Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49

"How's it going?" the cop inquired.

"Just marv," said Oedipa. "I'll let you know if it's hopeless." Then she saw that Hilarius had left the Gewehr on his desk and was across the room ostensibly trying to open a file cabinet. She picked the rifle up, pointed it at him, and said, "I ought to kill you." She knew he had wanted her to get the weapon.

"Isn't that what you've been sent to do?" He crossed and uncrossed his eyes at her; stuck out his tongue tentatively.

"I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."

"Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be."

"Come on in," Oedipa yelled.

Tears sprang to Hilarius's eyes. "You aren't going to shoot?"

The cop tried the door. "It's locked, hey," he said.

"Bust it down," roared Oedipa, "and Hitler Hilarius here will foot the bill."

Outside, as a number of nervous patrolmen approached Hilarius, holding up strait jackets and billy clubs they would not need, and as three rival ambulances backed snarling up onto the lawn, jockeying for position, causing Helga Blamm between sobs to call the drivers filthy names, Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone. She moseyed over past snapping flashbulbs and stuck her head in the window. "Hi."

Mucho pressed his cough button a moment, but only smiled. It seemed odd. How could they hear a smile? Oedipa got in, trying not to make noise. Mucho thrust the mike in front of her, mumbling, "You're on, just be yourself." Then in his earnest broadcasting voice, "How do you feel about this terrible thing?" "Terrible," said Oedipa.

"Wonderful," said Mucho. He had her go on to give listeners a summary of what'd happened in the office. "Thank you, Mrs Edna Mosh," he wrapped up, "for your eyewitness account of this dramatic siege at the Hilarius Psychiatric Clinic. This is KCUF Mobile Two, sending it back now to 'Rabbit' Warren, at the studio." He cut his power. Something was not quite right.

"Edna Mosh?" Oedipa said. "It'll come out the right way," Mucho said. "I was allowing for the distortion on these rigs, and then when they put it on tape."

"Where are they taking him?" "Community hospital, I guess," Mucho said, "for observation. I wonder what they can observe."

"Israelis," Oedipa said, "coming in the windows. If there aren't any, he's crazy." Cops came over and they chatted awhile. They told her to stay around Kinneret in case there was legal action. At length she returned to her rented car and followed Mucho back to the studio. Tonight he had the one-to-six shift on the air.

In the hallway outside the loud ratcheting teletype room, Mucho upstairs in the office typing out his story, Qedipa encountered the program director, Caesar Funch. "Sure glad you're back," he greeted her, clearly at a loss for her first name.

"Oh?" said Oedipa, "and why is that."

"Frankly," confided Funch, "since you left, Wen-dell hasn't been himself."

"And who," said Oedipa, working herself into a rage because Funch was right, "pray, has he been, Ringo Starr?" Funch cowered. "Chubby Checker?" she pursued him toward the lobby, "the Righteous Brothers? And why tell me?"

"All of the above," said Funch, seeking to hide his head, "Mrs Maas."

"Oh, call me Edna. What do you mean?"

"Behind his back," Funch was whining, "they're calling him the Brothers N. He's losing his identity, Edna, how else can I put it? Day by day, Wendell is less himself and more generic. He enters a staff meeting and the room is suddenly full of people, you know? He's a walking assembly of man."

"It's your imagination," Oedipa said. "You've been smoking those cigarettes without the printing on them again."

"You'll see. Don't mock me. We have to stick together. Who else worries about him?"

She sat alone then on a bench outside Studio A, listening to Mucho's colleague Rabbit Warren spin records. Mucho came downstairs carrying his copy, a serenity about him she'd never seen. He used to hunch his shoulders and have a rapid eyeblink rate, and both now were gone, "Wait," he smiled, and dwindled down the hall. She scrutinized him from behind, trying to see iridescences, auras.

They had some time before he was on. They drove downtown to a pizzeria and bar, and faced each other through the fluted gold lens of a beer pitcher.

"How are you getting on with Metzger?" he said. "There's nothing," she said. "Not any more, at least," said Mucho. "I could tell that when you were talking into the mike."

"That's pretty good," Oedipa said. She couldn't figure the expression on his face.

"It's extraordinary," said Mucho, "everything's been-wait. Listen." She heard nothing unusual. "There are seventeen violins on that cut," Mucho said, "and one of them-I can't tell where he was because it's monaural here, damn." It dawned on her that he was talking about the Muzak. It has been seeping in, in its subliminal, unidentifiable way since they'd entered the place, all strings, reeds, muted brass.

"What is it," she said, feeling anxious. "His E string," Mucho said, "it's a few cycles sharp. – He can't be a studio musician. Do you think somebody could do the dinosaur bone bit with that one string, Oed? With just his set of notes on that cut. Figure out what his ear is like, and then the musculature of his hands and arms, and eventually the entire man. God, wouldn't that be wonderful." "Why should you want to?" "He was real. That wasn't synthetic. They could dispense with live musicians if they wanted. Put together all the right overtones at the right power levels so it'd come out like a violin. Like I…" he hesitated before breaking into a radiant smile, "you'll think I'm crazy, Oed. But I can do the same thing in reverse. Listen to anything and take it apart again. Spectrum analysis, in my head. I can break down chords, and timbres, and words too into all the basic frequencies and harmonics, with all their different loudnesses, and listen to them, each pure tone, but all at once." "How can you do that?"

"It's like I have a separate channel for each one," Mucho said, excited, "and if I need more I just expand. Add on what I need. I don't know how it works, but lately I can do it with people talking too. Say 'rich, chocolaty goodness.'"

"Rich, chocolaty, goodness," said Oedipa. "Yes," said Mucho, and fell silent. "Well, what?" Oedipa asked after a couple minutes, with an edge to her voice.

"I noticed it the other night hearing Rabbit do a commercial. No matter who's talking, the different power spectra are the same, give or take a small percentage. So you and Rabbit have something in common now. More than that. Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person's time line sideways till they all coincide. Then you'd have this big, God, maybe a couple hundred million chorus saying 'rich, chocolaty goodness' together, and it would all be the same voice."

"Mucho," she said, impatient but also flirting with a wild suspicion. "Is this what Funch means when he says you're coming on like a whole roomful of people?" "That's what I am," said Mucho, "right. Everybody is." He gazed at her, perhaps having had his vision of consensus as others do orgasms, face now smooth, amiable, at peace. She didn't know him. Panic started to climb out of a dark region in her head. "Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming, reflecting the color of beer.