Infinite Jest (83 page)

They all get on the outside of three cones of Gatorade, bent or squatting, sucking wind, while Schtitt stands at a sort of Parade Rest with his weatherman's pointer behind his back and shares overall impressions with the players on the morning's work thus far. Certain players are singled out for special mention or humiliation. Then more wind sprints. Then a brief like strategy-clinic-thing from Corbett Thorp on how approach shots down the line aren't always the very best tactic, and why. Thorp's a first-rate tennis mind, but his terrible stutter makes the boys so uncomfortable they have a hard time listening.
^181
181

The whole first shift's on the eighth court for the final conditioning drills.
^182
182
First are Star Drills. A dozen-plus boys on either side of the net, behind the baselines. Form a line. Go one at a time. Go: run up the side line, touch the net with your stick; then backwards to the outside corner of the service box and then forward to touch the net again; backward to the middle of the service box, forward to touch net; back to the baseline's little jut of centerline, up to net; service box's other outside corner, net, baseline's corner, net, then turn and run like hell for the corner you started from. Schtitt has a stopwatch. There's a janitorial bucket
^183
183
placed in the doubles alley by the finish point, for potential distress. They each do the Star Drill three times. Hal has 41 seconds and 38 and 48, which is average both for him and for any seventeen-year-old with a resting pulse rate in the high 50s. John Wayne's low of 33 occurs on his third Star, and he stops dead at the finish point and always just stands there, never bending or walking it off. Stice gets a 29 and everyone gets very excited until Schtitt says he was slow starting the watch: the arthritis in a thumb. Everyone but Wayne and Stice uses the retch-bucket in a sort of pro forma way. Sixteen-year-old Petropolis Kahn, a.k.a. 'W.M.' for 'Woolly Mammoth' because he's so hairy, gets a 60 and then a 59 and then pitches forward onto the hard surface and lies very still. Tony Nwangi tells people to walk around him.

The cardiovascular finale is Side-to-Sides, conceived by van der Meer in the B.S. '60s and demonic in its simplicity. Again split into fours on eight courts. For the top 18's, prorector R. Dunkel at net with an armful of balls and more in a hopper beside him, hitting fungoes, one to the forehand corner and then one to the backhand corner and then farther out to the forehand corner and so on. And on. Hal Incandenza is expected at least to get a racquet on each ball; for Stice and Wayne the expectations are higher. A very unpleasant drill fatigue-wise, and for Hal also ankle-wise, what with all the stopping and reversing. Hal wears two bandages over a left ankle he shaves way more often than his upper lip. Over the bandages goes an Air-Stirrup inflatable ankle brace that's very lightweight but looks a bit like a medieval torture-implement. It was in a stop-and-reverse move much like Side-to-Sides
^184
184
that Hal tore all the soft left-ankle tissue he then owned, at fifteen, in his ankle, at Atlanta's Easter Bowl, in the third round, which he was losing anyway. Dunkel goes fairly easy on Hal, at least on the first two go-arounds, because of the ankle. Hal's going to be seeded in at least the top 4 at the WhataBurger Inv. in a couple weeks, and woe to the prorector who lets Hal get hurt the way Hal let some of his Little Buddies get hurt yesterday.

What's potentially demonic about Side-to-Sides is that the duration of the drill and pace and angle of the fungoes to be chased down from side to side are entirely at the prorector's discretion. Prorector Rik Dunkel, a former 16's-doubles runner-up at Jr. Wimbledon and a decent enough guy, the son of some kind of plastic-packaging-systems tycoon on the South Shore, tied with Thorp for brightest of the prorectors (more or less by default), regarded as kind of a mystic because he refers people sometimes to Lyle and has been observed sitting at community gatherings with his eyes closed but not sleeping .. . but the point is a decent enough guy but not much into any kind of exchange of quarter. He seems to have received instructions to put the particular hurt on Ortho Stice this time, and by his third go-around Stice is trying to weep without breath and mewing for his aunts.
^185
185
But anyway everybody goes through Sides-to-Sides three times. Even Petropolis Kahn staggers through them, who after Stars had had to be sort of lugged over by Stephan Wagenknecht and Jeff Wax with his Nikes dragging behind him and his head swinging free on his neck and given kind of a swingset-shove to get started. Hal feels for Kahn, who's not fat but is in the Schacht-type mold, very thick and solid, except also carrying extra weight in terms of leg-and-back-hair, and who always tires easily no matter how hard he conditions. Kahn makes it through but stays bent over the distress-bucket long after the third go-around, staring into it, and stays that way while everybody else removes more soaked bottom layers of clothing and accepts clean towels from a halfway-house part-time black girl with a towel cart, and picks up balls.
^186
186

