Read Online Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - Free Book Online Page A

insane really even to think of as any betrayal of Clive. . . .
    Convenient as hell for her, anyway. Roger Mexico is now going through much the same
     thing with Jessica, the Other Chap in this case being known as Beaver. Pirate has
     looked on but never talked about it to Mexico. Yes he is waiting, to see if it will
     end for Roger the same way, part of him, never so cheery as at the spectacle of another’s
     misfortune, rooting for Beaver and all that he, like Clive, stands for, to win out.
     But another part—an alternate self?—one that he mustn’t be quick to call “decent”—does
seem
to want for Roger what Pirate himself lost. . . .
    “You
are
a pirate,” she’d whispered the last day—neither of them knew it was the last day—“you’ve
     come and taken me off on your pirate ship. A girl of good family and the usual repressions.
     You’ve raped me. And I’m the Red Bitch of the High Seas. . . .” A lovely game. Pirate
     wished she’d thought it up sooner. Fucking the last (already the last) day’s light
     away down afternoon to dusk, hours of fucking, too in love with it to uncouple, they
     noticed how the borrowed room rocked gently, the ceiling obligingly came down a foot,
     lamps swayed from their fittings, some fraction of the Thameside traffic provided
     salty cries over the water, and nautical bells. . . .
    But back over their lowering sky-sea behind, Government hounds were on the track—drawing
     closer, the cutters are coming, the cutters and the sleek hermaphrodites of the law,
     agents who, being old hands, will settle for her safe return, won’t insist on his
     execution or capture. Their logic is sound: give him a bad enough wound and he’ll
     come round, round to the ways of this hard-boiled old egg of world and timetables,
     cycling night to compromise night. . . .
    He left her at Waterloo Station. A gala crowd was there, to see Fred Roper’s Company
     of Wonder Midgets off to an imperial fair in Johannesburg, South Africa. Midgets in
     their dark winter clothes, exquisite little frocks and nip-waisted overcoats, were
     running all over the station, gobbling their bonvoyage chocolates and lining up for
     news photos. Scorpia’s talc-white face, through the last window, across the last gate,
     was a blow to his heart. A flurry of giggles and best wishes arose from the Wonder
     Midgets and their admirers. Well, thought Pirate, guess I’ll go back in the Army. . . .
    • • • • • • •
    They’re bound eastward now, Roger peering over the wheel, hunched Dracula-style inside
     his Burberry, Jessica with bright millions of droplets still clinging in soft net
     to her shoulders and sleeves of drab wool. They want to be together, in bed, at rest,
     in love, and instead it’s eastward tonight and south of the Thames to rendezvous with
     a certain high-class vivisectionist before the clock of St. Felix chimes one. And
     when the mice run down, who knows tonight but what they’ve run for good?
    Her face against the breath-fogged window has become another dimness, another light-trick
     of the winter. Beyond her, the white fracture of the rain passes. “Why does he go
     out and pinch all his dogs in person? He’s an administrator, isn’t he? Wouldn’t he
     hire a boy or something?”
    “We call them ‘staff,’” Roger replies, “and I don’t know why Pointsman does anything
     he does, he’s a Pavlovian, love. He’s a Royal Fellow. What am I supposed to know about
     any of those people? They’re as difficult as the lot back in Snoxall’s.”
    They’re both of them peevish tonight, whippy as sheets of glass improperly annealed,
     ready to go smash at any indefinite touch in a whining matrix of stresses—
    “Poor Roger, poor lamb, he’s having an awful war.”
    “All right,” his head shaking, a fuming b or p that refuses to explode, “ahh, you’re
     so clever aren’t you,” raving Roger, hands off the wheel to help the words out,