Gravity's Rainbow (87 page)

Partygoers stagger fore and aft, evening clothes decorated with sunbursts of vomit.
Ladies lie out in the rain, nipples erect and heaving under drenched silk. Stewards
skid along the decks with salvers of Dramamine and bicarbonate. Barfing aristocracy
sag all down the life-lines. Here comes Slothrop now, down a ladder to the main deck,
bounced by the rolling off of alternate manropes, feeling none too keen. He’s lost
Bianca. Gone fussing through the ship doubling back again and again, can’t find her
any more than his reason for leaving her this morning.

It matters, but how much? Now that Margherita has wept to him, across the stringless
lyre and bitter chasm of a ship’s toilet, of her last days with Blicero, he knows
as well as he has to that it’s the S-Gerät after all that’s following him, it and
the pale plastic ubiquity of Laszlo Jamf. That if he’s been seeker and sought, well,
he’s also baited, and bait. The Imipolex question was planted for him by somebody,
back at the Casino Hermann Goering, with hopes it would flower into a full
Imipolectique
with its own potency in the Zone—but They knew Slothrop would jump for it. Looks
like there are sub-Slothrop needs They know about, and he doesn’t: this is humiliating
on the face of it, but now there’s also the even more annoying question,
What do I need that badly
?

Even a month ago, given a day or two of peace, he might have found his way back to
the September afternoon, to the stiff cock in his pants sprung fine as a dowser’s
wand trying to point up at what was hanging there in the sky for everybody. Dowsing
Rockets is a gift, and he had it, suffered from it, trying to fill his body to the
pores and follicles with ringing prurience . . . to enter, to be filled . . . to go
hunting after . . . to be shown . . . to begin to scream . . . to open arms legs mouth
asshole eyes nostrils without a hope of mercy to its intention waiting in the sky
paler than dim commercial Jesus. . . .

But nowadays, some kind of space he cannot go against has opened behind Slothrop,
bridges that might have led back are down now for good. He is growing less anxious
about betraying those who trust him. He feels obligations less immediately. There
is, in fact, a general loss of emotion, a numbness he ought to be alarmed at, but
can’t quite . . .

Can’t
 . . .

Russian transmissions come crackling out of ship’s radio, and the static blows like
sheets of rain. Lights have begun to appear on shore. Procalowski throws a master
switch and cuts off all the lights of the
Anubis.
St. Elmo’s fire will be seen spurting at moments from cross-ends, from sharp points,
fluttering white as telltales about the antennas and stays.

The white ship, camouflaged in the storm, will slip by Stettin’s great ruin in silence.
Rain will slacken for a moment to port and reveal a few last broken derricks and charred
warehouses so wet and gleaming you can almost smell them, and a beginning of marshland
you can smell, where no one lives. And then the shore again will be invisible as the
open sea’s. The Oder Haff will grow wider around the
Anubis.
No patrol boats will be out tonight. Whitecaps will come slamming in out of the darkness,
and break high over the bow, and brine stream from the golden jackal mouth . . . Count
Wafna lurch aft in nothing but his white bow tie, hands full of red, white, and blue
chips that spill and clatter on deck, and he’ll never cash them in . . . the Countess
Bibescue dreaming by the fo’c’sle of Bucharest four years ago, the January terror,
the Iron Guard on the radio screaming
Long Live Death
, and the bodies of Jews and Leftists hung on the hooks of the city slaughter-houses,
dripping on the boards smelling of meat and hide, having her breasts sucked by a boy
of 6 or 7 in a velvet Fauntleroy suit, their wet hair flowing together indistinguishable
as their moans now, will vanish inside sudden whiteness exploding over the bow . . .
and stockings ladder, and silk frocks over rayon slips make swarming moirés . . .
hardons go limp without warning, bone buttons shake in terror . . . lights be thrown
on again and the deck become a blinding mirror . . . and not too long after this,
Slothrop will think he sees her, think he has found Bianca again—dark eyelashes plastered
shut and face running with rain, he will see her lose her footing on the slimy deck,
just as the
Anubis
starts a hard roll to port, and even at this stage of things—even in his distance—he
will lunge after her without thinking much, slip himself as she vanishes under the
chalky lifelines and gone, stagger trying to get back but be hit too soon in the kidneys
and be flipped that easy over the side and it’s adios to the
Anubis
and all its screaming Fascist cargo, already no more ship, not even black sky as
the rain drives down his falling eyes now in quick needlestrokes, and he hits, without
a call for help, just a meek tearful
oh fuck
, tears that will add nothing to the whipped white desolation that passes for the
Oder Haff tonight. . . .

