As with Mucho when she'd left Kinneret, Metzger did not seem desperate at her going. She debated, driving north, whether to stop off at home on the way to Berkeley or coming back. As it turned out she missed the exit for Kinneret and that solved it. She purred along up the east side of the bay, presently climbed into the Berkeley hills and arrived close to midnight at a sprawling4, many-leveled, German-baroque hotel, car-peted in deep green, going in for curved corridors and ornamental5 chandeliers. A sign in the lobby said wel-come california chapter american deaf-mute assembly. Every light in the place burned, alarmingly bright; a truly ponderable silence occupied the build-ing. A clerk popped up from behind the desk where he'd been sleeping and began making sign language at her. Oedipa considered giving him the finger to see what would happen. But she'd driven straight through, and all at once the fatigue7 of it had caught up with her. The clerk took her to a room with a reproduction of a Remedios Varo in it, through corridors gently curv-ing as the streets of San Narciso, utterly9 silent. She fell asleep almost at once, but kept waking from a nightmare about something in the mirror, across from her bed. Nothing specific, only a possibility, nothing she could see. When she finally did settle into sleep, she dreamed that Mucho, her husband, was making love to her on a soft white beach that was not part of any California she knew. When she woke in the morning, she was sitting bolt upright, staring into the mirror at her own exhausted10 face.
She found the Lectern Press in a small office building on Shattuck Avenue. They didn't have Plays of Ford11, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger on the prem-ises, but did take her check for $12.50, gave her the address of their warehouse12 in Oakland and a receipt to show the people there. By the time she'd collected the book, it was afternoon. She skimmed through to find the line that had brought her all the way up here. And in the leaf-fractured sunlight, froze.
No hallowed skein of stars can ward13, I trow, ran the couplet, Who once has crossed the lusts14 of Angela. "No," she protested aloud. " 'Who's once been set his tryst2 with Trystero.'" The pencilled note in the paperback15 had mentioned a variant16. But the paperback was supposed to be a straight reprint of the book she now held. Puzzled, she saw that this edition also had a footnote:
According only to the Quarto edition (1687). The earlier Folio has a lead inserted where the closing line should have been. D'Amico has suggested that Wharfinger may have made a libellous comparison involving someone at court, and that the later 'restoration' was actually the work of the printer, Inigo Barfstable. The doubt-ful 'Whitechapel' version (c. 1670) has This tryst or odious17 awry18, O Niccolo,' which besides bring-ing in a quite graceless Alexandrine, is difficult to make sense of syntactically, unless we accept the rather unorthodox though persuasive21 argument of J.-K. Sale that the line is really a pun on 'This trystero dies irae . . . .' This, however, it must be pointed22 out, leaves the line nearly as corrupt23 as before, owing to no clear meaning for the word trystero, unless it be a pseudo-Italianate variant on triste (= wretched, depraved). But the 'White-chapel' edition, besides being a fragment, abounds24 in such corrupt and probably spurious lines, as we have mentioned elsewhere, and is hardly to be trusted.
Then where, Oedipa wondered, does the paper-back I bought at Zapf's get off with its "Trystero" line? Was there yet another edition, besides the Quarto, Folio, and "Whitechapel" fragment? The editor's preface, signed this time, by one Emory Bortz, professor of English at Cal, mentioned none. She spent nearly an hour more, searching through all the foot-notes, finding nothing.
"Dammit," she yelled, started the car and headed for the Berkeley campus, to find Professor Bortz.
She should have remembered the date on the book —1957. Another world. The girl in the English office informed Oedipa that Professor Bortz was no longer with the faculty25. He was teaching at San Narciso College, San Narciso, California.
Of course, Odeipa thought, wry19, where else? She copied the address and walked away trying to remem-ber who'd put out the paperback. She couldn't.
It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon; no time for any campus Oedipa knew of to be jumping, yet this one was. She came downslope from Wheeler Hall, through Sather Gate into a plaza26 teeming27 with corduroy, denim28, bare legs, blonde hair, hornrims, bi-cycle spokes29 in the sun, bookbags, swaying card tables, long paper petitions dangling31 to earth, posters for un-decipherable FSM's, YAF's, VDC's, suds in the foun-tain, students in nose-to-nose dialogue. SJie_joiQyjgd^ through it carrying her fat book, attracted, unsure, a stranger, wanting to feel relevant but knowing how much of a search among alternate universes it would take. For she had undergone her own educating at a time of nerves, blandness32 and retreat among not only her fellow students but also most of the visible structure around and ahead of them, this having been a national reflex to certain pathologies in high places only death had had the power to cure, and this Berkeley was like no somnolent33 Siwash out of her own past at all, but more akin6 to those Far Eastern or Latin American universities you read about, those autonomous34 culture media where the most beloved of folklores may be brought into doubt, cataclysmic of dissents38 voiced, suicidal of commitments chosen—the sort that bring governments down. But it was English she was hearing as she crossed Bancroft Way among the blonde children and the muttering Hondas and Su-zukis; American English. Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who'd mothered over Oedipa's so temperate39 youth? In another world. Along another pattern of track, another string of decisions taken, switches closed, the faceless pointsmen who'd thrown them now all trans-ferred, deserted40, in stir, fleeing the skip-tracers, out of their skull41, on horse, alcoholic42, fanatic43, under aliases44, dead, impossible to find ever again. Among them they had managed to turn the young Oedipa into a rare creature indeed, unfit perhaps for marches and sit-ins, but just a whiz at pursuing strange words in Jacobean texts.
She pulled the Impala into a gas station some-where along a gray stretch of Telegraph Avenue and found in a phone book the address of John Nefastis. She then drove to a pseudo-Mexican apartment house, looked for his name among the U. S. mailboxes, as-cended outside steps and walked down a row of draped windows till she found his door. He had a crewcut and the same underage look as Koteks, but wore a shirt on various Polynesian themes and dating from the Truman administration.
Introducing herself, she invoked46 the name of Stan-ley Koteks. "He said you could tell me whether or not I'm a 'sensitive'."
Nefastis had been watching on his TV set a bunch of kids dancing some kind of a Watusi. "I like to watch young stuff," he explained. "There's something about a little chick that age."
"So does my husband," she said. "I understand."
John Nefastis beamed at her, simpatico, and brought out his Machine from a workroom in back. It looked about the way the patent had described it. "You know how this works?"
