Infinite jest - David Wallace

‘This is your story. This is your first step.’

Marathe shrugged. ‘My legs, my nose and oral. All as a consequence of the progression. At the Chit Chat, I admit all the things, I realize I am addicted desperately.’ Marathe was trying to decide if to find ways to make the authority woman briefly leave the office, so that Marathe might rapidly arm-climb up to the cabinet to regard the smiling cases of cartridge closely before the cabinet’s locking. Or instead also to return on pretext to remain and hang roundly in the living room for waiting persons, to find a glimpse of who is this mentioned resident with her female U.H.I.D. veil; for this is the purpose of coming to demi-maisons M. Fortier gave. Marathe could give the fact of the cartridges to Fortier and the veiled girl to Steeply, or oppositely. The fatigue returned. But Steeply, before committing to overt action, will wish for confirmation that those in the cabinet were items of the true Entertainment, not the blank and joking F.L.Q. displays. There was truly a faint whirring noise coming from the head, he imagined. Marathe’s sidearm sat in its holster under the seat of him, hidden by the plaid-colored blanket of his lap. To easily kill the person in authority was inutile at this time of not glimpsing the girl, he had decided, plus impractical of surrounding witness. Marathe’s fauteuil could travel 45 kph on a level surface over short distance. The authority figure liked to comb at the bright hair with her claw of the deformed hand. She was telling Marathe the false addict that she found his honesty encouraging and saying to sign these forms, for releasing. As Marathe signed slowly the name of a deceased Health-Benefits administrator at the Caisse de Depot et Placement,[313]the woman began to ask about what lengths he believed he was willing to go to.

The whole family was lousy with secrets, she’d decided, was part of the nonturkey dinner’s sadness. From each other, themselves, itself. A big one being this pretense that overt eccentricity was the same as openness. I.e. that they were all ‘exactly as crazy as they seem’ — the punter’s phrase.

We’re all a lot more intuitive about our lovers’ families than we are about our own families, she knew. Charlotte Treat’s face glistened; her cheek’s deep scars were a more violent red than the rest. Her ribs under the wet Michelob Dry T-shirt were starting to stand out, her neck to get that skinny stemmy look of katexia. She looked like a ravaged fowl. Kate Gompert’s bed sat unmade, a copy of some yellow paperback called Feeling Good open facedown on the mattress and starting to curl. Joelle had this weird fear that Gompert, who made Joelle extremely nervous at the best of times, would come home and walk in and find Joelle cleaning with her hair in a kerchief and veil damply clinging. She used the last of the room’s Kleenex dusting all five bedside tables, wiping in careful rings around objects she wasn’t to touch.

There was then some trickiness in the situation when the demi-maison’s woman offered the extension of a place for Marathe. Desperately addicted Henri the Swiss could sleep upon the Convertisofa in the rear office this very P.M., she said, if he was willing to endure the mess and sometimes insects of the rear office. The woman had a ripe spot of sympathique for the disableds, Marathe could see. For trickiness in the situation, no lines had been prepared by Fortier to defer this offer of the extension of the spot of treatment in the demi-maìson. The woman in authority smiled that she could see in his playing with the fauteuil’s wheels the addicted struggle between desperation and denial, she said. Marathe was rapidly calculating should he falsely accept and remain here for one night to observe for himself the description of the veiled patient from U.H.I.D., against should he exit and roll like no person’s business to the nearest place of private telephoning to alert the A.F.R. at the shop that here at this demi-maison were of possibility real cartridges of the Entertainment, perhaps including a duplicatable Master or the anti-samizdat remedy cartridge of F.L.Q.’s allegation, to return to chez Antitoi and return later in squeaking force to the demi-maison and acquire both the cartridges and the veiled performer, if the U.H.I.D. patient of treatment is revealed as the disguised performer. The engineer of radio had spoken volubly of this person’s veil and screen. Or calculating also whether to telephone not Antitoi Entertainent but the 24-hour costless prefix of M./Mlle. Steeply and convey the very same information instead, finally, first, to Bureau des Services sans Spécificité, placing bets on O.N.A.N. and against Fortier, casting his lots finally with one side only, conveying his restenotic wife and entertainment-hungry children down from St.-Remi-d’Amherst’s Convexity-ravaged wastes to live with him the rest of their lives down here among U.S.A.’s confusion of choices, demanding hidden protection from Steeply and high-income medical care for the heart- and head-difficulties of beloved Gertraude.

