David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘And the origin of this sound of hysterical weeping and moans, this is —?’

‘It’s Anton Doucette in there. He’s in there clinically depressed. Lyle’s trying to buck him up. Some of the crueler guys are in there watching like it’s entertainment. I got disgusted. Somebody in pain isn’t entertainment. I did my sets, now I’m a vapor-trail.’

‘You exude vapor?’

‘Always nice running into you, Id.’

‘Await. Please conduct me upstairs or into the locker for a lavatory visit. The blindfold I am wearing is experimental on the part of Thorp. You are told of the visually challenged player who will matriculate?’

The blind kid? From like Nowheresburg, Iowa? Dempster?’

‘Dymphna.’

‘He’s not coming in til next term. He delayed, Inc said they said. Dural edema or something.’

‘Though age only nine, he is in his Midwest region’s ranking of Twelve and Belows highly ranked. Coach Thorp tells this.’

‘Well, I’d say for a blind, soft-skulled kid he’s real high-ranked, Id, yeah.’

‘But Dymphna. I hear Thorp tell that the highness of the ranking may be due to the blindness itself. Thorp and Texas Watson were who scouted this player.’

‘I wouldn’t mention the name Watson near that weight room in there if I were you.’

‘Thorp tells that his excellence of play is scouted by them to be his anticipation. As in the player Dymphna arrives at the necessary location well before the opponent player’s ball, through anticipation.’

‘I know what anticipation is, Id.’

‘Thorp tells to me that this excellence in anticipation in the blind is because of hearing and sounds, because sounds are merely … here. Please read the comment I have carefully notated upon this folded piece of paper.’

‘ “Sound Merely ‘Variations In Intensity’ — Throp.” Throp?’

‘It was meaning Thorp, in excitement. He tells that one may, perforce, judge the opponent player’s VAPS [236]in more detail by the ear than the eye. This is experimental theory of Thorp. This is explaining why the highly ranked Dymphna appears to always have floated by magic to the necessary spot where a ball is soon to land. Thorp tells this in a convincing manner.’

‘Perforce?’

That this blind person is able to judge the necessary spot of landing by the intensity of the sound of the ball against the opponent player’s string.’

‘Instead of watching the contact and then imaginatively extending the beginning of its flight, like those of us hobbled by sight.’

T, Idris Arslanian, am compelled with Thorp’s telling.’

‘Which helps explain the blindfold.’

‘I therefore experiment with volunteer blindness. Training the ear in degrees of intensity in play. Today versus Whale I was wearing the blindfold to play.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘Not as well as hoped. I frequently faced the wrong direction for play. I frequently judged by the intensity of balls struck on adjacent courts and ran onto adjacent courts, intruding on play.’

‘We sort of wondered what all the ruckus was down there at the 14’s end.’

‘Thorp tells that training the ear is a process of time, in encouragement.’

‘Well, later, Id.’

‘Stop. Wait before leaving. Please conduct me to a lavatory. Ted Schacht? Are you as yet there?’

‘…’

‘Are you as yet there? I very —’

‘Whuffff watch where you’re going kid for Christ’s sake.’

‘Who is this please.’

‘Troeltsch, James L., slightly doubled over.’

‘It is I, Idris Arslanian, wearing a rayon handkerchief as a blindfold over my features. I am disoriented and wishing badly for a lavatory. Wondering also what is ensuing inside the weight room, where Schacht alleges you are all watching Doucette weep in clinical depression.’

‘Kertwannnggg! Just kidding, Ars. It’s really Mike Pemulis.’

Then you, Mike Pemulis, may even now be questioning why is this blindfold upon Idris Arslanian.’

‘What blindfold? Ars, no, you’re wearing a fucking blindfold too?’

‘You, Mike Pemulis, are also wearing a blindfold?’

‘Just kertwanging on you, brother.’

‘I became disoriented on a stairway, then conversed with Ted Schacht. I am suspecting I do not trust your sense of laughter enough to conduct me back upstairs.’

‘You should feel your way in and just for one second see the amount of high-stress sweat Lyle’s taking off Anton (“The Booger”) Doucette in there, Ars.’

‘Doucette is the two-hand player whose mole appears to be material from a nostril, clinically depressing Doucette at its appearance.’

‘Rog on the mole. Except that’s not what’s depressing the Booger this time. This one we decided we’d describe him as more like anxiously depressed than depressed.’

‘One can be depressed of different types?’

‘Boy are you young, Ars. The Booger’s got himself convinced he’s going to get the academic Boot. He’s been on proby this whole year, since apparently some trouble last year with Thorp’s cubular trig —’

‘I am sympathizing with this in toto.’

‘— and but except now he claims he’s close to flunking in Watson’s laughable Energy survey class, which would obviously mean the old Boot at term’s end, if he really does flunk. He’s thought himself into a brainlock of anxiety. He’s in there clutching his skull with Lyle and Mario, and some of the like less kind guys in there have a pool going on whether Lyle can pull him back from the brink.’

‘Texas Watson the prorector, teaching of energy in models of resource-scarcity and resource-plenty.’

‘Ars, I’m nodding in confirmation. Fossil fuels all the way up to annular fusion/fission cycles, DT-lithiumization, so on and so forth. All on a real superficial-type level, since Watson’s basically got like a little liquid-filled nubbin at the top of his spine where his brain ought to be.’

‘Texas Watson does not overwhelm with brightness, it is true.’

‘But Doucette’s got himself convinced he’s got this insurmagulate conceptual block that keeps him from grasping annulation, even superficially.’

‘After we converse you will conduct me to micturate, please.’

‘It’s the same sort of block some people get with the Mean-Value Theorem. Or in Optics when we get to color fields. At a certain level of abstraction it’s like the brain recoils.’

‘Causing pain of impact within the skull, resulting in clutching the head.’

‘Watson’s gone the extra click with him. Watson’s good-hearted if nothing else. He’s tried flash-cards, mnemonic rhymes, even claymation filmstrips from over at Rindge-Latin Remedial.’

‘You are saying without avail.’

‘I’m saying apparently the Boogster just sits there in class, eyes bugging out, stomach in fucking knots, dope-slapped by anxiety. I’m saying frozen.’

‘You are saying recoiling.’

‘The right side of his face frozen in this anxiety-tic. Envisioning any possible tennis career as with these little wings on it, flying off. Talking all kinds of crazy self-injuring anxious-depression talk. It all started with him and Mario and me in the sauna, him breaking down, me and Mario trying to talk him out of the crazy washed-up-at-fifteen-type depressed talk, Mario exploiting a previous like therapeutic bond with the kid from about the mole, then with me putting DT-annulation in broad-stroke terms a freaking invertebrate could have understood for Christ’s sake. Just about passing out from the sauna all through this. Finally taking him in to Lyle even with the 18 ‘s still doing circuits in there. Lyle’s working with the Booger now. Between the anxiety and the marathon sauna-time it’s a real feeding frenzy for old Lyle let me tell you.’