Gravity's Rainbow (44 page)

A drape has caught fire. Slothrop, tripping over partygoers, can’t hear anything,
knows his head hurts, keeps running through the smoke at the tank—leaps on, goes to
undog the hatch and is nearly knocked off by Tamara popping up to holler at everybody
again. After a struggle which shouldn’t be without its erotic moments, for Tamara
is a swell enough looking twist with some fine moves, Slothrop manages to get her
in a come-along and drag her down off of the tank. But loud noise and all, look—he
doesn’t seem to have an erection. Hmm. This is a datum London never got, because nobody
was looking.

Turns out the projectile, a dud, has only torn holes in several walls, and demolished
a large allegorical painting of Virtue and Vice in an unnatural act. Virtue had one
of those dim faraway smiles. Vice was scratching his shaggy head, a little bewildered.
The burning drape’s been put out with champagne. Raoul is in tears, thankful for his
life, wringing Slothrop’s hands and kissing his cheeks, leaving trails of Jell-o wherever
he touches. Tamara is escorted away by Raoul’s bodyguards. Slothrop has just disengaged
himself and is wiping the Jell-o off of his suit when there is a heavy touch on his
shoulder.

“You were right. You are the man.”

“That’s nothing.” Errol Flynn frisks his mustache. “I saved a dame from an octopus
not so long ago, how about that?”

“With one difference,” sez Blodgett Waxwing. “This really happened tonight. But that
octopus didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know a lot. Not everything, but a few things you don’t. Listen Slothrop—you’ll
be needing a friend, and sooner than you think. Don’t come here to the villa—it may
be too hot by then—but if you can make it as far as Nice—” he hands over a business
card, embossed with a chess knight and an address on Rue Rossini. “I’ll take the envelope
back. Here’s your suit. Thanks, brother.” He’s gone. His talent is just to fade when
he wants to. The zoot suit is in a box tied with a purple ribbon. Keychain’s there
too. They both belonged to a kid who used to live in East Los Angeles, named Ricky
Gutiérrez. During the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, young Gutiérrez was set upon by a carload
of Anglo vigilantes from Whittier, beaten up while the L.A. police watched and called
out advice, then arrested for disturbing the peace. The judge was allowing zoot-suiters
to choose between jail and the Army. Gutiérrez joined up, was wounded on Saipan, developed
gangrene, had to have his arm amputated, is home now, married to a girl who works
in the kitchen at a taco place in San Gabriel, can’t find any work himself, drinks
a lot during the day. . . . But his old zoot, and those of thousands of others busted
that summer, hanging empty on the backs of all the Mexican L.A. doors, got bought
up and have found their way over here, into the market, no harm turning a little profit,
is there, they’d only have hung there in the fat smoke and the baby smell, in the
rooms with shades pulled down against the white sun beating, day after day, on the
dried palm trees and muddy culverts, inside these fly-ridden and empty rooms. . . .

• • • • • • •

Imipolex G has proved to be nothing more—or less—sinister than a new plastic, an aromatic
heterocyclic polymer, developed in 1939, years before its time, by one L. Jamf for
IG Farben. It is stable at high temperatures, like up to 900°C., it combines good
strength with a low power-loss factor. Structurally, it’s a stiffened chain of aromatic
rings, hexagons like the gold one that slides and taps above Hilary Bounce’s navel,
alternating here and there with what are known as heterocyclic rings.

The origins of Imipolex G are traceable back to early research done at du Pont. Plasticity
has its grand tradition and main stream, which happens to flow by way of du Pont and
their famous employee Carothers, known as The Great Synthesist. His classic study
of large molecules spanned the decade of the twenties and brought us directly to nylon,
which not only is a delight to the fetishist and a convenience to the armed insurgent,
but was also, at the time and well within the System, an announcement of Plasticity’s
central canon: that chemists were no longer to be at the mercy of Nature. They could
decide now what properties they wanted a molecule to have, and then go ahead and build
it. At du Pont, the next step after nylon was to introduce aromatic rings into the
polyamide chain. Pretty soon a whole family of “aromatic polymers” had arisen: aromatic
polyamides, polycarbonates, polyethers, polysulfanes. The target property most often
seemed to be strength—first among Plasticity’s virtuous triad of Strength, Stability
and Whiteness (
Kraft, Standfestigkeit, Weiße:
how often these were taken for Nazi graffiti, and indeed how indistinguishable they
commonly were on the rain-brightened walls, as the busses clashed gears in the next
street over, and the trams creaked of metal, and the people were mostly silent in
the rain, with the early evening darkened to the texture of smoke from a pipe, and
the arms of young passersby not in the sleeves of their coats but inside somewhere,
as if sheltering midgets, or ecstatically drifted away from the timetable into a tactile
affair with linings more seductive even than the new nylon . . .). L. Jamf, among
others, then proposed, logically, dialectically, taking the parental polyamide sections
of the new chain, and looping
them
around into rings too, giant “heterocyclic” rings, to alternate with the aromatic
rings. This principle was easily extended to other precursor molecules. A desired
monomer of high molecular weight could be synthesized to order, bent into its heterocyclic
ring, clasped, and strung in a chain along with the more “natural” benzene or aromatic
rings. Such chains would be known as “aromatic heterocyclic polymers.” One hypothetical
chain that Jamf came up with, just before the war, was later modified into Imipolex
G.

