Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

Back in that more innocent day, the damage Windust caused, if any, all stayed safely on paper. But then, at some point, somewhere she thinks of as down in the middle of a vast and unforgiving flatland, he took a step. Hardly measurable in that immensity and yet, like finding and clicking on an invisible link on a screen, transported in the act over into his next life.

Generally, all-male narratives, unless it’s the NBA, challenge Maxine’s patience. Now and then Ziggy or Otis will hustle her into watching an action movie, but if there aren’t that many women in the opening credits, she’ll tend to drift away. Something like this has been happening as she scans through Windust’s karmic rap sheet here, that’s until she gets to 1982–83, when he was stationed in Guatemala, ostensibly as part of an agricultural mission, in coffee-growing country. Helpful Farmer Windust. Here, as it turned out, he met, courted, and married—as his nameless biographers put it, “deployed into a spousal scenario with”—a very young local girl named Xiomara. For a minute Maxine imagines a wedding sequence out in the jungle, with pyramids, native Mayan rituals, psychedelics. But no, instead it was in the sacristy at the local Catholic church, everyone there already or about to become strangers…

If government agencies were in-laws, Xiomara would’ve been less than acceptable on a number of counts. Politically her family was trouble waiting to happen, from old-school arevalista “spiritual socialists” on leftward, through activists with a history of nonnegotiable hatred for United Fruit, hardcore anarcho-Marxist aunts and cousins who ran safe houses and talked Kanjobal with the folks out in the country, plus assorted gun runners and dope dealers who just wanted to be left alone but were invariably described as Suspected Guerrilla Sympathizers, which seemed to mean everybody who lived in the region.

So… what do we have here, true love, imperialist rape, a cover story to get in good with the indigenous? The record is less than forthcoming. No further mention of Xiomara or for that matter Windust in Guatemala. A few months later he surfaces in Costa Rica, but without the missus.

Maxine scrolls onward but is now focusing more on why did Marvin bring her this in the first place, and what’s she supposed to do with it? All right, all right, maybe Marvin is some kind of otherworldly messenger, an angel even, but whatever unseen forces may be employing him at the moment, she’s obliged to ask professional questions, such as how in secular space might the data-storage gizmo have found its way to Marvin? Somebody wants her to see it. Gabriel Ice? Elements in the CIA or whoever? Windust himself?

Aweek or so later, Maxine’s in Vontz Auditorium again for eighth-grade graduation. After the usual interfaith parade of clergy, each wearing some appropriate outfit, which always reminds her of the setup to a joke, the Kugelblitz Bebop Ensemble plays “Billie’s Bounce,” Bruce Winterslow sets some kind of Guinness Book record for most polysyllabic words in a sentence, and then on comes the guest speaker, March Kelleher. Maxine is a little shocked at the effects of only a couple years—wait, she wonders with a sudden pulse of panic, how many years exactly? March now has gray not just coming in but putting its feet up and making itself at home, and she’s wearing oversize shades today that suggest a temporary loss of faith in eye makeup. She’s wearing desert-camo fatigues and her signature snood, today a sort of electric green. Her commencement speech turns out to be a parable nobody is supposed to get.

“Once upon a time, there was a city with a powerful ruler who liked to creep around town in disguise, doing his work in secret. Now and then someone recognized him, but they were always willing to accept a small handful of silver or gold to forget all about it. ‘You have been exposed for a moment to a highly toxic form of energy,’ is his usual formula. ‘Here is a sum I trust will compensate you for any damage done. Soon you will begin to forget, and then you’ll feel better.’

“At the time, out and about in the night, there was also an older lady, probably didn’t look too different from your grandmother, who carried a huge sack full of dirty rags, scraps of paper and plastic, broken appliances, leftover food, and other rubbish she collected off the street. She went everywhere, she had lived out in the city longer than anyone there, unprotected and in the open regardless of the weather, and she knew everything. She was the guardian of whatever the city threw away.

“On the day she and the ruler of the city finally crossed paths, he got a rude surprise—when he offered his well-meant handful of coins, she angrily flung them back at him. They went scattering and ringing on the paving stones. ‘Forget?’ she screeched. ‘I cannot and must not forget. Remembering is the essence of what I am. The price of my forgetting, great sir, is more than you can imagine, let alone pay.’

“Taken aback, somehow thinking he must not have offered enough, the ruler began to dig through his purse again, but when he looked up, the old woman had vanished. That day he returned from his secret tasks earlier than usual, in a queer state of nerves. He supposed now he’d have to find this old woman and render her harmless. How awkward.

“Though he was not by nature a violent person, he had learned a long time ago that nobody held on to a job like his unless they were willing to do whatever it took. For years he had sought new and creative methods short of violence, which usually came down to buying people off. Stalkers of imperial celebrities were hired as bodyguards, journalists with nasal-length issues were redesignated ‘analysts’ and installed at desks in the state intelligence office.

“By this logic the old woman with her sack of garbage should have become an environmental cabinet minister and someday get parks and recycle centers all across the realm named after her. But whenever anyone tried to approach her with job offers, she was never to be found. Her criticisms of the regime, however, had already entered the collective consciousness of the city and become impossible to delete.

“Well, kids, it’s just a story. The kind of story you were likely to hear in Russia back in the days when Stalin was in power. People told each other these Aesop’s fables and everybody knew what stood for what. But can we in the 21st-century U.S. say the same?

“Who is this old lady? What does she think she’s been finding out all these years? Who is this ‘ruler’ shes’s refusing to be bought off by? And what’s this ‘work’ he was ‘doing in secret’? Suppose ‘the ruler’ isn’t a person at all but a soulless force so powerful that though it cannot ennoble, it does entitle, which, in the city-nation we speak of, is always more than enough? The answers are left to you, the Kugelblitz graduating class of 2001, as an exercise. Good luck. Think of it as a contest. Send your answers to my Weblog, tabloidofthedamned.com, first prize is a pizza with anything you want on it.”

The address gets her some applause, more than it would’ve at the snob academies east and west of here, but not as much as you might’ve expected a Kugelblitz alum to get.

“It’s my personality,” she tells Maxine at the reception afterward. “The women don’t like the way I turn myself out, the men don’t like my attitude. Which is why I’m starting to cut back on the personal appearances and concentrate instead on my Weblog.” Handing Maxine one of the flyers that Otis brought home.

“I’ll visit it,” Maxine promises.

Nodding across the patio, “Who’s that you came in with, the Sterling Hayden look-alike?”

“The what? Oh, that’s my ex. Well. Sort of ex.”