"Stanley gave me a kind of rundown." He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about some-thing called entropy. The word bothered him as much as "Trystero" bothered Oedipa. But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat-engines, the other to do with communication. The equation for one, back in the '3o's, had looked very like the equation for the other. It was a coincidence. The two fields were entirely47 unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon48. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules49 into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was off-set by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where.
"Communication is the key," cried Nefastis. "The Demon passes his data on to the sensitive, and the sensitive must reply in kind. There are untold50 billions of molecules in that box. The Demon collects data on each and every one. At some deep psychic51 level he must get through. The sensitive must receive that staggering set of energies, and feed back something like the same quantity of information. To keep it all cycling. On the secular52 level all we can see is one piston53, hopefully moving. One little movement, against all that massive complex of information, destroyed over and over with each power stroke."
"Help," said Oedipa, "you're not reaching me."
"Entropy is a figure of speech, then," sighed Nefastis, "a metaphor54. It connects the world of thermo-dynamics to the world of information flow. The Ma-chine uses both. The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful55, but also objectively true."
"But what," she felt like some kind of a heretic, "if the Demon exists only because the two equations look alike? Because of the metaphor?"
Nefastis smiled; impenetrable, calm, a believer. "He existed for Clerk Maxwell long before the days of the metaphor."
But had Clerk Maxwell been such a fanatic about his Demon's reality? She looked at the picture on the outside of the box. Clerk Maxwell was in profile and would not meet her eyes. The forehead was round and smooth, and there was a curious bump at the back of his head, covered by curling hair. His visible eye seemed mild and noncommittal, but Oedipa wondered what hangups, crises, spookings in the middle of the night might be developed from the shadowed subtleties57 of his mouth, hidden under a full beard.
"Watch the picture," said Nefastis, "and concen-trate on a cylinder58. Don't worry. If you're a sensitive you'll know which one. Leave your mind open, recep-tive to the Demon's message. I'll be back." He returned to his TV set, which was now showing cartoons. Oedipa sat through two Yogi Bears, one Magilla Gorilla59 and a Peter Potamus, staring at Clerk Maxwell's enigmatic profile, waiting for the Demon to communicate.
Are you there, little fellow, Oedipa asked the Demon, or is Nefastis putting me on. Unless a piston moved, she'd never know. Clerk Maxwell's hands were cropped out of the photograph. He might have been holding a book. He gazed away, into some vista60 of Victorian England whose light had been lost forever. Oedipa's anxiety grew. It seemed, behind the beard, he'd begun, ever so faintly, to smile. Something in his eyes, certainly, had changed . . .
And there. At the top edge of what she could see: hadn't the right-hand piston moved, a fraction? She couldn't look directly, the instructions were to keep her eyes on Clerk Maxwell. Minutes passed, pistons61 re-mained frozen in place. High-pitched, comic voices issued from the TV set. She had seen only a retinal twitch62, a misfired nerve cell. Did the true sensitive see more? In her colon63 now she was afraid, growing more so, that nothing would happen. Why worry, she wor-ried; Nefastis is a nut, forget it, a sincere nut. The true sensitive is the one that can share in the man's hallu-cinations, that's all.
How wonderful they might be to share. For fif-teen minutes more she tried; repeating, if you are there, whatever you are, show yourself to me, I need you, show yourself. But nothing happened.
"I'm sorry," she called in, surprisingly about to cry with frustration64, her voice breaking, "It's no use." Nefastis came to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
"It's OK," he said. "Please don't cry. Come on in on the couch. The news will be on any minute. We can do it there."
"It?" said Oedipa. "Do it? What?"
"Have sexual intercourse65," replied Nefastis. "Maybe there'll be something about China tonight. I like to do it while they talk about Viet Nam, but China is best of all. You think about all those Chinese. Teeming. That profusion66 of life. It makes it sexier, right?"
"Gah," Oedipa screamed, and fled, Nefastis snap-ping his fingers through the dark rooms behind her in a hippy-dippy, oh-go-ahead-then-chick fashion he had doubtless learned from watching the TV also.
"Say hello to old Stanley," he called as she pattered down the steps into the street, flung a babushka over her license67 plate and screeched68 away down Telegraph. She drove more or less automatically until a swift boy in a Mustang, perhaps unable to contain the new sense of virility69 his auto35 gave him, nearly killed her and she realized that she was on the freeway, heading irreversi-bly for the Bay Bridge. It was the middle of rush hour. Oedipa was appalled70 at the spectacle, having thought such traffic only possible in Los Angeles, places like that. Looking down at San Francisco a few minutes later from the high point of the bridge's arc, she saw smog. Haze71, she corrected herself, is what it is, haze. How can they have smog in San Francisco? Smog, according to the folklore36, did not begin till farther south. It had to be the angle of the sun.
Amid the exhaust, sweat, glare and ill-humor of a summer evening on an American freeway, Oedipa Maas pondered her Trystero problem. All the silence of San Narciso—the calm surface of the motel pool, the con-templative contours of residential72 streets like rakings in the sand of a Japanese garden—had not allowed her to think as leisurely73 as this freeway madness.
For John Nefastis (to take a recent example) two kinds of entropy, thermodynamic and informational, happened, say by coincidence, to look alike, when you wrote them down as equations. Yet he had made his mere74 coincidence respectable, with the help of Max-well's Demon.
Now here was Oedipa, faced with a metaphor of God knew how many parts; more than two, anyway. With coincidences blossoming these days wherever she looked, she had nothing but a sound, a word, Trystero, a to hold them together.
She knew a few things about it: it had opposed the Thurn and Taxis postal75 system in Europe; its symbol was a muted post horn; sometime before 1853 it had appeared in America and fought the Pony76 Express and Wells, Fargo, either as outlaws77 in black, or disguised as Indians; and it survived today, in California, serving as a channel of communication for those of unorthodox sexual persuasion78, inventors who believed in the reality of Maxwell's Demon, possibly her own husband, Mucho Maas (but she'd thrown Mucho's letter long away, there was no way for Genghis Cohen to check the stamp, so if she wanted to find out for sure she'd have to ask Mucho himself).
Either Trystero did exist, in its own right, or it was being presumed, perhaps fantasied by Oedipa, so hung up on and interpenetrated with the dead man's estate. Here in San Francisco, away from all tangible79 assets of that estate, there might still be a chance of getting the whole thing to go away and disintegrate80 quietly. She had only to drift tonight, at random81, and watch nothing happen, to be convinced it was purely82 nervous, a little something for her shrink to fix. She got off the freeway at North Beach, drove around, parked finally in a steep side-street among warehouses83. Then walked along Broadway, into the first crowds of evening.