Jamf at the time was working for a Swiss outfit called Psychochemie AG, originally
known as the Grössli Chemical Corporation, a spinoff from Sandoz (where, as every
schoolchild knows, the legendary Dr. Hofmann made his important discovery). In the
early ’20s, Sandoz, Ciba, and Geigy had got together in a Swiss chemical cartel. Shortly
after, Jamf’s firm was also absorbed. Apparently, most of Grössli’s contracts had
been with Sandoz, anyway. As early as 1926 there were oral agreements between the
Swiss cartel and IG Farben. When the Germans set up their cover company in Switzerland,
IG Chemie, two years later, a majority of the Grössli stock was sold to them, and
the company reconstituted as Psychochemie AG. The patent for Imipolex G was thus cross-filed
for both the IG and for Psychochemie. Shell Oil got into it through an agreement with
Imperial Chemicals dated 1939. For some curious reason, Slothrop will discover, no
agreements between ICI and the IG seem to be dated any later than ’39. In this Imipolex
agreement, Icy Eye could market the new plastic inside the Commonwealth in exchange
for one pound and other good and valuable consideration. That’s nice. Psychochemie
AG is still around, still doing business at the same old address in the Schokoladestrasse,
in that Zürich, Switzerland.

Slothrop swings the long keychain of his zoot, in some agitation. A few things are
immediately obvious. There is even more being zeroed in on him from out there than
he’d thought, even in his most paranoid spells. Imipolex G shows up on a mysterious
“insulation device” on a rocket being fired with the help of a transmitter on the
roof of the headquarters of Dutch Shell, who is co-licensee for marketing the Imipolex—a
rocket whose propulsion system bears an uncanny resemblance to one developed by British
Shell at around the same time . . . and oh, oh boy, it just occurs to Slothrop now
where all the rocket intelligence is being
gathered
—into the office of who but Mr. Duncan Sandys, Churchill’s own son-in-law, who works
out of the Ministry of Supply located where but at Shell Mex
House, for Christ’s sake. . . .

Here Slothrop stages a brilliant Commando raid, along with faithful companion Blodgett
Waxwing, on Shell Mex House itself—right into the heart of the Rocket’s own branch
office in London. Mowing down platoons of heavy security with his little Sten, kicking
aside nubile and screaming WRAC secretaries (how else is there to react, even in play?),
savagely looting files, throwing Molotov cocktails, the Zootsuit Zanies at last crashing
into the final sanctum with their trousers up around their armpits, smelling of singed
hair, spilled blood, to find not Mr. Duncan Sandys cowering before their righteousness,
nor open window, gypsy flight, scattered fortune cards, nor even a test of wills with
the great Consortium itself—but only a rather dull room, business machines arrayed
around the walls calmly blinking, files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces, frail
as the last German walls standing without support after the bombs have been and now
twisting high above, threatening to fold down out of the sky from the force of the
wind that has blown the smoke away. . . . The smell of firearms is in the air, and
there’s not an office dame in sight. The machines chatter and ring to each other.
It’s time to snap down your brims, share a postviolence cigarette and think about
escape . . . do you remember the way in, all the twists and turns? No. You weren’t
looking. Any of these doors might open you to safety, but there may not be time. . . .

But Duncan Sandys is only a name, a function in this, “How high does it go?” is not
even the right kind of question to be asking, because the organization charts have
all been set up by Them, the titles and names filled in by Them, because

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t
have to worry about answers.

Slothrop finds he has paused in front of the blue parts list that started all this.
How high does it go . . .
ahhhh. The treacherous question is not meant to apply to
people
after all, but to the
hardware!
Squinting, moving a finger carefully down the columns, Slothrop finds that Vorrichtung
für die Isolierung’s Next Higher Assembly.

