Penguin books

"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."

"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 Flebötomo, 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.

White lightning has fueled up many a hearse

In the mountains where ridge-runners dwell—

It's a brew begot in a poison pot,

And mulled with the hammers of Hell!

(Refrain): Oh—Tantivy's been drunk in many a place, From here to the Uttermost Isle, And if he should refuse any chance at the booze, May I die with an hoary-eyed smile!

There are what sound like a hundred—but most likely only two— Welshmen singing, tenor from the south and bass from the north of the country, you see, so that all conversation sub rosa or not is effectively drowned out. Exactly what Slothrop wants. He leans in Katje's direction.

"Meet me in my room," she whispers, "306, after midnight." "Gotcha." And Slothrop is upright in time to join in again right on bar one:

He's been ossified in oceans of grog,

In the haunts of the wobbly whale— He's been half-seas over from Durban to Dover, Wiv four shaky sheets to the gale. For in London fog or Sahara's sun, Or the icebound steeps of Zermatt, Loaded up for a lark to 'is Plimsoll mark He's been game to go off on a bat!

Yes, Tantivy's been drunk in many a place . . . &c.

After dinner Slothrop gives Tantivy the high-sign. Their dancers go off arm in arm to the marble lounges where the toilet stalls are equipped with a network of brass voice-tubes, all acoustic, to make stall-to-stall conversation easier. Slothrop and Tantivy head for the nearest bar.

"Listen," Slothrop talking into his highball glass, bouncing words off of ice cubes so they'll have a proper chill, "either I'm coming down with a little psychosis here, or something funny is going on, right?"

Tantivy, who is feigning a relaxed air, breaks off humming "You Can Do a Lot of Things at the Sea-side That You Can't Do in Town" to inquire, "Ah, yes, do you really think so?"

"Come on, that octopus."

"The devilfish is found quite commonly on Mediterranean shores. Though usually not so large—is it the size that bothers you? Don't Americans like—"

"Tantivy, it was no accident. Did you hear that Bloat? 'Don't kill it!' He had a crab with him, m-maybe inside that musette bag, all set to lure that critter away with. And where'd he go tonight, anyhow?"

"I think he's out on the beach. There's a lot of drinking."

"He drinks a lot?"

"No."

"Look, you're his friend—"

Tantivy moans. "God, Slothrop, I don't know. I'm your friend too, but there's always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with. ..."

"Paranoia's ass. Something's up, a-and you know it!"

Tantivy chews ice, sights along a glass stirring rod, rips up a small napkin into a snowstorm, all sorts of bar business, he's an old hand. But at last, in a soft voice, "Well, he's receiving messages in code."

"Ha!"

"I saw one in his kit this afternoon. Just a glimpse. I didn't try to look closer. He is with Supreme Headquarters, after all—I suppose that could be it."

"No, that's not it. Now what about this—" and Slothrop tells about his midnight date with Katje. For a moment they might almost be back in the bureau at ACHTUNG, and the rockets falling, and tea in paper cups, and everything right again. ...

"Are you going?"

"Shouldn't I? You think she's dangerous?"

"I think she's delightful. If I hadn't Françoise, not to mention Yvonne to worry about, I'd be racing you to her door."

"But?"

But the clock over the bar only clicks once, then presently again, ratcheting time minutewise into their past.

"Either what you've got is contagious," Tantivy begins, "or else they've an eye on me too."

They look at each other. Slothrop remembers that except for Tantivy he's all alone here. "Tell me."

"I wish I could. He's changed—but I couldn't give you a single bit of evidence. It's been since ... I don't know. Autumn. He doesn't talk politics any more. God, we used to get into these— He won't discuss his plans after he's demobbed either, it's something he used to do all the time. I thought the Blitz might have got him rattled . . . but after yesterday, I think it must be more. Damn it, it makes me sad."

"What happened?"

"Oh. A sort of—not a threat. Or not a serious one. I mentioned, only joking, that I was keen on your Katje. And Bloat became very cold, and said, 'I'd stay clear of that one if I were you.' Tried to cover it with a laugh, as if he had his eye on her too. But that wasn't it. I-I don't have his confidence any more. I'm— I feel I'm only useful to

him in a way I can't see. Being tolerated for as long as he can use me.

The old University connection. I don't know if you ever felt it at Harvard . . . from time to time back in Oxford, I came to sense a peculiar

structure that no one admitted to—that extended far beyond Turl Street, past Cornmarket into covenants, procuring, accounts due . . . one never knew who it would be, or when, or how they'd try to collect it... but I thought it only idle, only at the fringes of what I was really up there for, you know. ..."

"Sure. In that America, it's the first thing they tell you. Harvard's there for other reasons. The 'educating' part of it is just sort of a front."

"We're so very innocent here, you see."