But it took her no more than an hour to catch sight of a muted post horn. She was moseying along a street full of aging boys in Roos Atkins suits when she collided with a gang of guided tourists come rowdy-dowing out of a Volkswagen bus, on route to take in a few San Francisco nite spots. "Let me lay this on you," a voice spoke30 into her ear, "because I just left," and she found being deftly84 pinned outboard of one breast this big cerise ID badge, reading Hi! my name Is Arnold Snarb! and i'm lookin' for A good time! Oedipa glanced around and saw a cherubic face vanishing with a wink85 in among natural shoulders and striped shirts, and away went Arnold Snarb, looking for a better time.
Somebody blew on an athletic86 whistle and Oedipa found herself being herded87, along with other badged citizens, toward a bar called The Greek Way. Oh, no, Oedipa thought, not a fag joint88, no; and for a minute tried to fight out of the human surge, before recalling how she had decided to drift tonight.
"Now in here," their guide, sweating dark tentacles90 into his tab collar, briefed them, "you are going to see the members of the third sex, the lavender crowd this city by the Bay is so justly famous for. To some of you the experience may seem a little queer, but remember, try not to act like a bunch of tourists. If you get propositioned it'll all be in fun, just part of the gay night life to be found here in famous North Beach. Two drinks and when you hear the whistle it means out, on the double, regroup right here. If you're well behaved we'll hit Finocchio's next." He blew the whistle twice and the tourists, breaking into a yell, swept Oedipa inside, in a frenzied91 assault on the bar. When things had calmed she was near the door with an unidenti-fiable drink in her fist, jammed against somebody tall in a suede92 sport coat. In the lapel of which she spied, wrought93 exquisitely94 in some pale, glimmering95 alloy96, not another cerise badge, but a pin in the shape of the Trystero post horn. Mute and everything.
All right, she told herself. You lose. A game try, all one hour's worth. She should have left then and gone back to Berkeley, to the hotel. But couldn't.
"What if I told you," she addressed the owner of the pin, "that I was an agent of Thurn and Taxis?"
"What," he answered, "some theatrical97 agency?" He had large ears, hair cropped nearly to his scalp, acne on his face, and curiously98 empty eyes, which now swiveled briefly99 to Oedipa's breasts. "How'd you get a name like Arnold Snarb?"
"If you tell me where you got your lapel pin," said Oedipa.
"Sorry."
She sought to bug100 him: "If it's a homosexual sign or something, that doesn't bother me."
Eyes showing nothing: "I don't swing that way," he said. "Yours either." Turned his back on her and ordered a drink. Oedipa took off her badge, put it in an ashtray101 and said, quietly, trying not to suggest
hysteria,
"Look, you have to help me. Because I really think I am going out of my head."
"You have the wrong outfit102, Arnold. Talk to your clergyman."
"I use the U. S. Mail because I was never taught any different," she pleaded. "But I'm not your enemy. I don't want to be."
"What about my friend?" He came spinning around on the stool to face her again. "You want to be that, Arnold?"
"I don't know," she thought she'd better say.
He looked at her, blank. "What do you know?"
She told him everything. Why not? Held nothing back. At the end of it the tourists had been whistled away and he'd bought two rounds to Oedipa's three.
"I'd heard about 'Kirby,'" he said, "it's a code name, nobody real. But none of the rest, your Sinophile across the bay, or that sick play. I never thought there was a history to it."
"I think of nothing but," she said, and a little plaintive103.
"And," scratching the stubble on his head, "you have nobody else to tell this to. Only somebody in a bar whose name you don't know?"
She wouldn't look at him. "I guess not."
"No husband, no shrink?"
"Both," Oedipa said, "but they don't know."
"You can't tell them?"
She met his eyes' void for a second after all, and shrugged104.
"I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous105. An inamorato is somebody in love. That's the worst addiction106 of all."
"Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with them, or something?"
"Right. The whole idea is to get to where you don't need it. I was lucky. I kicked it young. But there are
sixty-year-old men, believe it or not, and women even older, who wake up in the night screaming." "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?" "No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates107, Arnold. Meetings would destroy the whole point of it."
"What about the person who comes to sit with you? Suppose you fall in love with them?"
"They go away," he said. "You never see them twice. The answering service dispatches them, and they're careful not to have any repeats."
How did the post horn come in? That went back to their founding. In the early '6o's a Yoyodyne execu-tive living near L.A. and located someplace in the corporate108 root-system above supervisor109 but below vice-president, found himself, at age 39, automated110 out of a job. Having been since age 7 rigidly111 instructed in an eschatology that pointed nowhere but to a presi-dency and death, trained to do absolutely nothing but sign his name to specialized112 memoranda113 he could not begin to understand and to take blame for the running-amok of specialized programs that failed for specialized reasons he had to have explained to him, the execu-tive's first thoughts were naturally of suicide. But pre-vious training got the better of him: he could not make the decision without first hearing the ideas of a com-mittee. He placed an ad in the personal column of the L.A. Times, asking whether anyone who'd been in the same fix had ever found any good reasons for not com-mitting suicide. His shrewd assumption being that no suicides would reply, leaving him automatically with only valid115 inputs116. The assumption was false. After a week of anxiously watching the mailbox through little Japanese binoculars117 his wife had given him for a going-away present (she'd left him the day after he was pink-slipped) and getting nothing but sucker-list stuff through the regular deliveries that came each noon, he was jolted118 out of a boozy, black-and-white dream of jumping off The Stack into rush-hour traffic, by an insistent119 banging at the door. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. He opened his door and found an aged45 bum56 with a knitted watch cap on his head and a hook for a hand, who presented him with a bundle of letters and loped away without a word. Most of the letters were from suicides who had failed, either through clumsiness or last-minute cowardice120. None of them, however, could offer any compelling reasons for stay-ing alive. Still the executive dithered: spent another week with pieces of paper on which he would list, in columns headed "pro8" and "con," reasons for and against taking his Brody. He found it impossible, in the absence of some trigger, to come to any clear decision. Finally one day he noticed a front page story in the Times, complete with AP wirephoto, about a Buddhist121 monk122 in Viet Nam who had set himself on fire to protest government policies. "Groovy!" cried the execu-tive. He went to the garage, siphoned all the gasoline from his Buick's tank, put on his green Zachary All suit with the vest, stuffed all his letters from unsuccess-ful suicides into a coat pocket, went in the kitchen, sat on the floor, proceeded to douse123 himself good with