PNS 289

Her name turns out to be Geli Tripping, and the balalaika belongs to a Soviet intelligence officer named Tchitcherine. In a way, Geli does too -- part-time, anyhow. Seems this Tchitcherine maintains a harem, a girl in every rocket-town in the Zone. Yup, another rocket maniac. Slothrop feels like a tourist.

Geli talks about her young man. They sit in her roofless room drinking a pale wine known hereabouts as Nordhäuser Schattensaft. Overhead, black birds with yellow beaks lace the sky, looping in the sunlight from their nests up in the mountain castles and down in the city ruins. Far away, perhaps in the marketplace, a truck convoy is idling all its engines, the smell of exhaust winding over the maze of walls, where moss creeps, water oozes, roaches seek purchase walls that baffle the motor sound so that it seems to come from all directions.

She's thin, a bit awkward, very young. Nowhere in her eyes is there any sign of corrosion -- she might have spent all her War roofed and secure, tranquil, playing with small forest animals in a rear area someplace. Her song, she admits, sighing, is mostly wishful thinking. "When he's away, he's away. When you came in I almost thought you were Tchitcherine."

"Nope. Just a hard-working newshound, is all. No rockets, no harems."

"It's an arrangement," she tells him. "It's so unorganized out here. There have to be arrangements. You'll find out." Indeed he will -- he'll find thousands of arrangements, for warmth, love, food, simple movement along roads, tracks, and canals. Even G-5, living its fantasy of being the only government in Germany now, is just the arrangement for being victorious, is all. No more or less real than all these others so private, silent, and lost to History. Slothrop, though he doesn't know it yet, is as properly constituted a state as any other in the Zone these days. Not paranoia. Just how it is. Temporary alliances, lost and undone. He and Geli reach their arrangement hidden from the occupied streets by remnants of walls, in an old fourposter bed facing a dark pier glass. Out the roof that isn't there he can see a long tree-covered mountain ascending. Wine on her breath, nests of down in the hollows of her arms, thighs with the spring of saplings in wind. He's barely inside her before she comes, a fantasy about Tchitcherine in progress, clear and touchingly, across her face. This irritates Slothrop, but doesn't keep him from coming himself.

The foolishness begins immediately on detumescence, amusing questions like, what kind of word has gone out to keep everybody away from Geli but me? Or, is it that something about me reminds her of Tchitcherine, and if so, what? And, say, where's that Tchitcherine right now? He dozes off, is roused by her lips, fingers, dewy legs sliding along his. The sun jumps across their section of sky, gets eclipsed by a breast, is reflected out of her child's eyes ... then clouds, rain for which she puts up a green tarp with tassels she's sewn on, canopy style ... rain sluices down off the tassels, cold and loud. Night. She feeds him boiled cabbage with an old heirloom of a spoon with a crest on it. They drink more of that wine. Shadows are soft verdigris. The rain has stopped. Somewhere kids go booting an empty gas can over the cobblestones.

Something comes flapping in out of the sky: talons scrabble along the top of the canopy. "What's that?" half awake and she's got the covers again, c'mon Geli ....

"My owl," sez Geli. "Wernher. There's a candy bar in the top drawer of the chiffonier, Liebchen, would you mind feeding him?"

Liebchen indeed. Staggering off the bed,vertical for the first time all day, Slothrop removes a Baby Ruth from its wrapper, clears his throat, decides not to ask her how she came by it because he knows, and lobs the thing up on the canopy for that Wernher. Soon, lying together again, they hear peanuts crunching, and a clacking beak.

"Candy bars," Slothrop grouches. "What's the matter with him? Don't you know he's supposed to be out foraging, for live mice or some shit? You've turned him into a house owl."

"You're pretty lazy yourself." Baby fingers creeping down along his ribs.

"Well -- I bet -- cut it out -- I bet that Tchitcherine doesn't have to get up and feed that owl."

She cools, the hand stopping where it is. "He loves Tchitcherine. He never comes to be fed unless Tchitcherine's here."

Slothrop's turn to cool. More correctly, freeze. "Uh, but, you don't mean that Tchitcherine is actually, uh ..."

"He was supposed to be," sighing.

"Oh. When?"

"This morning. He's late. It happens."

Slothrop's off the bed halfway across the room with a softoff, one sock on and the other in his teeth, head through one armhole of his undershirt, fly zipper jammed, yelling shit.

"My brave Englishman," she drawls.

"Why didn't you bring this up earlier, Geli, huh?"

"Oh, come back. It's nighttime, he's with a woman someplace. He can't sleep alone."

"I hope you can."

"Hush. Come here. You can't go out with nothing on your feet. I'll give you a pair of his old boots and tell you all his secrets."

"Secrets?" Look out, Slothrop. "Why should I want to know --"

"You're not a war correspondent."

"Why does everybody keep saying that? Nobody believes me. Of course I'm a war correspondent." Shaking the brassard at her. "Can't you read. Sez 'War Correspondent.' I even have a mustache, here, don't I? Just like that Ernest Hemingway."