"Some of you, maybe. I'm sorry about Bloat."

"I still hope it's something else."

"I guess so. But what do we do right now?"

"Oh I'd say—keep your date, be careful. Keep me posted. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have an adventure or two to tell you about, for a change. And if you need help," teeth flashing, face reddening a bit, "well, I'll help you."

"Thanks, Tantivy." Jesus, a British ally. Yvonne and Françoise peek in, beckoning them outside. On to the Himmler-Spielsaal and chemin-de-fer till midnight. Slothrop breaks even, Tantivy loses, and the girls win. No sign of Bloat, though dozens of officers go drifting in and out, brown and distant as rotogravure, through the evening. Nor any sight of his girl Ghislaine. Slothrop asks. Yvonne shrugs: "Out with your friend? Who knows?" Ghislaine's long hair and tanned arms, her six-year-old face in a smile. ... If it turns out she does know something, is she safe?

At 11:59 Slothrop turns to Tantivy, nods at the two girls, tries to chuckle lewdly, and gives his friend a quick, affectionate punch in the shoulder. Once, back in prep school, just before sending him into a game, young Slothrop's football coach socked him the same way, giving him confidence for at least fifty seconds, till being trampled flat on his ass by a number of red-dogging Choate boys, each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino.

"Good luck," says Tantivy, meaning it, hand already reaching for Yvonne's sweet chiffon bottom. Minutes of doubt, yes yes . . . Slothrop ascending flights of red-carpeted stairway (Welcome Mister Slothrop Welcome To Our Structure We Hope You Will Enjoy Your Visit Here), malachite nymphs and satyrs paralyzed in chase, evergreen, at the silent landings, upward toward a single staring bulb at the top. . . .

At her door he pauses long enough to comb his hair. Now she

wears a white pelisse, with sequins all over, padded shoulders, jagged white ostrich plumes at the neckline and wrists. The tiara is gone:

in the electricity her hair is new snowfall. But inside a single scented candle burns, and the suite is washed in moonlight. She pours brandy in old flint snifters, and as he reaches, their fingers touch. "Didn't know you were so daffy about that golf!" Suave, romantic Slothrop.

"He was pleasant. I was being pleasant to him," one eye kind of squinched up, forehead wrinkled. Slothrop wonders if his fly's open.

"And ignore me. Why?" Clever pounce there, Slothrop—but she only evaporates before the question, re-forms in another part of the room. . . .

"Am I ignoring you?" She's at her window, the sea below and behind her, the midnight sea, its individual waveflows impossible at this distance to follow, all integrated into the hung stillness of an old painting seen across the deserted gallery where you wait in the shadow, forgetting why you are here, frightened by the level of illumination, which is from the same blanched scar of moon that wipes the sea tonight. . . .

"I don't know. But you're fooling around a lot."

"Perhaps I'm supposed to be."

"As 'Perhaps we were meant to meet'?"

"Oh, you think I'm more than I am," gliding to a couch, tucking one leg under.

"I know. You're only a Dutch milkmaid or something. Closet full o' those starched aprons a-and wooden shoes, right?"

"Go and look." Spice odors from the candle reach like nerves through the room.

"O.K., I will!" He opens her closet, and in moonlight reflected from the mirror finds a crowded maze of satins, taffetas, lawn, and pongee, dark fur collars and trimming, buttons, sashes, passementerie, soft, confusing, womanly tunnel-systems that must stretch back for miles—he could be lost inside of half a minute . . . lace glimmers, eyelets wink, a crepe scarf brushes his face . . . Aha! wait a minute, the operational scent in here is carbon tet, Jackson, and this wardrobe here's mostly props. "Well. Pretty snazzy."

"If that's a compliment, thank you."

Let Them thank me, babe. "An Americanism."

"You're the first American I've met."

"Hmm. You must've got out by way of that Arnhem, then, right?"

"My, you're quick," her tone warning him not to go after it. He sighs, ringing the snifter with his fingernail. In the dark room, with the paralyzed and silent sea at his back, he tries singing:

Too soon to know (fox-trot)

It's still too soon,

It's not as if we'd kissed and kindled,

Or chased the moon

Through midnight's hush, as dancing dwindled

Into quiet dawns,

Over secret lawns ...

Too soon to know

If all that breathless conversation

A sigh ago

Was more than casual flirtation

Doomed to drift away

Into misty gray . . .

How can we tell,

What can we see?

Love works its spells in hiding,

Quite past our own deciding ...

So who's to say

If joyful love is just beginning,

Or if its day

Just turned to night, as Earth went spinning?

Darling, maybe so—

It's TOO SOON TO KNOW.