the gasoline. He was about to make the farewell flick124 of the wheel on his faithful Zippo, which had seen him through the Normany hedgerows, the Ardennes, Germany, and postwar America, when he heard a key in the front door, and voices. It was his wife and some man, whom he soon recognized as the very efficiency expert at Yoyodyne who had caused him to be replaced by an IBM 7094. Intrigued125 by the irony126 of it, he sat in the kitchen and listened, leaving his necktie dipped in the gasoline as a sort of wick. From what he could gather, the efficiency expert wished to have sexual intercourse with the wife on the Moroccan rug in the living room. The wife was not unwilling127. The executive heard lewd128 laughter, zippers129, the thump130 of shoes, heavy breathing, moans. He took his tie out of the gasoline and started to snigger. He closed the top on his Zippo. "I hear laughing," his wife said presently. "I smell gasoline," said the efficiency expert. Hand in hand, naked, the two proceeded to the kitchen. "I was about to do the Buddhist monk thing," explained the execu-tive. "Nearly three weeks it takes him," marvelled131 the efficiency expert, "to decide. You know how long it would've taken the IBM 7094? Twelve microseconds. No wonder you were replaced." The executive threw back his head and laughed for a solid ten minutes, along toward the middle of which his wife and her friend, alarmed, retired132, got dressed and went out looking for the police. The executive undressed, showered and hung his suit out on the line to dry. Then he noticed a curious thing. The stamps on some of the letters in his suit pocket had turned almost white. He realized that the gasoline must have dissolved the printing ink. Idly, he peeled off a stamp and saw suddenly the image of the muted post horn, the skin of his hand showing clearly through the watermark. "A sign," he whispered, "is what it is." If he'd been a religious man he would have fallen to his knees. As it was, he only declared, with great solemnity: "My big mistake was love. From this day I swear to stay off of love: hetero, homo, bi, dog or cat, car, every kind there is. I will found a society of isolates, dedicated133 to this purpose, and this sign, re-vealed by the same gasoline that almost destroyed me, will be its emblem134." And he did.
Oedipa, by now rather drunk, said, "Where is he now?"
"He's anonymous," said the anonymous inamo-rato. "Why not write to him through your WASTE system? Say 'Founder135, IA.'"
"But I don't know how to use it," she said.
"Think of it," he went on, also drunk. "A whole underworld of suicides who failed. All keeping in touch through that secret delivery system. What do they tell each other?" He shook his head, smiling, stumbled off his stool and headed off to take a leak, disappearing into the dense136 crowd. He didn't come back.
Oedipa sat, feeling as alone as she ever had, now the only woman, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals. Story of my life, she thought, Mucho won't talk to me, Hilarius won't listen, Clerk Maxwell didn't even look at me, and this group, God knows. Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance137 to you. She gauged138 the spectrum139 of feeling out there as running from really violent hate (an Indian-looking kid hardly out of his teens, with frosted shoulder-length hair tucked behind his ears and pointed cowboy boots) to dry speculation140 (a hornrimmed SS type who stared at her legs, trying to figure out if she was in drag), none of which could do her any good. So she got up after awhile and left The Greek Way, and entered the city again, the infected city.
And spent the rest of the night finding the image of the Trystero post horn. In Chinatown, in the dark window of a herbalist, she thought she saw it on a sign among ideographs. But the streetlight was dim. Later, on a sidewalk, she saw two of them in chalk, 20 feet apart. Between them a complicated array of boxes, some with letters, some with numbers. A kids' game? Places on a. map, dates from a secret history? She copied the diagram in her memo114 book. When she looked up, a man, perhaps a man, in a black suit, was standing141 in a doorway142 half a block away, watching her. She thought she saw a turned-around collar but took no chances; headed back the way she'd come, pulse thundering. A bus stopped at the next corner, and she ran to catch it.
She stayed with buses after that, getting off only now and then to walk so she'd keep awake. What fragments of dreams came had to do with the post horn. Later, possibly, she would have trouble sorting the night into real and dreamed.
At some indefinite passage in night's sonorous143 score, it also came to her that she would be safe, that something, perhaps only her linearly fading drunken-ness, would protect her. The city was hers, as, made up and sleeked144 so with the customary words and images (cosmopolitan, culture, cable cars) it had not been before: she had safe-passage tonight to its far blood's branchings, be they capillaries145 too small for more than peering into, or vessels146 mashed147 together in shameless municipal hickeys, out on the skin for all but tourists to see. Nothing of the night's could touch her; nothing
did. The repetition of symbols was to be enough, with-out trauma148 as well perhaps to attenuate149 it or even jar it altogether loose from her memory. She was meant to remember. She faced that possibility as she might the toy street from a high balcony, roller-coaster ride, feed-ing-time among the beasts in a zoo—any death-wish that can be consummated150 by some minimum gesture. She touched the edge of its voluptuous151 field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening152, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up._for~her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night.
In Golden Gate Park she came on a circle of children in their nightclothes, who told her they were dreaming the gathering153. But that the dream was really no different from being awake, because in the mornings when they got up they felt tired, as if they'd been up most of the night. When their mothers thought they were out playing they were really curled in cupboards of neighbors' houses, in platforms up in trees, in secretly-hollowed nests inside hedges, sleeping, making up for these hours. The night was empty of all terror for them, they had inside their circle an imaginary fire, and needed nothing but their own unpenetrated sense of community. They knew about the post horn, but noth-ing of the chalked game Oedipa had seen on the sidewalk. You used only one image and it was a jump-rope game, a little girl explained: you stepped alternately in the loop, the bell, and the mute, while your girlfriend sang:
Tristoe, Tristoe, one, two, three, Turning taxi from across the sea ... "Thurn and Taxis, you mean?" They'd never heard it that way. Went on warming their hands at an invisible fire. Oedipa, to retaliate154, stopped believing in them.
In an all-night Mexican greasy155 spoon off 24th, she found a piece of her past, in the form of one Jesus Arrabal, who was sitting in a corner under the TV set, idly stirring his bowl of opaque156 soup with the foot of a chicken. "Hey," he greeted Oedipa, "you were the lady in Mazatlan." He beckoned157 her to sit.
"You remember everything," Oedipa said, "Jesus; even tourists. How is your CIA?" Standing not for the agency you think, but for a clandestine158 Mexican outfit known as the Conjuration de los Insurgentes Anarquis-tas, traceable back to the time of the Flores Mag6n brothers and later briefly allied159 with Zapata.