It is O72Oh. and they are through with the active part of dawn drills. Nwangi, at the edge of the hillside, is whistling the next shift over for opening sprints. Schtitt shares more overall impressions as minimum-wage aides dispense Kleenex and paper cones. Nwangi's reedy voice carries; he's telling the B's he wishes to see nothing but assholes and elbows on these sprints. It's unclear to Hal what this might connote. The A-players have formed those ragged rows behind the baseline again, and Schtitt paces back and forth.

'Am seeing sluggish drilling, by sluggards. Not meaning insults. This is the fact. Motions are gone through. Barely minimal efforts. Cold, yes? The cold hands and nose with mucus? Thoughts on getting through, going in, hot showers, water very hot. A meal. The thoughts are drifting toward the comfort of ending. Too cold to demand the total, yes? Master Chu, too cold for tennis at the high level, yes?’

Chu: 'It does seem pretty cold out, sir.’

'Ah.' Pacing back and forth with about-faces at every tenth step, stopwatch around his neck, pipe and pouch and pointer in his hands behind his back, nodding to himself, clearly wishing he had a third hand so he could stroke his white chin, pretending to ruminate. Every A.M. essentially the same, except when Schtitt does the females and the males get dressed down by deLint. All the older boys' eyes are glazed with repetition. Hal's tooth gives off little electric shivers with each inbreath, and he feels slightly unwell. When he moves his head slightly the monitor-glass bits' glitter shifts and dances along the opposite fence in a sort of sickening way.

'Ah.' Turns crisply toward them, looking briefly skyward. 'And when is hot? Too pretty hot for the total self on the court? The other hand of the spectrum? Ach. Is always something that is too. Master Incandenza who cannot quickly get behind lob's descent so weight can move forvart into overhand,
^187
187
please tell your thinking: it is always hot or cold, yes?’

A small smile, "s been our general observation out there, sir.’

'So then then so, Master Chu, from California's temperance regions?’

Chu brings down his hankie. 'I guess we have to learn to adjust to conditions, sir, I believe is what you're saying.’

A full sharp half-turn to face the group. 'Is what I am not saying, young LaMont Chu, is why you cease to seem to give total effort of self since you begin with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive tape and walls. No? Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always something that is too. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overdose to baseline, not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting, so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgrass in cracks along baseline. Who could give the total, with crabgrass. Look here is low net high net. Opponent's relatives heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small to inspire. Always something.’

His turns as he paces are crisp and used to punctuate. 'Adjust. Adjust? Stay the same. No? Is not stay the same? It is cold? It is wind? Cold and wind is the world. Outside, yes? On the tennis court the you the player: this is not where there is cold wind. I am saying. Different world mside. World built inside cold outside world of wind breaks the wind, shelters the player, you, if you stay the same, stay inside.' Pacing gradually faster, the turns becoming pirouettic. The older kids stare straight ahead; some of the younger follow every move of the pointer with wide eyes. Trevor Axford is bent at the waist and moving his head slightly, trying to get the sweat dripping off his face to spell something out on the surface. Schtitt is silent for two fast about-faces, ranging before them, tapping his jaw with the pointer. 'Not ever I think this adjusting. To what, this adjusting? This world inside is the same, always, if you stay there. This is what we are making, no? New type citizen. Not of cold and wind outside. Citizens of this sheltering second world we are working to show you every dawn, no? To make your introduction.' The Big Buddies translate Schtitt into accessible language for the littler kids, is a big part of their assignment.