Knowing what is expected of her, she waits with a vapid look till he's done, mellow close-harmony reeds humming a moment in the air, then reaches out a hand, melting toward him as he topples in slow-motion toward her mouth, feathers sliding, sleeves furling, ascending bare arms finely moongrained slipping around and up his back, her tacky tongue nervous as a moth, his hands rasping over sequins . . . then her breasts flatten against him as her forearms and hands go away folding up behind her to find a zipper, bring it snarling down her spineline. . . .

Katie's skin is whiter than the white garment she rises from. Born again . . . out the window he can almost see the spot where the devilfish crawled in from the rocks. She walks like a ballerina on her toes, thighs long and curving, Slothrop undoing belt, buttons, shoelaces hopping one foot at a time, oboy oboy, but the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is still a dark side, her ventral side, her

face, that he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the entire eye space till whites are gone and there's only the red animal reflection when the light comes to strike no telling when the light—

She has sunk to the deep bed, pulling him along, into down, satin, seraphic and floral embroidery, turning immediately to take his erection into her stretched fork, into a single vibration on which the night is tuning ... as they fuck she quakes, body strobing miles beneath him in cream and night-blue, all sound suppressed, eyes in crescents behind the gold lashes, jet earrings, long, octahedral, flying without a sound, beating against her cheeks, black sleet, his face above her unmoved, full of careful technique—is it for her? or wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on—she will move him, she will not be mounted by a plastic shell. . . her breathing has grown more hoarse, over a threshold into sound . . . thinking she might be close to coming he reaches a hand into her hair, tries to still her head, needing to see her face: this is suddenly a struggle, vicious and real— she will not surrender her face—and out of nowhere she does begin to come, and so does Slothrop.

For some reason now, she who never laughs has become the top surface of a deep, rising balloon of laughter. Later as she's about to go to sleep, she will also whisper, "Laughing," laughing again.

He will want to say, "Oh, They let you," but then again maybe They don't. But the Katje he's talking to is already gone, and presently his own eyes have closed.

Like a rocket whose valves, under remote control, open and close at prearranged moments, Slothrop, at a certain level of his re-entry into sleep, stops breathing through his nose and commences breathing through his mouth. This soon grows to snores that have been known to rattle storm windows, set shutters to swinging and chandeliers into violent tintinnabulation, yes indee-eed. ... At the first of these tonight, Katje wakes up belts him in the head with a pillow.

"None of that."

"Hmm."

"I'm a light sleeper. Every time you snore, you get hit with this," waving the pillow.

No kidding, either. The routine of snore, get belted with pillow, wake up, say hmm, fall back to sleep, goes on well into the morning. "Come on," finally, "cut it out."

"Mouth-breather!" she yells. He grabs his own pillow and swings it at her. She ducks, rolls, hits the deck feinting with her pillow, backing

toward the sideboard where the booze is. He doesn't see what she has in mind till she throws her pillow and picks up the Seltzer bottle.

The what, The Seltzer Bottle? What shit is this, now? What other interesting props have They thought to plant, and what other American reflexes are They after? Where's those banana cream pies, eh?

He dangles two pillows and watches her. "One more step," she giggles. Slothrop dives in goes to hit her across the ass whereupon she lets him have it with the Seltzer bottle, natch. The pillow bursts against one marble hip, moonlight in the room is choked with feathers and down and soon with hanging spray from jets of Seltzer. Slothrop keeps trying to grab the bottle. Slippery girl squirms away, gets behind a chair. Slothrop takes the brandy decanter off of the sideboard, un-stoppers it, and flings a clear, amber, pseudopodded glob across the room twice in and out of moonlight to splash around her neck, between her black-tipped breasts, down her flanks. "Bastard," hitting him with the Seltzer again. Settling feathers cling to their skins as they chase around the bedroom, her dappled body always retreating, often in this light, even at close range, impossible to see. Slothrop keeps falling over the furniture. "Boy, when I get my hands on you!" At which point she opens the door to the sitting room, skips through, slams it again so Slothrop runs right into it, bounces off, sez shit, opens the door to find her waving a big red damask tablecloth at him.

"What's this," inquires Slothrop.

"Magic!" she cries, and tosses the tablecloth over him, precisely wrinkling folds propagating swift as crystal faults, redly through the air. "Watch closely, while I make one American lieutenant disappear."

"Quit fooling," Slothrop flailing around trying to reach the outside again. "How can I watch closely when I'm in here." He can't find an edge anyplace and feels a little panicky.

"That's the idea," suddenly inside, next to him, lips at his nipples, hands fluttering among the hairs at the back of his neck, pulling him slowly to deep carpeting, "My little chickadee."

"Where'd you see that one, hey? Remember when he gets in bed w-with that goat?