• • • • • • •

The voices are German. Looks like a fishing smack here, stripped for some reason of
nets and booms. Cargo piled on deck. A pink-faced youth is peering down at Slothrop
from midships, rocking in, rearing back. “He’s wearing evening clothes,” calling in
to the pilot house. “Is that good or bad? You’re not with the military government,
are you?”

“Jesus, kid, I’m drowning. I’ll sign a
form
if you want.” Well, that’s Howdy Podner in German. The youth reaches out a pink hand
whose palm is crusted with barnacles, and hauls him on up, ears freezing, salty snot
pouring out his nose, flopping onto a wood deck that reeks with generations of fish
and is scarred bright from more solid cargo. The boat gets under way again with this
tremendous surge of acceleration. Slothrop is sent rolling wetly aft. Behind them
a great roostertail foams erect against the rain. Maniacal laughter blows aft from
the pilot house. “Hey who, or what, is in command of this vessel, here?”

“My mother,” the pink boy crouching beside him with an apologetic and helpless look.
“The terror of the high seas.”

This apple-cheeked lady is Frau Gnahb, and her kid’s name is Otto. When she’s feeling
affectionate she calls him “the Silent Otto,” which she thinks is very funny, but
it dates her. While Slothrop gets out of the tuxedo and hangs it up inside to dry,
wrapping himself in an old army blanket, mother and son tell him how they run black
market items all along the Baltic coast. Who else would be out tonight, during a storm?
He has a trustworthy face, Slothrop does, people will tell him anything. Right now
seems they’re headed for Swinemünde to take on cargo for a run tomorrow up the coast
of Usedom.

“Do you know a man in a white suit,” quoting Geli Tripping from a few eras back, “who’s
supposed to be on the Strand-Promenade in that Swinemünde every day around noon?”

Frau Gnahb takes a pinch of snuff, and beams. “Everybody does. He’s the white knight
of the black market, as I am queen of the coastal trade.”

“Der Springer, right?”

“Nobody else.”

Nobody else. Up in his pants pocket Slothrop is still packing around that chesspiece
old Säure Bummer gave him. By it shall Springer know him. Slothrop falls asleep in
the pilot house, gets in two or three hours, during which Bianca comes to snuggle
in under his blanket with him. “You’re really in that Europe now,” she grins, hugging
him. “Oh my goo’ness,” Slothrop keeps saying, his voice exactly like Shirley Temple’s,
out of his control. It sure is embarrassing. He wakes to sunlight, gulls squealing,
smell of number 2 fuel oil, the booming of wine barrels down racketing planks to shore.
They are docked in Swinemünde, by the sagging long ash remains of warehouses. Frau
Gnahb is supervising some offloading. Otto has a tin can of honest-to-God Bohnenkaffee
simmering. “First I’ve had in a while,” Slothrop scorching his mouth.

“Black market,” purrs the Silent Otto. “Good business to be in.”

“I was in it for a while. . . .” Oh, yes, and he’s left the last of that Bodine hashish,
hasn’t he, several fucking ounces in fact, back on the
Anubis
, wasn’t that clever. See the sugar bowl do the Tootsie Roll with the big, bad, Devil’s
food cake—

“Nice morning,” Otto remarks.

Slothrop puts his tux back on, wrinkled and shrunken and almost dry, and debarks with
Otto to find Der Springer. It seems to be Springer who’s chartered today’s trip up
the coast. Slothrop keeps looking around for the
Anubis
, but she’s nowhere in sight. In the distances, gantries huddle together, skeletal,
presiding over the waste that came upon this port so sudden. The Russian assault in
the spring has complicated the layout here. The white ship could be hiding behind
any of these heaps of dockyard wreckage. Come out, come out. . . .

