V-2 - Chapter 9 - The Last Gods on Earth

[Robin Landseadel]

	Every step of the way we walk the line
	Your days are numbered, so are mine
	Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape
	We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape

	City’s just a jungle; more games to play
	Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away
	I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town
	I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

	Got nothin' for you, I had nothin' before
	Don’t even have anything for myself anymore
	Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down
	Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around

	All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
	Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
	Only one thing I did wrong
	Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

I guess if one was to conjure up a place where there was a U.S.  
version of Foppl's siege party, Mississippi would be as likely a place  
as any. Any sensitive soul would find their way out soon enough. We've  
had premonitions of Kurt escaping through the stained glass window for  
quite a few pages now:

		Later on, finding the turret oppressive, Mondaugen
	exited through the window and wandered the gables,
	corridors and stairways of the villa till the moon was down. . .

Halloween XIV, the sequel! Is the turret's window the depraved stained- 
glass window, the one with Christian martyrs being eviscerated by wild  
beasts? And what an image later, with Old Testament Ur-Mother Sarah  
eviscerated by wild beasts, "strand wolves" taking away any and all  
future potential for nurturing right at the tribes source . .

	. . . Early in the morning, with only the nacreous beginnings
	of a dawn visible out over the Kalahari, he came around a
	brick wall and entered a small hopyard. Hanging over the
	rows, each wrist attached to a different stringing-wire, feet
	dangling over young hops already side with downy mildew,
	was another Bondel, perhaps Foppl's last. Below, dancing
	about the body and flicking its buttocks with a sjambok, was
	old Godolphin. Vera Meroving stood by his side and they
	appeared to have exchanged clothing. Godolphin, keeping
	time with the sjambok, launched quaveringly into a reprise
	of Down by the Summertime Sea.

These songs appear to underscore the moral depravity of a scene by  
turning it into song and dance routine, a-la Tom Leher. Behind all the  
exploration of these occluded veins of history, Pynchon's still a song  
and dance man at heart. Romance and Grand Guignol may be singing the  
top line, but it's the same old jokester dropping bombs in the rhythm  
section. Down by the Summertime Sea pops up during the conversation  
between "V." and Godolphin, right after Godolphin sighs --

		"The only trouble is that now, nearing eighty, I keep
	discovering that damned war has made the world older
	than I. The world frowns now on youth in a vacuum, it
	insists youth be turned-to, utilized, exploited. No time for
	pranks. No more Vheissus. Ah, well." And to a catchy,
	rather syncopated fox-trot tune, he sang. . .

		Once we could flirt and spoon,
		Down by the summertime sea.
		Your aunt Iphigenia found it terribly odd
		To see us stealing a kiss there on the Promenade, oh
		You weren't past seventeen,
		Parasol-pretty for me;

		Ah, could we but return to that season of light,
		With our puppy-love soaring like a gay summer kite,
		When it wasn't yet time to think of autumn, or night;
		Down by the summertime sea.

So we have an unheard refrain of "Down By the Summertime Sea"  
mindlessly sung by Godolphin as he tortures a local, echoing the  
previous scene with Vera. This initiates Mondaugen's exit from the  
siege party

		Mondaugen this time withdrew, preferring at last
	neither to watch nor to listen. Instead he returned to the
	turret and gathered up his log books, oscillograms and
	a small knapsack of clothing and toilet articles. He
	sneaked downstairs and went out by a French window; . . .

Another exit through a window, but not the depraved stained-glass  
window, the one with Christian martyrs being eviscerated by wild  
beasts, something more in line with traditional farce.

	. .  located a long plank at the rear of the house and
	dragged it to the ravine. Foppl and guests had been
	somehow alerted to his departure. They crowded the
	windows; some sat out on the balconies and roof, some
	came to the veranda to watch. With a final grunt
	Mondaugen dropped the plank across a narrow part of
	the ravine. As he was working his way gingerly across,
	trying not to look down at the tiny stream two hundred
	feet below, the accordion began a slow sad tango, as if
	piping him ashore. This soon modulated into a rousing
	valediction, which they all sang in chorus:

		Why are you leaving the party so early,
		Just when it was getting good?
  		Were the crowds and the laughter just a little too tame,
		Did the girl you had your eye on go and forfeit the game?
  			o tell me
  		Where is there music any gayer than ours, and tell me
		Where are wine and ladies in such ample supply?
  		If you know a better party in the Southwest
  			Protectorate,
  		Tell us and we'll drop on by
		(Right after this one)
		Tell us and we'll drop on by.

		He reached the other side, adjusted the knapsack --
	began to trudge toward a distant clump of trees. After a
	few-hundred yards he decided to look back after all. They
	still watched him and their hush now was a part of the
	same that hung over all the scrubland. The morning's sun
	bleached their faces a Faschingwhite he remembered
	seeing in another place. They gazed across the ravine
	dehumanized and aloof, as if they were the last gods
	on earth.
	V., 295/297

Listen to Bruckner's Eighth often enough, you might feel the same.

Mondaugen's next companion on the road is a one-armed Bondel on a  
donkey, the trio moving across another one of those Waste Lands on  
their way back to the Atlantic and a far better land beyond that. For  
all of Kurt's skills as an auditor of foreign sounds, we leave him  
with the Bondel singing in a Hottentot dialect that he can't understand.


	Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay

	You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way

	Only one thing I did wrong

	Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

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	But I do want to thank the bureau…I mean the committee, the

	organization for the $10,000 they’ve given out…tonight they

	made over $400,000 and I think that I have another appointment.

	I would like to stay here, but for the sake of brevity I must leave.

	I do want to thank you, I want to thank Studs TurKAL. I want to

	thank Mr. Knopf who just ran through the auditorium and I want to

	thank Breshnev, Kissinger – acting President of the Unites States

	– and also want to thank Truman Capote and thank you.