"You see. In exile," waving his arm around at the place. He was part-owner here with a yucateco who still believed in the Revolution. Their Revolution. "And you. Are you still with that gringo who spent too much money on you? The oligarchist, the miracle?" "He died."
"Ah, pobrecito." They had met Jesus Arrabal on the beach, where he had previously160 announced an anti-government rally. Nobody had showed up. So he fell to talking to Inverarity, the enemy he must, to be true to his faith, learn. Pierce, because of his neutral manners when in the presence of ill-will, had nothing to tell Arrabal; he played the rich, obnoxious161 gringo so perfectly162 that Oedipa had seen gooseflesh come up along the anarchist163's forearms, due to no Pacific sea-breeze. Soon as Pierce went off to sport in the surf, Arrabal asked her if he was real, or a spy, or making fun of him. Oedipa didn't understand.
"Yon know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm37. Like the church we hate, an-archists also believe in another world. Where revolu-tions break out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul's talent for consensus164 allows the masses to work together without effort, automatic as the body itself. And yet, sena, if any of it should ever really happen that perfectly, I would also have to cry miracle. An anarchist miracle. Like your friend. He is too exactly and without flaw the thing we fight. In Mexico the privilegiado is always, to a finite percentage, redeemed165 —one of the people. Unmiraculous. But your friend, unless he's joking, is as terrifying to me as a Virgin166 appearing to an Indian."
In the years intervening Oedipa had remembered Jesus because he'd seen that about Pierce and she hadn't. As if he were, in some unsexual way, competi-tion. Now, drinking thick lukewarm coffee from a clay pot on the back burner of the yucateco's stove and listening to Jesus talk conspiracy167, she wondered if, without the miracle of Pierce to reassure168 him, Jesus might not have quit his CIA eventually and gone over like everybody else to the majority priistas, and so never had to go into exile.
The dead man, like Maxwell's Demon, was the linking feature in a coincidence. Without him neither she nor Jesus would be exactly here, exactly now. It was enough, a coded warning. What, tonight, was chance? So her eyes did fall presently onto an ancient rolled copy of the anarcho-syndicalist paper Regeneracidn. The date was 1904 and there was no stamp next to the cancellation169, only the handstruck image of the post horn.
"They arrive," said Arrabal. "Have they been in the mails that long? Has my name been substituted for that
of a member who's died? Has it really taken sixty years? Is it a reprint? Idle questions, I am a footsoldier. The
higher levels have their reasons." She carried this thought back out into the night with her.
Down at the city beach, long after the pizza stands and rides had closed, she walked unmolested through a drifting, dreamy cloud of delinquents170 in summer-weight gang jackets with the post horn stitched on in thread that looked pure silver in what moonlight there was. They had all been smoking, snuffing or injecting some-thing, and perhaps did not see her at all.
Riding among an exhausted busful of Negroes going on to graveyard171 shifts all over the city, she saw scratched on the back of a seat, shining for her in the brilliant smoky interior, the post horn with the legend DEATH. But unlike WASTE, somebody had troubled to write in, in pencil: don't ever antagonize the horn.
Somewhere near Fillmore she found the symbol tacked172 to the bulletin board of a laundromat, among other scraps173 of paper offering cheap ironing and baby sitters. If you know what this means, the note said, you know where to find out more. Around her the odor of chlorine bleach174 rose heavenward, like an incense175. Ma-chines chugged and sloshed fiercely. Except for Oedipa the place was deserted, and the fluorescent176 bulbs seemed to shriek177 whiteness, to which everything their light touched was dedicated. It was a Negro neighbor-hood. Was The Horn so dedicated? Would it Antago-nize The Horn to ask? Who could she ask?
In the buses all night she listened to transistor178 radios playing songs in the lower stretches of the Top 200, that would never become popular, whose melodies and lyrics179 would perish as if they had never been sung. A Mexican girl, trying to hear one of these through snarl-ing static from the bus's motor, hummed along as if she would remember it always, tracing post horns and hearts with a fingernail, in the haze of her breath on the window.
Out at the airport Oedipa, feeling invisible, eaves-dropped on a poker180 game whose steady loser entered each loss neat and conscientious181 in a little balance-book decorated inside with scrawled182 post horns. "I'm averag-ing a 99.375 percent return, fellas," she heard him say. The others, strangers, looked at him, some blank, some annoyed. "That's averaging it out, over 23 years," he went on, trying a smile. "Always just that little percent on the wrong side of breaking even. Twenty-three years. I'll never get ahead of it. Why don't I quit?" Nobody answering.
In one of the latrines was an advertisement by AC-DC, standing for Alameda County Death Cult20, along with a box number and post horn. Once a month they were to choose some victim from among the innocent, the virtuous183, the socially integrated and well-adjusted, using him sexually, then sacrificing him. Oedipa did not copy the number.
Catching184 a TWA flight to Miami was an unco-ordinated boy who planned to slip at night into aquar-iums and open negotiations185 with the dolphins, who would succeed man. He was kissing his mother pas-sionately goodbye, using his tongue. "I'll write, ma," he kept saying. "Write by WASTE," she said, "re-member. The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad." "I love you, ma," he said. "Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by WASTE."
So it went. Oedipa played the voyeur186 and listener. Among her other encounters were a facially-deformed welder187, who cherished his ugliness; a child roaming the night who missed the death before birth as certain outcasts do the dear lulling189 blankness of the commu-nity; a Negro woman with an intricately-marbled scar along the baby-fat of one cheek who kept going through rituals of miscarriage190 each for a different reason, delib-erately as others might the ritual of birth, dedicated not to continuity but to some kind of interregnum; an ag-ing night-watchman, nibbling191 at a bar of Ivory Soap, who had trained his virtuoso192 stomach to accept also lotions193, air-fresheners, fabrics194, tobaccoes and waxes in a hopeless attempt to assimilate it all, all the promise, productivity, betrayal, ulcers195, before it was too late; and even another voyeur, who hung outside one of the city's still-lighted windows, searching for who knew what specific image. Decorating each alienation196, each species of withdrawal197, as cufflink, decal, aimless doodl-ing, there was somehow always the post horn. She grew so to expect it that perhaps she did not see it quite as often as she later was to remember seeing it. A couple-three times would really have been enough. Or too much.
She busrode and walked on into the lightening morning, giving herself up to a fatalism rare for her. Where was the Oedipa who'd driven so bravely up here from San Narciso? That optimistic baby had come on so like the private eye in any long-ago radio drama, be-lieving all you needed was grit198, resourcefulness, exemp-tion from hidebound cops' rules, to solve any great mystery.