Or to tell this figure of medical authority to look out behind for a large spider and thereupon snap her slim neck with one hand and use the telephone console in this office to summon Fortier and an A.F.R. elite detail directly to this demi-maison. Or else to summon directly Steeply and the white-suiting forces of O.N.A.N. The authority made a spire of her fingers beneath her chin and gazed at Marathe’s cocked head with a face of respect and sympathy but not solicitude, also which made snapping her neck with one hand seem a sad choice for Marathe. He pretended that it was necessary to sniff. Mssrs. Fortier and Broullîme, the A.F.R. others he had known well since the days of when they stood together tensed at the crossings of many trains, beneath the sky’s moon — none of them sensed truly that Marathe has lost the belly for this type of work. That Marathe, he must fight the nausea of the stomach as he pushed the sharpened handle of the manche a balai broomstick through the Antitoi’s insides during the technical interview of the Antitoi, and later had vomited out into the alley under secrecy. One of the Office’s dogs chewed at its haunch with great ferocity, in misery. In the U.S.A. of O.N.A.N., M./Mlle. Hugh/Helen Steeply of the clandestine U.S.O.U.S./U.S.B.S.S. would hide the family of Marathe in obscure suburban locales, with papers of identity fashioned by specialists in above reproach and no suspicion; and Marathe, his familiarity with the knowledge of Québecois insurgency would be comfortably rewarded once Notre Rai Pays seceded to alone draw down the wrath of chanteur-fou Gentle’s anger. The A.F.R.’s triumph of dissemination of the lethal Entertainment would ensure Marathe’s valuable welcome by Gentle and his wife’s beloved treatments for the ventricle and lack of skull. Marathe pictured Gertraude with a helmet and hook of gold, breathing easily through expensive tubes. The variable of calculus was how long to remain and work for dissemination against when to jump to the safety of American welcome. Fortier’s wrath would be implacable at Marathe’s ‘perdant son coeur,’[314]and it may be far wiser of waiting until Quebec had been evicted and the A.F.R. were fully engaged to reveal his quadrupling for O.N.A.N., Marathe.

Knocking at the Office’s door at the same time as entering came a young girl with missing teeth, radiating coldness from the exterior outside the demi-maison, leaning only her upper half of the body into the office through the doorway she had opened.

‘Clocking in, boss,’ the young girl stated in the flat nasality of Boston U.S.A.

The woman in authority smiled in return. ‘Two more to interview, John-ette, then I’m off.’

‘Pisser.’

‘Can you let the people in from the shed when they come for Mrs. Lopate?’

The young and inclined girl nodded her slim head. In a nostril a generic diaper-pin was transpercé, which glittered in the fluorescence of the light as she nodded. ‘And Janice says she’s screwing out of here now and any message for her before she goes.’ The authority negated with her head at this. The young girl in the door looked down upon Marathe and said ‘Hey’ or ‘Eh’ in a greeting of neutral emotions. Marathe smiled with desperation and pretended to sniff. Visible smoke’s odor came through the open door from the noisy salon beyond it. Marathe decided firmly against the snapping of any necks upon this visit, because of bodies leaning with suddenness into the office unexpectedly. The torso of the person began to withdraw as suddenly the authority looked up and stated ‘Oh and Johnette?’

The door swung more open once more as the returned upper half replied ‘Yo.’

‘Do me a favor? Clenette H. brought some donie-cartridges down from E.T.A. this afternoon?’

‘Let me guess.’

‘The natives are restless.’ The authority laughed aloud. ‘Something new.’

The torso laughed as well. ‘Did you see McDade’s watching that Korean thing again out here?’

‘So can you just run them through after lights-out, as many as you can, check and make sure they’re appropriate?’

‘No skin, no substances, light drinking only,’ the young girl said in the manner of reviewing the rehearsal of something learned.

‘As many as you can get through, and leave them on Janice’s desk, and I’ll have her put them out at the start of the day-shift tomorrow.’

The young girl of substitute authority made a curious circle with two of her fingers in the air of the doorway. Some kind of signal of the hand to the chief authority. Every finger of the hand of the girl wore a ring of different type. ‘The natives’ll be grateful, for once.’

‘They’re in the cabinet with the intakes,’ the authority told her.

‘I’ll watch them during Dream Duty, as many as there’s time.’

‘And Johnette?’

Once more the torso reextended inward.

The woman with authority said ‘And keep Emil and Wade from tormenting David K., will you please?’

