from Gravity’s Rainbow

THOMAS PYNCHON

Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is one of the most bizarre and extraordinary novels of the twentieth century. It is gigantic and taxing, and few who begin it finish. I only succeeded in the rush of a forty-eight-hour delirium—boxer-shorted and unshaven in a squalid Parisian chambre de bonne with a pot of lentils between my knees. By the book’s end I was fully participating in the manic paranoia that fueled its composition, and when I staggered out onto the brightly lit street, I had a very difficult time figuring out what I was supposed to do next.

Gravity’s Rainbow is one of those handful of novels, more a world than a book, that overwhelms you with the totality of its vision, immersing you well above the eyeballs. It’s also a very difficult novel to pin down: on the one hand an act of extreme dementia, furiously interlarded with layers of conspiracy and machination; on the other, a consummate genre-bender, interchanging moments of Three Stooges–like farce with hard science, statistical theory, and meticulous wartime history. It’s the kind of book writers probably shouldn’t read, considering the effects on the ego of having one’s achievements monumentally dwarfed.

But all eulogizing aside, the scene I’ve excerpted is not for the squeamish. Rarely does a writer of true greatness emerge from the legions of scribblers, rarer still does such a writer address the furthest frontiers of what most people think unthinkable. Here is one of those exceptional moments.

The cell is in semidarkness, with only a scented candle burning back in a corner that seems miles away. She waits for him in a tall Adam chair, white body and black uniform-of-the-night. He drops to his knees.

“Domina Nocturna . . . shining mother and last love . . . your servant Ernest Pudding reporting as ordered.”

. . . She is naked now, except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels. Her only jewelry is a silver ring with an artificial ruby not cut to facets but still in the original boule, an arrogant gout of blood, extended now, waiting his kiss.

His clipped moustache bristles, trembling, across her fingers. She has filed her nails to long points and polished them the same red as her ruby. Their ruby. In this light the nails are almost black. “That’s enough. Get ready.”

. . . He is on his knees again, bare as a baby. His old man’s flesh creeps coarse-grained in the light from the candle. Old scars and new welts group here and there over his skin. His penis stands at present arms. She smiles. At her command, he crawls forward to kiss her boots. He smells wax and leather, and can feel her toes flexing beneath his tongue, through the black skin . . . Some nights she’s gagged him with a ceremonial sash, bound him with a goldtasseled fourragère or his own Sam Browne. But tonight he lies humped on the floor at her feet, his withered ass elevated for the cane, bound by nothing but his need for pain, for something real, something pure. They have taken him so far from his simple nerves. They have stuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet . . . no it’s not guilt here, not so much amazement— that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him her communiqués of vertigo, nausea and pain . . . Above all, pain. The clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth . . .

He struggles to his knees to kiss the instrument. She stands over him now, legs astride, pelvis cocked forward, fur cape held apart on her hips. He dares to gaze up at her cunt, that fearful vortex. Her pubic hair has been dyed black for the occasion. He sighs, and lets escape a small shameful groan.

“Ah . . . yes, I know.” She laughs. “Poor mortal Brigadier, I know. It is my last mystery,” stroking with fingernails her labia, “you cannot ask a woman to reveal her last mystery, no, can you?”

“Please . . .”

“No. Not tonight. Kneel here and take what I give you.”

. . . Her shadow covers his face and upper torso, her leather boots creak softly as thigh and abdominal muscles move, and then in a rush she begins to piss. He opens his mouth to catch the stream, choking, trying to keep swallowing, feeling warm urine dribble out the corners of his mouth and down his neck and shoulders, submerged in the hissing storm. When she’s done he licks the last few drops from his lips. More cling, golden clear, to the glossy hairs of her quim. Her face, looming between her bare breasts, is smooth as steel.

She turns. “Hold up my fur.” He obeys. “Be careful. Don’t touch my skin.” Earlier in this game she was nervous, constipated, wondering if this was anything like male impotence. But thoughtful Pointsman, anticipating this, has been sending laxative pills with her meals. Now her intestines whine softly, and she feels shit begin to slide down and out. He kneels with his arms up holding the rich cape. A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks. He spreads his knees, awkwardly, until he can feel the leather of her boots. He leans forward to surround the hot turd with his lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side . . . The stink of shit floods his nose, gathering him, surrounding. It is the smell of Passchendaele, of the Salient. Mixed with the mud, and the putrefaction of corpses, it was the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem. The turd slides into his mouth, down to his gullet. He gags, but bravely clamps his teeth shut. Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters somewhere, unseen, untasted—risen now and backed in the bitter intestinal oven to bread we know, bread that’s light as domestic comfort, secret as death in bed . . . Spasms in his throat continue. The pain is terrible. With his tongue he mashes shit against the roof of his mouth and begins to chew, thickly now, the only sound in the room . . .

There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she’ll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.

The Brigadier comes quickly. The rich smell of semen fills the room like smoke.

“Now go.”