Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Must be woven out of that barbed wire,” is Slothrop’s opinion, “what girl’d want to get near anything like that?”

  “Ah, but, but would any woman in her right mind want to be within ten miles of that-that ghastly shirt, eh?”

  “Wait!” From someplace Slothrop now produces a gaudy yellow, green and orange display handkerchief, and over Tantivy’s groans of horror arranges it in his friend’s jacket pocket so as to stick out in three points. “There!” beaming, “that’s what you call real sharp!”

  They emerge into sunlight. Gulls begin to wail, the garment on Slothrop blazes into a refulgent life of its own. Tantivy squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, the girls are all attached to Slothrop, stroking the shirt, nibbling at its collar-points, cooing in French.

  “Of course.” Tantivy picks up the basket. “Right.”

  The girls are dancers. The manager of the Casino Hermann Goering, one César Flebótomo, brought in a whole chorus-line soon as the liberators arrived, though he hasn’t yet found time to change the place’s occupation name. Nobody seems to mind it up there, a pleasant mosaic of tiny and perfect seashells, thousands of them set in plaster, purple, pink and brown, replacing a huge section of roof (the old tiles still lie in a heap beside the Casino), put up two years ago as recreational therapy by a Messerschmitt squadron on furlough, in German typeface expansive enough to be seen from the air, which is what they had in mind. The sun now is still too low to touch the words into any more than some bare separation from their ground, so that they hang suppressed, no relation any more to the men, the pain in their hands, the blisters that grew black under the sun with infection and blood—only receding as the party now walk down past sheets and pillowcases of the hotel, spread to dry on the slope of the beach, fine wrinkles edged in blue that will flow away as the sun climbs, six pairs of feet stirring debris never combed for, an old gambling chip half bleached by the sun, translucent bones of gulls, a drab singlet, Wehrmacht issue, torn and blotted with bearing grease. . . .

  They move along the beach, Slothrop’s amazing shirt, Tantivy’s handkerchief, girls’ frocks, green bottles all dancing, everyone talking at once, boy-and-girl lingua franca, the girls confiding quite a lot to each other with side glances for their escorts. This ought to be good for a bit of the, heh, heh, early paranoia here, a sort of pick-me-up to help face what’s sure to come later in the day. But it isn’t. Much too good a morning for that. Little waves are rolling in, breaking piecrust-wise along a curve of dark shingle, farther off foaming among the black rocks that poke up along the Cap. Out at sea wink twin slivers of a boat’s sails being sucked along in the sun and distance, over toward Antibes, the craft tacking gradual, cockle-frail among low swells whose touch and rowdy hiss along the chines Slothrop can feel this morning, reminded of prewar Comets and Hamptons sighted from the beach at Cape Cod, among land odors, drying seaweed, summer-old cooking oil, the feel of sand on sunburn, the sharp-pointed dune grass under bare feet. . . . Closer to shore a pédalo full of soldiers and girls moves along—they dangle, splash, sprawl in green and white striped lounge chairs back aft. At the edge of the water small kids are chasing, screaming, laughing in that hoarse, helplessly tickled little-kid way. Up on the esplanade an old couple sit on a bench, blue and white and a cream-colored parasol, a morning habit, an anchor for the day. . . .

  They go as far as the first rocks, finding there an inlet partly secluded from the rest of the beach, and from the looming Casino. Breakfast is wine, bread, smiling, sun diffracting through the fine gratings of long dancers’ hair, swung, flipped, never still, a dazzle of violet, sorrel, saffron, emerald. . . . For a moment you can let the world go, solid forms gone a-fracturing, warm inside of bread waiting at your fingertips, flowery wine in long, easy passage streaming downward around the root of your tongue. . . .

  Bloat cuts in. “I say Slothrop, is she a friend of yours too?”

  Hmm? what’s happening . . . she, what? Here sits Bloat, smug, gesturing over at the rocks and a tide pool nearby. . . .

  “You’re getting ‘the eye,’ old man.”