But the private eye sooner or later has to get beat up on. This night's profusion of post horns, this malig-nant, deliberate replication, was their way of beating up. They knew her pressure points, and the ganglia of her optimism, and one by one, pinch by precision pinch, they were immobilizing her.
Last night, she might have wondered what under-grounds apart from the couple she knew of communi-cated by WASTE system. By sunrise she could legiti-mately ask what undergrounds didn't. If miracles were, as Jesus Arrabal had postulated199 years ago on the beach at Mazatlan, intrusions into this world from another, a kiss of cosmic pool balls, then so must be each of the night's post horns. For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately200 choosing not to communicate by U. S. Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance201. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery202. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference203 to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, un-publicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn204 into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world.
Just before the morning rush hour, she got out of a jitney whose ancient driver ended each day in the red, downtown on Howard Street, began to walk toward the Embarcadero. She knew she looked terrible— knuckles205 black with eye-liner and mascara from where she'd rubbed, mouth tasting of old booze and coffee. Through an open doorway, on the stair leading up into the disinfectant-smelling twilight206 of a rooming house she saw an old man huddled207, shaking with grief she couldn't hear. Both hands, smoke-white, covered his face. On the back of the left hand she made out the post horn, tattooed209 in old ink now beginning to blur210 and spread. Fascinated, she came into the shadows and ascended211 creaking steps, hesitating on each one. When she was three steps from him the hands flew apart and his wrecked212 face, and the terror of eyes gloried in burst veins213, stopped her.
"Can I help?" She was shaking, tired. "My wife's in Fresno," he said. He wore an old double-breasted suit, frayed214 gray shirt, wide tie, no hat. "I left her. So long ago, I don't remember. Now this is for her." He gave Oedipa a letter that looked like he'd been carrying it around for years. "drop it in the," and he held up the tattoo208 and stared into her eyes, "you know. I can't go out there. It's too far now, I had a bad night."
"I know," she said. "But I'm new in town. I don't know where it is."
"Under the freeway." He waved her on in the direction she'd been going. "Always one. You'll see it." The eyes closed. Cammed each night out of that safe
furrow215 the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously216 to plowing217, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices over-heard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage218, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress219 that could keep vestiges220 of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing221 bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost? She was overcome all at once by a need to touch him, as if she could not believe in him, or would not remember him, without it. Exhausted, hardly knowing what she was doing, she came the last three steps and sat, took the man in her arms, actually held him, gazing out of her smudged eyes down the stairs, back into the morn-ing. She felt wetness against her breast and saw that he was crying again. He hardly breathed but tears came as if being pumped. "I can't help," she whispered, rock-ing him, "I can't help." It was already too many miles to Fresno.
"Is that him?" a voice asked behind her, up the stairs. "The sailor?"
"He has a tattoo on his hand."
"Can you bring him up OK? That's him." She turned and saw an even older man, shorter, wearing a tall Homburg hat and smiling at them. "I'd help you but I got a little arthritis222."
"Does he have to come up?" she said. "Up there?"
"Where else, lady?"
She didn't know. She let go of him for a moment, reluctant as if he were her own child, and he looked up at her. "Come on," she said. He reached out the tat-tooed hand and she took that, and that was how they went the rest of the way up that flight, and then the two more: hand in hand, very slowly for the man with arthritis.
"He disappeared last night," he told her. "Said he was going looking for his old lady. It's a thing he does, off and on." They entered a warren of rooms and corri-dors, lit by lo-watt bulbs, separated by beaverboard partitions. The old man followed them stiffly. At last he said, "Here."
In the little room were another suit, a couple of religious tracts223, a rug, a chair. A picture of a saint, changing well-water to oil for Jerusalem's Easter lamps. Another bulb, dead. The bed. The mattress, waiting. She ran through then a scene she might play. She might find the landlord of this place, and bring him to court, and buy the sailor a new suit at Roos/Atkins, and shirt, and shoes, and give him the bus fare to Fresno after all. But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn't felt it go away, as if he'd known the best moment to let go.
"Just mail the letter," he said, "the stamp is on it." She looked and saw the familiar carmine224 8^ airmail, with a jet flying by the Capitol dome225. But at the top of the dome stood a tiny figure in deep black, with its arms outstretched. Oedipa wasn't sure what exactly was sup-posed to be on top of the Capitol, but knew it wasn't anything like that.
"Please," the sailor said. "Go on now. You don't want to stay here." She looked in her purse, found a ten and a single, gave him the ten. "I'll spend it on booze," he said.
"Remember your friends," said the arthritic226, watching the ten.
"Bitch," said the sailor. "Why didn't you wait till he was gone?"
Oedipa watched him make adjustments so he'd fit easier against the mattress. That stuffed memory. Regis-terA . . .
"Give me a cigarette, Ramirez," the sailor said. "I know you got one."
Would it be today? "Ramirez," she cried. The arthritic looked around on his rusty227 neck. "He's going to die," she said.
"Who isn't?" said Ramirez.
She remembered John Nefastis, talking about his Machine, and massive destructions of information. So when this mattress flared228 up around the sailor, in his Viking's funeral: the stored, coded years of uselessness, early death, self-harrowing, the sure decay of hope, the set of all men who had slept on it, whatever their lives had been, would truly cease to be, forever, when the mattress burned. She stared at it in wonder. It was as if she had just discovered the irreversible process. It as-tonished her to think that so much could be lost, even the quantity of hallucination belonging just to the sailor that the world would bear no further trace of. She knew, because she had held him, that he suffered DT's. Behind the initials was a metaphor, a delirium229 tremens, a trembling unfurrowing of the mind's plowshare. The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant230 whose lapse231 in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful232 or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts233 and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering234, to protect us from. The act of metaphor then was a 7 thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. Oedipa did not know where she was. Trembling, unfurrowed, she slipped sidewise, screeching235 back across grooves236 of years, to hear again the earnest, high voice of her second or third collegiate love Ray Glozing bitching among "uhs" and the synco-pated tonguing of a cavity, about his freshman237 calculus238; "dt," God help this old tattooed man, meant also a time differential, a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where velocity239 dwelled in the projectile240 though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick. She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only because there was that high magic to low puns, be-cause DT's must give access to dt's of spectra241 beyond the known sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneli-ness and fright. But nothing she knew of would pre-serve them, or him. She gave him goodbye, walked downstairs and then on, in the direction he'd told her. For an hour she prowled among the sunless, concrete underpinnings of the freeway, finding drunks, bums242, pedestrians243, pederasts, hookers, walking psychotic, no secret mailbox. But at last in the shadows she did come on a can with a swinging trapezoidal top, the kind you throw trash in: old and green, nearly four feet high. On the swinging part were hand-painted the initials W.A.S.T.E. She had to look closely to see the periods between the letters.