Marathe smiled largely as the door closed entirely and the authority made a small motion of apologies for being interrupted. ‘I do not have these meanings donie and natives, if I may boldly ask,’ he said. ‘Nor etier.’

A laugh of friendliness. It occurred to Marathe that this was a happy person. ‘Donies are donated goods. Which we depend on more than we’d like. The residents and alums are always on the lookout. Sometimes we call the current residents the natives; we mean it as affectionate. That was Johnette, she’s living[315] staff. We’ve got two living staff, alums of the house. One’s under the weather, but Johnette’s — you’ll like Johnette. Johnette’s a keeper. E.T.A. is letters, E-T-A.’

Marathe pretended to laugh aloud. ‘I beg a pardon, for I thought some etier in the pronunciation of my native Swiss.’

The authority smiled with understanding. ‘E.T.A.’s a private school. We usually get some residents on up there, part-time. It’s just up the hill.’ Seeing the deep intake of veil which his inhaling caused for one moment only, the authority expressed surprise of the face and said ‘But you did know Ennet’s a working house. Residents have a month to find work, normally.’ Exhaling with care, Marathe gestured faintly as in But of course.

11 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT

Part of Mario’s footage for the documentary they’re letting him do on this fall’s E.T.A. consists of Mario just walking around different parts of the Academy with the Bolex H64 camera strapped to his head and joined by coax cable to the foot-treadle, which he holds against his sweatered chest with one hand and operates with the other. At 2100 at night it’s cold out. The Center Courts are brightly lit, but only one court is being used, Gretchen Holt and Jolene Criess still winding up some sort of marathon challenge from the P.M. session, the hands around their grips bluish and sweaty hair frozen into electrified spikes, pausing between points to blow noses on sleeves, wearing so many layers of sweats they look barrel-bodied out there, and Mario doesn’t bother with the change in film-speed he’d need to record them through the steamed window of Schtitt’s room, where he is. The room’s noise is deafening.

Coach Schtitt’s room is 106, next to his office on the first floor of Comm.-Ad., past Dr. Rusk’s office and down a two-corner hall from the lobby.

It’s a big empty room, built for its stereo. Hardwood floor in need of sanding, a wooden chair and a cane chair, an army cot. A little low table just big enough for Schtitt’s pipe rack. A folding card table folded up and leaning against the wall. Acoustic damping-tile on all the walls and nothing decorative hanging or mounted on the walls. Acoustic tiling on the ceiling also, with a bare overhead light with a long chain mounted in a dirty ceiling fan with a short chain. The fan never rotates but sometimes emits a sound of faulty wiring. There’s a faint odor of Magic Marker in the room. There is nothing upholstered, no pillow on the cot, nothing soft to absorb or deflect the sound of the equipment stacked on the floor, the black Germanness of a top-shelf sound system, a Mario-sized speaker in each corner of the room with the cloth cover removed so each woofer’s cone is exposed and mightily throbbing. Schtitt’s room is soundproofed. The window faces the Center Courts, the transom and observatory directly overhead and mangling the shadows of the courts’ lights. The window is right over the radiator, which when the stereo is off makes odd hollow ringing clanky clunks as if someone deep underground were having at the pipes with a hammer. The cold window over the radiator is steamed and trembles slightly with Wagnerian bass.

Gerhardt Schtitt is asleep in the cane chair in the middle of the empty room, his head thrown back and arms hanging, hands treed with arteries you can see his slow pulse in. His feet are stolidly on the floor, his knees spread way out wide, the way Schtitt always has to sit, on account of his varicoceles. His mouth is partly open and a dead pipe hangs at an alarming angle from its corner. Mario records him sleeping for a little while, looking very old and white and frail, yet also obscenely fit. What’s on and making the window shiver and condensed droplets gather and run in little bullet-headed lines down the glass is a duet that keeps climbing in pitch and emotion: a German second tenor and a German soprano are either very happy or very unhappy or both. Mario’s ears are extremely sensitive. Schtitt sleeps only amid excruciatingly loud European opera. He’s shared with Mario several different tales of grim childhood experiences at a BMW-sponsored ‘Quality-Control-Orientated’ Austrian Akademie to account for his REM-peculiarities. The soprano leaves the baritone and goes up to a high D and just hangs there, either shattered or ecstatic. Schtitt doesn’t stir, not even when Mario falls twice, loudly, trying to get to the door with his hands over his ears.