  Well . . . she must have come out of the sea. At this distance, some 20 meters, she is only a dim figure in a black bombazine frock that reaches to her knees, her bare legs long and straight, a short hood of bright blonde hair keeping her face in shadow, coming up in guiches to touch her cheeks. She’s looking at Slothrop, all right. He smiles, sort of waves. She only continues to stand, the breeze pushing at her sleeves. He turns back to draw the cork from a wine bottle, and its pop arrives as a grace note for a scream from one of the dancers. Tantivy’s already halfway to his feet, Bloat gaping out in the girl’s direction, the danseuses snapshot in defense reflexes, hair flying, frocks twisted, thighs flashing—

  Holy shit it’s moving—an octopus? Yes it is the biggest fucking octopus Slothrop has ever seen outside of the movies, Jackson, and it has just risen up out of the water and squirmed halfway onto one of the black rocks. Now, cocking a malignant eye at the girl, it reaches out, wraps one long sucker-studded tentacle around her neck as everyone watches, another around her waist and begins to drag her, struggling, back under the sea.

  Slothrop’s up, bottle in hand, running down past Tantivy who’s doing a hesitant dance step, hands patting lounge-suit pockets for weapons that aren’t there, more and more of the octopus revealed the closer he comes and wow it’s a big one, holycow—skids to a halt alongside, one foot in the tide pool, and commences belting the octopus in the head with the wine bottle. Hermit crabs slide in death-struggle around his foot. The girl, already half in the water, is trying to cry out, but the tentacle, flowing and chilly, barely allows her windway enough to breathe. She reaches out a hand, a soft-knuckled child’s hand with a man’s steel ID bracelet on the wrist, and clutches at Slothrop’s Hawaiian shirt, begins tightening her own grip there, and who was to know that among her last things would be vulgar-faced hula girls, ukuleles, and surfriders all in comic-book colors . . . oh God God please, the bottle thudding again and again wetly into octopus flesh, no fucking use, the octopus gazes at Slothrop, triumphant, while he, in the presence of certain death, can’t quit staring at her hand, cloth furrowing in tangents to her terror, a shirt button straining at a single last thread—he sees the name on the bracelet, scratched silver letters each one clear but making no sense to him before the slimy gray stranglehold that goes tightening, liquid, stronger than he and she together, framing the poor hand its cruel tetanus is separating from Earth—

  “Slothrop!” Here’s Bloat ten feet away offering him a large crab.

  “What th’ fuck . . .” Maybe if he broke the bottle on the rock, stabbed the bastard between the eyes—

  “It’s hungry, it’ll go for the crab. Don’t kill it, Slothrop. Here, for God’s sake—” and here it comes spinning through the air, legs cocked centrifugally outward: dithering Slothrop drops the bottle just before the crab smacks against his other palm. Neat catch. Immediately, through her fingers and his shirt, he can feel the reflex to food.

  “O.K.” Shaking Slothrop waves the crab at the octopus. “Chow time, fella.” Another tentacle moves in. Its corrugated ooze touches his wrist. Slothrop tosses the crab a few feet along the beach, and what do you know, that octopus goes for it all right: dragging along the girl and Slothrop staggering for a bit, then letting her go. Slothrop quickly snatches up the crab again, dangling it so the octopus can see, and begins to dance the creature away, down the beach, drool streaming from its beak, eyes held by the crab.

  In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing? But there is a mad exuberance, as with inanimate objects which fall off of tables when we are sensitive to noise and our own clumsiness and don’t want them to fall, a sort of wham! ha-ha you hear that? here it is again, WHAM! in the cephalopod’s every movement, which Slothrop is glad
to get away from as he finally scales the crab like a discus, with all his strength, out to sea, and the octopus, with an eager splash and gurgle, strikes out in pursuit, and is presently gone.

  The frail girl lies on the beach, taking in great breaths of air, surrounded now by the others. One of the dancers is holding her in her arms and speaking, r’s and nasals still French, in a language Slothrop, moseying back into earshot, can’t quite place.

  Tantivy smiles and flips a small salute. “Good show!” cheers Teddy Bloat. “I wouldn’t have wanted to try that myself!”

  “Why not? You had that crab. Saaay—where’d you get that crab?”