"Oh. Then I imagine you wouldn't be looking for Rocket Number 00000 after all. It was just a silly idea I had. I'm sorry."

Oh boy, am I gonna get out of here, sez Slothrop to himself , this is a badger game if I ever saw one, man. Who else would be interested in the one rocket out of 6000 that carried the Imipolex Gravy device?

"And you couldn1t care less about the Schwarzgerät, either," she keeps on. She keeps on.

"The what?"

"They also called it S-Gerät."

Next higher assembly, Slothrop, remember? Wernher, up on the canopy, is hooting. A signal to that Tchitcherine, no doubt.

Paranoids are not paranoids (Proverb 5) because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberatly into paranoid situations.

"Now how on earth," elaboratly uncorking a fresh bottle of Nordhäusar Schattensaft, thopp, best Cary Grant imitation he can summon with bowels so echoing tight, suavely refilling glasses, handing one to her, "would a sweet, young, thing, like you, know anything, about rocket, hahd-weah?"

"I read Vaslav's mail," as if it's a dumb question, which it is.

"You shouldn't be blabbing to random strangers like this. If he finds out, he'll murder you."

"I like you. I like intrigue. I like playing."

"Maybe you like to get people in trouble."

"All right." Out with the lower lip.

"O.K., O.K., tell me about it. But I don't know if the Guardian will even be interested. My editors are a rather stuffy lot, you know."

Goose bumps crowd her bare little breasts. "I posed once for a rocket insignia. Perhaps you've seen it. A pretty young witch straddling an A4. Carrying her obsolete broom over her shoulder. I was voted the Sweetheart of 3/Art. Abt. (mot) 485."

"Are you a real witch?"

"I think I have tendencies. Have you been up to the Brocken yet?"

"Just hit town, actually."

"I've been up there every Walpurgisnacht since I had my first period. I'll take you, if you like."

"Tell me about this, this 'Schwarzgerät.'"

"I thought you weren't interested."

"How can I know if I'm interested or not if I don't even know what I'm supposed or supposed not to be interested in?"

"You must be a correspondent. You have a way with words."

Tchitcherine comes roaring through the window, a Nagant blazing in his fist. Tchitcherine lands in a parachute and fells Slothrop with one judo chop. Tchitcherine drives a Stalin tank right into the room, and blasts Slothrop with a 76 mm shell. Thanks for stalling him, Liebchen, he was a spy, well, cheerio, I'm off to Peenemünde and a nubile Polish wench with tits like vanilla ice cream, check you out later.

"I have to go, I think," Slothrop sez, "typewriter needs a new ribbon, gotta sharpen pencils, you know how it is --"

"I told you, he won't be here tonight."

"Why? Is he out after that Schwarzgerät, eh?"

"No. He hasn't heard the latest. The message came in from Stettin yesterday."

"In clear, of course."

"Why not?"

"Couldn't be very important."

"It's for sale."

"The message?"

"The S-Gerät, you pill. A man in Switzerland can get it. Half a million Swiss francs, if you're in the market. He waits on the Strand-Promenade, every day till noon. He'll be wearing a white suit."

Oh yeah? "Blodgett Waxwing."

"It didn't give the name. But I don't think it1s Waxwing. He sticks close to the Mediterranean."

"You get around."

"Waxwing is already a legend around the Zone. So is Tchitcherine. For all I know, so are you. What was your name?"

"Cary Grant. Ge-li, Ge-li, Ge-li .... Listen, Swine münde, that's in the Soviet zone, ain't it."

"You sound like a German. Forget frontiers now. Forget subdivisions. There aren't any."

"There are soldiers."

"That's right." Staring at him. "But that's different."

"Oh."

"You'll learn. It's all been suspended. Vaslav calls it an 'interregnum.' You only have to flow along with it."

"Gotta flow outa here now, kid. Thanx for the info, and a tip of the Scuffling hat to ya --"

"Please stay." Curled on the bed, her eyes about to spill over with tears. Aw, shit, Slothrop you sucker ... but she's just a little kid.... "Come here...."

the minute he puts it in, though, she goes wicked and a little crazy, slashing at his legs, shoulders and ass with chewed-down fingernails sharp as a saw. Considerate Slothrop is trying to hold off coming till she's ready when all of a sudden something heavy, feathered, and many-pointed comes crashing down into the small of his back, bounces off triggering him and as it turns out Geli too ZONNGGG! eeeeee ... oh, gee whiz. Wings flap and Wernher -- for it is he -- ascends into the darkness.

"Fucking bird," Slothrop screams, "he tries that again I'll give him a Baby Ruth right up his ass, boy --" it's a plot it's a plot it's Pavlovian conditioning! or something, "Tchitcherine trained him to do that, right?"

"Wrong! I trained him to do that." She's smiling at him so four-year-old happy and not holding a thing back, that Slothrop decides to believe everything she's been telling him.