little panicky.

"That's the idea," suddenly inside, next to him, lips at his nipples, hands fluttering among the hairs at the back of his neck, pulling him slowly to deep carpeting, "My little chickadee."

"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 pon-

der 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 conies 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. "/ 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 tak-

ing 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 Francoise 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 Lef-tenant, 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 festoon-ery 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 root-like 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!