  “Found it,” replies Bloat with a straight face. Slothrop stares at this bird but can’t get eye contact. What th’ fuck’s going on?

  “I better have some of that wine,” Slothrop reckons. He drinks out of the bottle. Air goes splashing upward in lopsided spheres inside the green glass. The girl watches him. He stops for breath and smiles.

  “Thank you, lieutenant.” Not a tremor in the voice, and the accent is Teutonic. He can see her face now, soft nose of a doe, eyes behind blonde lashes full of acid green. One of those thin-lipped European mouths. “I had almost stopped breathing.”

  “Uh—you’re not German.”

  Shaking her head no emphatically, “Dutch.”

  “And have you been here—”

  Her eyes go elsewhere, she reaches, takes the bottle from his hand. She is looking out to sea, after the octopus. “They are very optical, aren’t they. I hadn’t known. It saw me. Me. I don’t look like a crab.”

  “I guess not. You’re a swell-looking young lady.” In the background, delighted Bloat nudges Tantivy. That recklessness transatlantic. Slothrop takes her wrist, finds no problem now reading that ID bracelet. Sez KATJE BORGESIUS. He can feel her pulse booming. Does she know him from someplace? strange. A mixture of recognition and sudden shrewdness in her face . . .

  So it is here, grouped on the beach with strangers, that voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate . . . it’s a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in. Pale lines of force whir in the sea air . . . pacts sworn to in rooms since shelled back to their plan views, not quite by accident of war, suggest themselves. Oh, that was no “found” crab, Ace—no random octopus or girl, uh-uh. Structure and detail come later, but the conniving around him now he feels instantly, in his heart.

  They all stay a bit longer on the beach, finishing breakfast. But the simple day, birds and sunlight, girls and wine, has sneaked away from Slothrop. Tantivy is getting drunk, more relaxed and funnier as the bottles empty. He’s staked out not only the girl he first had his eye on, but also the one Slothrop would be no doubt sweet-talking right now if that octopus hadn’t shown up. He is a messenger from Slothrop’s innocent, pre-octopus past. Bloat, on the other hand, sits perfectly sober, mustache unruffled, regulation uniform, watching Slothrop closely. His companion Ghislaine, tiny and slender, pin-up girl legs, long hair brushed behind her ears falling all the way down her back, shifts her round bottom in the sand, writing marginal commentaries around the text of Bloat. Slothrop, who believes that women, like Martians, have antennas men do not, keeps an eye on her. She looks over only once, and her eyes grow wide and cryptic. He’d swear she knows something. On the way back to the Casino, toting their empties, and the basket full of the debris of the morning, he manages a word with her.

  “Some picnic, nessay-pah?”

  Dimples appear next to her mouth. “Did you know all the time about the octopus? I thought so because it was so like a dance—all of you.”

  “No. Honestly, I didn’t. You mean you thought it was just a practical joke or something?”

  “Little Tyrone,” she whispers suddenly, taking his arm with a big phony smile for the others. Little? He’s twice her size. “Please—be very careful. . . .” That’s all. He has Katje by the other hand, two imps, contrary, either side. The beach is empty now except for fifty gray gulls sitting watching the water. White heaps of cumulus pose out at sea, hard-surfaced, cherub-blown—palm leaves stir, all down the esplanade. Ghislaine drops away, back down the beach, to pick up prim Bloat. Katje squeezes Slothrop’s arm and tells him just what he wants to hear about now: “Perhaps, after all, we were meant to meet. . . .”

  • • • • • • •

  From out at sea, the Casino at this hour is a blazing bijou at the horizon: its foil of palms already shadows in the dwindling light. Deepening go the yellowbrowns of these small serrated mountains, sea colored the soft inside of a black olive, white villas, perched châteaux whole and ruined, autumn greens of copses and solitary pines, all deepening to the nightscape latent across them all day. Fires are lit on the beach. A faint babble of English voices, and even occasional songs, reaches across the water to where Dr. Porkyevitch stands on deck. Below, Octopus Grigori, having stuffed himself with crab meat, frisks happily in his special enclosure. The reaching radius of the lighthouse on the headland sweeps by, as tiny fishing craft head out to sea. Grischa, little friend, you have performed your last trick for a while. . . . Is there any hope for further support from Pointsman, now that Porkyevitch and His Fabulous Octopus have done their part?