"Oh, don't ask ..." This time it is a good-natured coordinated quickie, both kind of drowsy, covered with sticky feathers . . . after coming they lie close together, too liquefied to move, mm, damask and pile, it's so cozy and just as red as a womb in here. . . . Curled holding her feet in his, cock nestled in the warm cusp between her buttocks, Slothrop trying earnestly to breathe through his nose, they drop off to sleep.

Slothrop wakes to morning sunlight off of that Mediterranean, filtered through a palm outside the window, then red through the tablecloth, birds, water running upstairs. For a minute he lies coming awake, no hangover, still belonging Slothropless to some teeming cycle of departure and return. Katje lies, quick and warm, S'd against the S of himself, beginning to stir.

From the next room he hears the unmistakable sound of an Army belt buckle. "Somebody," he observes, catching on quickly, "must be robbing my pants." Feet patter by on the carpet, close to his head. Slothrop can hear his own small change jingling in his pockets. "Thief!" he yells, which wakes up Katje, turning to put her arms around him. Slothrop, managing now to locate the hem he couldn't find last night, scoots from under the tablecloth just in time to see a large foot in a two-tone shoe, coffee and indigo, vanish out the door. He runs into the bedroom, finds everything else he had on is gone too, down to shoes and skivvies.

"My clothes!" running back out past Katje now emerging from the damask and making a grab for his feet. Slothrop flings open the door, runs out in the hall, recollects that he is naked here, spots a laundry cart and grabs a purple satin bedsheet off of it, drapes it around him in a sort of toga. From the stairway comes a snicker and the pad-pad of crepe soles. "Aha!" cries Slothrop charging down the hall. The slippery sheet will not stay on. It flaps, slides off, gets underfoot. Up the stairs two at a time, only to find at the top another corridor, just as empty. Where is everybody?

From way down the hall, a tiny head appears around a corner, a tiny hand comes out and gives Slothrop the tiny finger. Unpleasant laughter reaches him a split second later, by which time he's sprinting toward it. At the stairs, he hears footsteps heading down. The Great Purple Kite races cursing down three flights, out a door and onto a little terrace, just in time to see somebody hop over a stone balustrade and vanish into the upper half of a thick tree, growing up from somewhere below. "Treed at last!" cries Slothrop.

First you have to get into the tree, then you can climb it easy as a ladder. Once inside, surrounded by pungent leaflight, Slothrop can't see farther than a couple of limbs. The tree is shaking though, so he reckons that that thief is in here someplace. Industriously he climbs on, sheet catching and tearing, skin stuck by needles, scraped by bark. His feet hurt. He's soon out of breath. Gradually the cone of green light narrows, grows brighter. Close to the top, Slothrop notes a saw-cut or something partway through the trunk, but doesn't stop to pon-

der what it might mean till he's reached the very top of the tree and clings swaying, enjoying the fine view of the harbor and headland, paint-blue sea, whitecaps, storm gathering off at the horizon, the tops of people's heads moving around far below. Gee. Down the trunk he hears the sound of wood beginning to crack, and feels vibration here in his slender perch.

"Aw, hey . . ." That sneak. He climbed down the tree, not up! He's down there now, watching! They knew Slothrop would choose up, not down—they were counting on that damned American reflex all right, bad guy in a chase always heads up—why up? and they sawed the trunk nearly through, a-and now—

They? They?

"Well," opines Slothrop, "I had better, uh . . ." About then the point of the tree cracks through, and with a great rustle and whoosh, a whirl of dark branches and needles breaking him up into a few thousand sharp falling pieces, down topples Slothrop, bouncing from limb to limb, trying to hold the purple sheet over his head for a parachute. Oof. Nnhh. About halfway to the ground, terrace-level or so, he happens to look down, and there observes many senior officers in uniform and plump ladies in white batiste frocks and flowered hats. They are playing croquet. It appears Slothrop will land somewhere in their midst. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine a tropical island, a secure room, where this cannot be happening. He opens them about the time he hits the ground. In the silence, before he can even register pain, comes the loud thock of wood hitting wood. A bright-yellow striped ball conies rolling past an inch from Slothrop's nose and on out of sight, followed a second later by a burst of congratulations, ladies enthusiastic, footfalls heading his way. Seems he's, unnhh, wrenched his back a little, but doesn't much feel like moving anyhow. Presently the sky is obscured by faces of some General and Teddy Bloat, gazing curiously down.

"It's Slothrop," sez Bloat, "and he's wearing a purple sheet."

"What's this my lad," inquires the General, "costume theatricals, eh?" He is joined by a pair of ladies beaming at, or perhaps through, Slothrop.

"Whom are you talking to, General?"

"That blighter in the toga," replies the General, "who is lying between me and my next wicket."

"Why how extraordinary, Rowena," turning to her companion, "do you see a 'blighter in a toga'?"

"Goodness no, Jewel," replies blithe Rowena. "/ believe the General has been drinking." The ladies begin to giggle.