Oedipa settled back in the shadow of a column. She may have dozed244 off. She woke to see a kid dropping a bundle of letters into- the can. She went over and dropped in the sailor's letter to Fresno; then hid again and waited. Toward midday a rangy young wino showed up with a sack; unlocked a panel at the side of the box and took out all the letters. Oedipa gave him half a block's start, then began to tail him. Congratu-lating herself on having thought to wear flats, at least. The carrier led her across Market then over toward City Hall. In a street close enough to the drab, stone openness of the Civic245 Center to be infected by its gray, he rendezvoused246 with another carrier, and they ex-changed sacks. Oedipa decided to stick with the one she'd been following. She tailed him all the way back down the littered, shifty, loud length of Market and over on First Street to the trans-bay bus terminal, where he bought a ticket for Oakland. So did Oedipa.
They rode over the bridge and into the great, empty glare of the Oakland afternoon. The landscape lost all variety. The carrier got off in a neighborhood Oedipa couldn't identify. She followed him for hours along streets whose names she never knew, across arteri-als that even with the afternoon's lull188 nearly murdered her, into slums and out, up long hillsides jammed solid with two- or three-bedroom houses, all their windows giving blankly back only the sun. One by one his sack of letters emptied. At length he climbed on a Berkeley bus. Oedipa followed. Halfway247 up Telegraph the carrier got off and led her down the street to a pseudo-Mexican apartment house. Not once had he looked behind him. John Nefastis lived here. She was back where she'd started, and could not believe 24 hours had passed. Should it have been more or less?
Back in the hotel she found the lobby full of deaf-mute delegates in party hats, copied in crepe paper after the fur Chinese communist jobs made popular during the Korean conflict. They were every one of them drunk, and a few of the men grabbed her, thinking to bring her along to a party in the grand ballroom248. She tried to struggle out of the silent, gesturing swarm249, but was too weak. Her legs ached, her mouth tasted hor-rible. They swept her on into the ballroom, where she was seized about the waist by a handsome young man in a Harris tweed coat and waltzed round and round, through the rustling250, shuffling251 hush252, under a great unlit chandelier. Each couple on the floor danced whatever was in the fellow's head: tango, two-step, bossa nova, slop. But how long, Oedipa thought, could it go on before collisions became a serious hindrance253? There would have to be collisions. The only alternative was some unthinkable order of music, many rhythms, all keys at once, a choreography in which each couple meshed254 easy, predestined. Something they all heard with an extra sense atrophied255 in herself. She followed her partner's lead, limp in the young mute's clasp, waiting for the collisions to begin. But none came. She was danced for half an hour before, by mysterious con-sensus, everybody took a break, without having felt any touch but the touch of her partner. Jesus Arrabal would have called it an anarchist miracle. Oedipa, withno name for it, wasonly demoralized. She curtsied andfled.!
Next day, after twelve hours of sleep and no dreams to speak of, Oedipa checked out of the hotel and drove down the peninsula to Kinneret. She had decided on route, with time to think about the day preceding, to go see Dr Hilarius her shrink, and tell him all. She might well be in the cold and sweatless meathooks of a psy-chosis. With her own eyes she had verified a WASTE system: seen two WASTE postmen, a WASTE mail-box, WASTE stamps, WASTE cancellations. And the image of the muted post horn all but saturating256 the Bay Area. Yet she wanted it all to be fantasy—some clear result of her several wounds, needs, dark doubles. She wanted Hilarius to tell her she was some kind of a nut and needed a rest, and that there was no Trystero. She also wanted to know why the chance of its being real should menace her so.
She pulled into the drive at Hilarius's clinic a little after sunset. The light in his office didn't seem to be on. Eucalyptus257 branches blew in a great stream of air that flowed downhill, sucked to the evening sea. Halfway along the flagstone path, she was startled by an insect whirring loudly past her ear, followed at once by the sound of a gunshot. That was no insect, thought Oedipa, at which point, hearing another shot, she made the connection. In the fading light she was a clear target; the only way to go was toward the clinic. She dashed up to the glass doors, found them locked, the lobby inside dark. Oedipa picked up a rock next to a flower bed and heaved it at one of the doors. It bounced off. She was looking around for another rock when a white shape appeared inside, fluttering up to the door and unlocking it for her. It was Helga Blamm, Hilari-us's sometime assistant.
"Hurry," she chattered258, as Oedipa slipped inside. The woman was close to hysterical259.
"What's happening?" Oedipa said.
"He's gone crazy. I tried to call the police, but he took a chair and smashed the switchboard with it."
"Dr Hilarius?"
"He thinks someone's after him." Tear streaks260 had meandered261 down over the nurse's cheekbones. "He's locked himself in the office with that rifle." A Gewehr 43, from the war, Oedipa recalled, that he kept as a souvenir.
"He shot at me. Do you think anybody will report
it?"
"Well he's shot at half a dozen people," replied Nurse Blamm, leading Oedipa down a corridor to her office. "Somebody better report it." Oedipa noticed that the window opened on a safe line of retreat.
"You could've run," she said.
Blamm, running hot water from a washbasin tap into cups and stirring in instant coffee, looked up, quiz-zical. "He might need somebody."
"Who's supposed to be after him?"
"Three men with submachine guns, he said. Ter-rorists, fanatics262, that was all I got. He started breaking up the PBX." She gave Oedipa a hostile look. "Too many nutty broads, that's what did it. Kinneret is full of nothing but. He couldn't cope."
"I've been away for a while," Oedipa said. "Maybe I could find out what it is. Maybe I'd be less of a threat for him." Blamm burned her mouth on the coffee. "Start telling him your troubles and he'll probably shoot you."
In front of his door, which she could never remem-ber having seen closed, Oedipa stood hipshot awhile, questioning her own sanity263. Why hadn't she split out through Blamm's window and read about the rest of it in the paper?
"Who is it?" Hilarius screamed, having picked up her breathing, or something.
"Mrs Maas."
"May Speer and his ministry264 of cretins rot eternally in hell. Do you realize that half these rounds are duds?"
"May I come in? Could we talk?"
"I'm sure you'd all like that," Hilarius said.
"I'm unarmed. You can frisk me."