“S-Gerät, 11/00000.”

If this number is the serial number of a rocket, as its form indicates, it must be
a special model—Slothrop hasn’t even heard of any with four zeroes, let alone five . . .
nor an S-Gerät either, there’s an I- and a J-Gerät, they’re in the guidance . . .
well, Document SG-1, which isn’t supposed to exist, must cover that. . . .

Out of the room: going noplace special, moving to a slow drumbeat in his stomach muscles
see what happens, be ready. . . .
In the Casino restaurant, not the slightest impedance at all to getting in, no drop
in temperature perceptible to his skin, Slothrop sits down at a table where somebody
has left last Tuesday’s London
Times.
Hmmm. Hasn’t seen one of
them
in a while. . . . Leafing through, dum, dum, de-doo, yeah, the War’s still on, Allies
closing in east and west on Berlin, powdered eggs still going one and three a dozen,
“Fallen Officers,” MacGregor, Mucker-Maffick, Whitestreet, Personal Tributes . . .
Meet Me in St. Louis
showing at the Empire Cinema (recalls doing the penis-in-the-popcorn-box routine
there with one Madelyn, who was less than—)—

Tantivy . . . Oh shit no, no wait—

“True charm . . . humble-mindedness . . . strength of character . . . fundamental
Christian cleanness and goodness . . . we all loved Oliver . . . his courage, kindness
of heart and unfailing good humour were an inspiration to all of us . . . died bravely
in battle leading a gallant attempt to rescue members of his unit who were pinned
down by German artillery . . .” And signed by his most devoted comrade in arms, Theodore
Bloat.
Major
Theodore Bloat now—

Staring out the window, staring at nothing, gripping a table knife so hard maybe some
bones of his hand will break. It happens sometimes to lepers. Failure of feedback
to the brain—no way to know how fiercely they may be making a fist. You know these
lepers. Well—

Ten minutes later, back up in his room, he’s lying face-down on the bed, feeling empty.
Can’t cry. Can’t do
anything.

They did it. Took his friend out to some deathtrap, probably let him fake an “honourable”
death . . . and then just
closed up his file. . . .

It will occur to him later that maybe the whole story was a lie. They could’ve planted
it easy enough in that London
Times
, couldn’t they? Left the paper for Slothrop to find? But by the time he figures that
one out, there’ll be no turning around.

At noon Hilary Bounce comes in rubbing his eyes wearing a shit-eating grin. “How was
your evening? Mine was remarkable.”

“Glad to hear it.” Slothrop is smiling.
You’re on my list too, pal.
This smile asks from him more grace than anything in his languid American life ever
has, up till now. Grace he always imagined himself short on. But it’s working. He’s
surprised, and so grateful that he almost starts crying then. The best part of all
is not that Bounce appears fooled by the smile, but that Slothrop knows now that it
will work for him again. . . .

So he does make it to Nice, after a fast escape down the Corniche through the mountains
fishtailing and rubber softly screeching at the sun-warmed abysses, tails all shaken
back on the beach where he was thoughtful enough to lend his buddy Claude the assistant
chef, about the same height and build, his own brand-new pseudo-Tahitian bathing trunks,
and while they’re all watching that Claude, find a black Citroën with the keys left
in, nothing to it, folks—rolling into town in his white zoot, dark glasses, and a
flopping Sydney Greenstreet Panama hat. He’s not exactly inconspicuous among the crowds
of military and the mamzelles already shifted into summer dresses, but he ditches
the car off Place Garibaldi, heads for a bistro on the old-Nice side of La Porte Fausse
and takes time to nab a roll and coffee before setting out to find the address Waxwing
gave him. It turns out to be an ancient four-story hotel with early drunks lying in
the hallways, eyelids like tiny loaves brushed with a last glaze of setting sun, and
summertime dust in stately evolutions through the taupe light, summertime ease to
the streets outside, April summertime as the great vortex of redeployment from Europe
to Asia hoots past leaving many souls each night to cling a bit longer to the tranquillities
here, this close to the drain-hole of Marseilles, this next-to-last stop on the paper
cyclone that sweeps them back from Germany, down the river-valleys, beginning to drag
some from Antwerp and the northern ports too now as the vortex grows more sure, as
preferential paths are set up. . . . Just for the knife-edge, here in the Rue Rossini,
there comes to Slothrop the best feeling dusk in a foreign city can bring: just where
the sky’s light balances the electric lamplight in the street, just before the first
star, some promise of events without cause, surprises, a direction at right angles
to every direction his life has been able to find up till now.