  He gave up questioning orders long ago—even questioning his exile. The evidence linking him to the Bukharin conspiracy, whose particulars he has never heard, might somehow be true—the Trotskyite Bloc might have known of him, by reputation, used him in ways forever secret . . . forever secret: there are forms of innocence, he knows, that cannot conceive of what that means, much less accept it as he has. For it might, after all, be only another episode in some huge pathological dream of Stalin’s. At least he had physiology, something outside the party . . . those who had nothing but the party, who had built their whole lives upon it, only to be purged, must go through something very like death . . . and never to know anything for certain, never to have the precision of the laboratory . . . it’s been his own sanity, God knows, for twenty years. At least they can never—

  No, no they wouldn’t, there’s never been a case . . . unless it’s been hushed up, you’d never read it in the journals of course—

  Would Pointsman—

  He might. Yes.

  Grischa, Grischa! It’s come true. On us so quickly: foreign cities, comedians in broken hats, cancan girls, fountains of fire, a noisy pit band . . . Grischa, with the flags of all the nations curled in your arms . . . fresh shellfish, a warm pirozhok, hot glasses of tea in the evenings, between performances . . . learn to forget Russia, to take comfort from what mean, falsified bits of her we wander across. . . .

  Now, the sky stretches to admit a single first star. But Porkyevitch makes no wish. Policy. Signs of arrival do not interest him, nor even signs of departure. . . . As the boat’s engine goes full ahead, their own wake goes lifting, pink with sunset, to obscure the white Casino on shore.

  Electricity is on tonight, the Casino back in France’s power grid. Chandeliers shaggy with crystal needles flare overhead, and softer lamps shine among the gardens outside. Going in to dinner with Tantivy and the dancers, Slothrop is brought to a round-eyed halt by the sight of Katje Borgesius, hair in one of those emerald tiaras, the rest of her rigged out in a long Medici gown of sea-green velvet. Her escort’s a two-star general and a brigadier.

  “RHIP,” sings Tantivy, shuffling off sarcastic buffaloes along the carpet, “oh, RHIP indeed.”

  “You’re trying to get my goat,” Slothrop smiles, “but it’s not working.”

  “I can tell.” His own smile freezes. “Oh, no, Slothrop, please, no, we’re going in to dinner—”

  “Well, I know we’re going in to dinner—”

  “No, this is very embarrassing, you’ve got to take it off.�
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  “You like that? She’s genuine hand-painted! Look! Nice tits, huh?”

  “It’s the Wormwood Scrubs School Tie.”

  In the main dining room they merge into a great coming and going of waiters, officers and ladies. Slothrop, young dancer by the hand, caught up in the eddying, manages at last to slide with her into a pair of seats just vacated: to find who but Katje his left-hand partner. He puffs out his cheeks, crosses his eyes, brushes his hair industriously with his hands by which time the soup has showed up, which he goes at as if disarming a bomb. Katje is ignoring him, talking earnestly instead across her general with some bird colonel about his prewar profession, managing a golf course in Cornwall. Holes and hazards. Gave one a feel for terrain. But he did like most to be there at night, when the badgers came out of their sets to play. . . .

  By the time the fish has come and gone, something funny is happening. Katje’s knee seems to be rubbing Slothrop’s, velvet-warm, under the table.

  Weeell, opines Slothrop, watch this: I will employ some of that subterfuge, I mean I’m in that Europe, aren’t I? He raises his wineglass and announces,” ‘The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffick.’” Cheers go up, bashful Tantivy tries not to smile. It’s a song everyone knows: one of the Scotsmen goes dashing down the room to the grand piano. César Flebótomo, twirling his slick mustache in a saber-point, nips behind a palm in a tub to turn the lights up a notch, sticks his head back out winking, and hisses for his maître d’hôtel. Wine is gargled, throats are cleared and a good number of the company commence singing

  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.