'Borders of court for singles Mr. Rader are what.’

'Twenty-four by eight sir,' sounding hoarse and thin.

'So. Second world without cold or purple dots of bright for you is 23.8 meters, 8 I think .2 meters. Yes? In that world is joy because there is shelter of something else, of purpose past sluggardly self and complaints about uncomfort. I am speaking to not just LaMont Chu of the temperance world. You have a chance to occur, playing. No? To make for you this second world that is always the same: there is in this world you, and in the hand a tool, there is a ball, there is opponent with his tool, and always only two of you, you and this other, inside the lines, with always a purpose to keep this world alive, yes?' The pointer-motions through all this become too orchestral and intricate to describe. 'This second world inside the lines. Yes? Is this adjusting? This is not adjusting. This is not adjusting to ignore cold and wind and tired. Not ignoring "as if." Is no cold. Is no wind. No cold wind where you occur. No? Not "adjust to conditions." Make this second world inside the world: here there are no conditions.’

Looks around.

'So put a lid on it about the fucking cold,' says deLint, with his clipboard under his arm and his strangler-sized hands in his pockets, hopping a little in place.

Schtitt is looking around. Like most Germans outside popular entertainment, he gets quieter when he wants to impress or menace. (There are very few shrill Germans, actually.) 'If it is hard,' he says softly, hard to hear because of the rising wind, 'difficult, for you to move between the two worlds, from cold hot wind and sun to this inside place inside the lines where is always the same,' he says, seeming now to study the weatherman's pointer he holds down and out with both hands, 'it can be arranged for you gentlemen not to leave, ever here, this world inside the lines of court. You know. Can stay here until there is citizenship. Right here.' The pointer is pointed at the spots they're standing at breathing and blotting their faces and blowing their noses. 'Can today put up Testar Lung, for world's shelter. Sleep bags. Meals brought to you. Never across the lines. Never leave the court. Study here. A bucket for hygienic needs. At Gymnasium Kaiserslautern where I am privileged boy who whining about cold wind, we live inside tennis court for months, to learn to live inside. Very lucky days when they bring us meals. Not possible to cross a line for months of living.’

Left-hander Brian van Vleck picks a bad moment to break wind.

Schtitt shrugs, half-turning away from them to look off somewhere. 'Or else leave here into large external world where is cold and pain without purpose or tool, eyelash in eye and pretty girl — not worry anymore about how to occur.' Looks around. 'No one is a prisoner here. Who would like to escape into large world? Master Sweeny?’

Little eyes down.

'Mr. Coyle, with always too co-wold to give total?’

Coyle studies the vasculature on the inside of his elbow with deep interest as he shakes his head. John Wayne is joggling his head around like a Raggedy-Andy-head, stretching out the neck hardware. John Wayne is notoriously tight and can't touch anything below the knee with straight legs during stretches.

'Mr. Peter Beak with always the weeping to home on the telephone?’

The twelve-year-old says Not Me Sir several times.

Hal very subtly shoots in a small plug of Kodiak. Aubrey deLint has his arms crossed over the clipboard and is looking around beadily like a crow. Hal Incandenza has an almost obsessive dislike for deLint, whom he tells Mario he sometimes cannot quite believe is even real, and tries to get to the side of, to see whether deLint has a true z coordinate or is just a cutout or projection. The kids of the next shift are walking downhill and sprinting back up and walking down, warrior-whooping without conviction. The other male prorectors are drinking cones of Gatorade, clustered in the little pavilion, feet up on patio-chairs, Dunkel's and Watson's eyes closed. Neil Hartígan, in his traditional Tahitian shirt and Gaugin-motif sweater, has to stay sitting down to fit under the Gatorade awning.