Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

  • • • • • • •

  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 m
an 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—”

  BRIGHT DAYS (FOX-TROT)

  —bright days for the black mar-ket,

  That silver ’n’ gold makes-it shine!

  From the Cor-al Sea to, the sky, blue, Baltic,

  Money’s the mainspring, that makes it all tick—like a

  Blinkin’ beacon, there’s a pricetag peekin’

  From each décolletage dee-vine—

  Be she green or scar-let, even Mom’s a har-lot, it’s the

  Good Lord’s grand design . . .

  A-and it’s sunny days-for, the black, black ma(a)rket,

  Cause silver and gold makes it shii-iine!

  Närrisch and Otto joining in here on three-part harmony, while the idle and hungry of Swinemünde look on, whitefaced as patient livestock. But their bodies are only implied: wire racks for prewar suits and frocks, too ancient, too glossy with dirt, with passage.

  Leaving the promenade, they pause at a street corner while a detachment of Russian infantry and horsemen marches by. “Gee, they’re pouring in,” notes Otto. “Where’s the circus?”

  “Up the coast, kid,” sez Närrisch.

  “What’s up the coast,” inquires Slothrop.

  “Look out,” warns Närrisch, “he’s a spy.”

  “Don’t call me ‘kid,’” Otto snarls.

  “Spy’s ass,” sez Slothrop.

  “He’s all right,” Springer pats them all on the shoulders, Herr Gemütlich here, “the word’s been out on him for a while. He isn’t even armed.” To Slothrop: “You’re welcome to come along with us, up the coast. It might be interesting for you.” But Slothrop is no dummy. He notices how he is getting funny looks from everybody now, including that Springer.

  Among the cargo headed up the coast are six chorus girls, wearing feathers and spangles under old cloth coats to save trunk space, a small pit band at different levels of alcoholic slumber, manymany cases of vodka, and a troupe of performing chimpanzees. Otto’s nautical-piratical mother has one of these chimps cornered inside the pilot house, where they are going at it, the Frau with her insults, the chimp reaching now and then trying to slap her with this floppy banana peel. Ulcerous impresario G. M. B. Haftung is trying to get Otto’s attention. He has a record of always making his appeals to the wrong personnel. “That’s Wolfgang in there! He’ll murder her!” Wolfgang’s his prize chimp, somewhat unstable, does a fair Hitler imitation but has this short attention span.

  “Well,” vaguely, “he’d better watch out for my Mom.”

  Framed here in her lozenge of hatchway, it’s much clearer just how extensively this old woman has been around: she is leaning, lilting, big sweet smile just as toothy as can be, right into that Wolfgang, cooing at him: “Deine Mutter . . .”

  “Say, she’s never seen one of those critters before,” Slothrop turning to Otto, surprising the youth with a faceful of, call it amiable homicide, “has she—”

  “Ach, she’s fantastic. She knows by instinct—exactly how to insult anybody. Doesn’t matter, animal, vegetable—I even saw her insult a rock once.”

  “Aw, now—”

  “Really! Ja. A gigantic clummmp of felsitic debris, last year, off the coast of Denmark, she criticized its,” just about to fall into one of those mirthless laughs we edge away from, “its crystalline structure, for twenty minutes. Incredible.”

  Chorus girls have already pried open a case of vodka. Haftung, brushing hair that grows only in memory across the top of his head, rushes over to scream at them. Boys and girls, all ages, tattered and thin, trail across the brow, stevedoring. Against the fair sky, chimps swing from spars and antenna, above them seagulls glide by and stare. Wind rises, soon a whitecap here and there will start to flicker out in the harbor. Each child carries a bale or box of a different shape, color, and size. Springer stands by, pince-nez clipped in front of agate eyes, checking off his inventory in a green morocco book, snails in garlic sauce, one gross . . . three cases cognac . . . tennis balls, two dozen . . . one Victrola . . . film, Lucky Pierre Runs Amok, three reels . . . binoculars, sixty . . . wrist-watches . . . u.s.w., a check-mark for each child.

  Presently all has been stowed below decks, chimps fall asleep, musicians wake up, girls surround Haftung and call him names, and pinch his cheeks. Otto makes his way along the side, hauling in lines as the children cast them off. As the last one is flung away, its eye-splice still in midair framing a teardrop vista of gutted Swinemünde, Frau Gnahb, sensing the release from land through her feet, gets under way in the usual manner, nearly losing a chimp over the fantail and sending Haftung’s half-dozen lovelies sprawling in a winsome tangle of legs, bottoms and breasts.

  Crosscurrents tug at the boat as it moves out the widening funnel of the Swine, toward the sea. Just inside the breakwaters, where it foams through breaches bombed underwater in the spring look out, Frau Gnahb, with no change of expression, swings her wheel full over, goes barreling straight at the Sassnitz ferry whoosh veers away just in time, cackling at passengers staggering back from the rail, gaping after her. “Please, Mother,” silent Otto plaintive in the window of the pilot house. In reply the good woman commences bellowing a bloodthirsty

  SEA CHANTY

  I’m the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody fucks with me—

  And those who’ve tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath the sea.

  And the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes,

  Singing, “Fuck ye not with Gory Gnahb and her desperate enterprise!”

  I’ll tangle with a battleship, I’ll massacre a sloop,

  I’ve sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop—

  I’ve seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries,

  “Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnahb, and her desperate enterprise!”

  Whereupon she grips her wheel and accelerates. They find themselves now leaping toward the side of a half-sunken merchantman: black concave iron splashed with red-lead, each crusted rivet and pitted plate closing in, looming over— The woman is clearly unbalanced. Slothrop shuts his eyes and hangs on to a chorus girl. With a whoop from the pilot house, the little boat is put over hard to port, missing collision by maybe a few coats of paint. Otto, caught daydreaming of death, staggers wildly by heading over the side. “It’s her sense of humor,” he points out, on the way past. Slothrop reaches out grabs him by the sweater, and the girl grabs Slothrop by the tail of his tuxedo.

  “She gets into something a little illegal,” Otto a moment later catching his breath, “you see what happens. I don’t know what to do with her.”

  “Poor kid,” the girl smiles.

  “Aw,” sez Otto.

  Slothrop leaves them, always happy to see young pe
ople get together, and joins von Göll and Närrisch on the fantail. Frau Gnahb has angled, wallowing, around to the northwest. Presently they are heading up the coast, through white-streaked, salt-smelling Baltic.