The storm has blown away, the breeze is mild today and the sky lies overhead in a
perfect interference-pattern, mackerel gray and blue. Someplace military machines
are rooting and clanking. Men and women are hollering near and far in Russian. Otto
and Slothrop dodge them down alleys flanked by the remains of half-timbered houses,
stepped out story by story, about to meet overhead after centuries of imperceptible
toppling. Men in black-billed caps sit on stoops, watching hands for cigarettes. In
a little square, market stalls are set up, wood frames and old, stained canvas shimmering
when the breeze passes through. Russian soldiers lean against posts or benches talking
to girls in dirndls and white knee-socks, all nearly still as statues. Market wagons
stand unhitched with tongues tilted to the ground and floors covered with burlap and
straw and traces of produce. Dogs sniff among the mud negatives of tank treads. Two
men in dark old blue uniforms work their way along with hose and broom, cleaning away
garbage and stone-dust with salt water pumped up from the harbor. Two little girls
chase round and round a gaudy red kiosk plastered with chromos of Stalin. Workers
in leather caps, blinking, morning-faced, pedal down to the docks with lunchboxes
slung on handle bars. Pigeons and seagulls feint for scraps in the gutters. Women
with empty string bags hurry by light as ghosts. A lone sapling in the street sings
with a blockful of birds you can’t see.

Just as Geli said, out on the steel-littered promenade, kicking stones, watching the
water, eyes idly combing the beach for the odd watch or gold eyeglass frame, waiting
for whoever will show up, is The Man. About 50, bleak and neutral-colored eyes, hair
thick at the sides of his head and brushed back.

Slothrop flashes the plastic knight. Der Springer smiles and bows.

“Gerhardt von Göll, at your service.” They shake hands, though Slothrop’s is prickling
in an unpleasant way.

Gulls cry, waves flatten on the strand. “Uh,” Slothrop sez, “I have this kind of trick
ear, you’ll have to—you say Gerhardt von what now?” This mackerel sky has begun to
look less like a moiré, and more like a chessboard. “I guess we have a friend in common.
Well, that Margherita Erdmann. Saw her last night. Yup. . . .”

“She’s supposed to be dead.” He takes Slothrop’s arm, and they all begin to stroll
along the promenade.

“W-well you’re supposed to be a movie director.”

“Same thing,” lighting American cigarettes for everybody. “Same problems of control.
But more intense. As to some musical ears, dissonance is really a higher form of consonance.
You’ve heard about Anton Webern? Very sad.”

“It was a mistake. He was innocent.”

“Ha. Of course he was. But mistakes are part of it too—everything fits. One
sees how
it fits, ja? learns patterns, adjusts to rhythms, one day you are no longer an actor,
but free now, over on the other side of the camera. No dramatic call to the front
office—just waking up one day, and knowing that Queen, Bishop, and King are only splendid
cripples, and pawns, even those that reach the final row, are condemned to creep in
two dimensions, and no Tower will ever rise or descend—no:
flight has been given only to the Springer!
”

“Right, Springer,” sez Otto.

Four Russian privates come wandering out of a bank of ruined hotel-fronts, laughing
across the promenade, over the wall down to the water where they stand throwing smooth
stones, kicking waves, singing to each other. Not much of a liberty town, Swinemünde.
Slothrop fills von Göll in on Margherita, trying not to get personal. But some of
his anxiety over Bianca must be coming through. Von Göll shakes his arm, a kindly
uncle. “There now. I wouldn’t worry. Bianca’s a clever child, and her mother is hardly
a destroying goddess.”

“You’re a comfort, Springer.”

The Baltic, restless Wehrmacht gray, whispers along the beach. Von Göll tips an invisible
Tyrolean to old ladies in black who’ve come out in pairs to get some sun. Otto goes
chasing seagulls, hands out in front of him silent-movie style looking to strangle,
but always missing his bird. Presently they are joined by a party with a lumpy nose,
stoop, week’s growth of orange and gray whiskers, and oversize leather trenchcoat
with no trousers on underneath. His name is Närrisch—the same Klaus Närrisch that
aerodynamics man Horst Achtfaden fingered for the Schwarzkommando, the very same.
He is carrying by the neck an unplucked dead turkey. As they thread their way among
chunks big and little of Swinemünde and the battle for it last spring, townspeople
begin to appear out of the ruins, and to straggle close on von Göll’s landward flank,
all eying this dead bird. Springer reaches inside his white suit jacket, comes out
with a U.S. Army .45, and makes a casual show of checking its action. His following
promptly dwindles by a half.

“They’re hungrier today,” observes Närrisch.

“True,” replies the Springer, “but today there are fewer of them.”

“Wow,” it occurs to Slothrop, “that’s a shitty thing to say.”

Springer shrugs. “Be compassionate. But don’t make up fantasies about them. Despise
me, exalt them, but remember, we define each other. Elite and preterite, we move through
a cosmic design of darkness and light, and in all humility, I am one of the very few
who can comprehend it
in toto.
Consider honestly therefore, young man, which side you would rather be on. While
they suffer in perpetual shadows, it’s . . . always—”