"While you karate-chop me in the spine265, no thank you."
"Why are you resisting every suggestion I make?"
"Listen," Hilarius said after awhile, "have I seemed to you a good enough Freudian? Have I ever deviated266 seriously?"
"You made faces now and then," said Oedipa, "but that's minor267."
His response was a long, bitter laugh. Oedipa waited. "I tried," the shrink behind the door said, "to submit myself to that man, to the ghost of that cantan-kerous Jew. Tried to cultivate a faith in the literal truth of everything he wrote, even the idiocies268 and contradic-tions. It was the least I could have done, nicht wahr? A kind of penance269.
"And part of me must have really wanted to believe
—like a child hearing, in perfect safety, a tale of horror
—that the unconscious would be like any other room, once the light was let in. That the dark shapes would resolve only into toy horses and Biedermeyer furniture. That therapy could tame it after all, bring it into society with no fear of its someday reverting270. I wanted to believe, despite everything my life had been. Can you
imagine?"
She could not, having no idea what Hilarius had done before showing up in Kinneret. Far away she now heard sirens, the electronic kind the local cops used, that sounded like a slide-whistle being played over a PA. system. With linear obstinacy271 they grew louder.
"Yes, I hear them," Hilarius said. "Do you think anyone can protect me from these fanatics? They walk through walls. They replicate272: you flee them, turn a corner, and there they are, coming for you again."
"Do me a favor?" Oedipa said. "Don't shoot at the cops, they're on your side."
"Your Israeli has access to every uniform known," Hilarius said. "I can't guarantee the safety of the 'police.' You couldn't guarantee where they'd take me if I surrendered, could you."
She heard him pacing around his office. Unearthly siren-sounds converged273 on them from all over the night. "There is a face," Hilarius said, "that I can make. One you haven't seen; no one in this country has. I have only made it once in my life, and perhaps today in central Europe there still lives, in whatever vegetable ruin, the young man who saw it. He would be, now, about your age. Hopelessly insane. His name was Zvi. Will you tell the 'police,' or whatever they are calling themselves tonight, that I can make that face again? That it has an
effective radius274 of a hundred yards and drives anyone unlucky enough to see it down forever into the dark-ened oubliette, among the terrible shapes, and secures the hatch irrevocably above them? Thank you."
The sirens had reached the front of the clinic. She heard car doors slamming, cops yelling, suddenly a great smash as they broke in. The office door opened then. Hilarius grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her inside, locked the door again.
"So now I'm a hostage," Oedipa said.
"Oh," said Hilarius, "it's you."
"Well who did you think you'd been——"
"Discussing my case with? Another. There is me, there are the others. You know, with the LSD, we're finding, the distinction begins to vanish. Egos275 lose their sharp edges. But I never took the drug, I chose to remain in relative paranoia276, where at least I know who I am and who the others are. Perhaps that is why you also refused to participate, Mrs Maas?" He held the rifle at sling277 arms and beamed at her. "Well, then. You were supposed to deliver a message to me, I assume. From them. What were you supposed to say?"
Oedipa shrugged. "Face up to your social responsi-bilities," she suggested. "Accept the reality principle. You're outnumbered and they have superior firepower."
"Ah, outnumbered. We were outnumbered there too." He watched her with a coy look.
"Where?"
"Where I made that face. Where I did my intern-ship."
She knew then approximately what he was talking about, but to narrow it said, "Where," again.
"Buchenwald," replied Hilarius. Cops began hammering on the office door.
"He has a gun," Oedipa called, "and I'm in here."
"Who are you, lady?" She told him. "How do you spell that first name?" He also took down her address, age, phone number, next of kin3, husband's occupation, for the news media. Hilarius all the while was rummag-ing in his desk for more ammo. "Can you talk him out of it?" the cop wanted to know. "TV folks would like to get some footage through the window. Could you keep him occupied?"
"Hang tough," Oedipa advised, "we'll see." "Nice act you all have there," nodded Hilarius. "You think," said Oedipa, "then, that they're try-ing to bring you back to Israel, to stand trial, like they did Eichinann?" The shrink kept nodding. "Why? What did you do at Buchenwald?"
"I worked," Hilarius told her, "on experimentally-induced insanity278. A catatonic Jew was as good as a dead one. Liberal SS circles felt it would be more humane279." So they had gone at their subjects with metronomes, serpents, Brechtian vignettes at midnight, surgical280 re-moval of certain glands281, magic-lantern hallucinations, new drugs, threats recited over hidden loudspeakers, hypnotism, clocks that ran backward, and faces. Hila-rius had been put in charge of faces. "The Allied liberators," he reminisced, "arrived, unfortunately, be-fore we could gather enough data. Apart from the spectacular successes, like Zvi, there wasn't much we could point to in a statistical282 way." He smiled at the expression on her face. "Yes, you hate me. But didn't I try to atone283? If I'd been a real Nazi284 I'd have chosen Jung, nicht wahr? But I chose Freud instead, the Jew. Freud's vision of the world had no Buchenwalds in it. Buchenwald, according to Freud, once the light was let in, would become a soccer field, fat children would learn flower-arranging and solfeggio in the strangling rooms. At Auschwitz the ovens would be converted over to petit fours and wedding cakes, and the V-2 missiles to public housing for the elves. I tried to believe it all. I slept three hours a night trying not to dream, and spent the other 21 at the forcible acquisition of faith. And yet my penance hasn't been enough. They've come like angels of death to get me, despite all I tried to do."
"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 tentacle89, don't let the Freudians coax285 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.
"Bust286 it down," roared Oedipa, "and Hitler Hilar-ius here will foot the bill."
Outside, as a number of nervous patrolmen ap-proached Hilarius, holding up strait jackets and billy clubs they would not need, and as three rival ambu-lances backed snarling287 up onto the lawn, jockeying for position, causing Helga Blamm between sobs288 to call the drivers filthy289 names, Oedipa spotted290 among search-lights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a micro-phone. 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, mumbling291, "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 eyewitness292 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 Punch. "Sure glad you're back," he greeted her, clearly at a loss for her first name.
"Oh?" said Oedipa, "and why is that."
"Frankly," confided293 Punch, "since you left, Wen-dell hasn't been himself."
"And who," said Oedipa, working herself into a rage because Punch was right, "pray, has he been, Ringo Starr?" Punch cowered294. "Chubby295 Checker?" she pur-sued him toward the lobby, "the Righteous Brothers? And why tell me?"
"All of the above," said Punch, seeking to hide his head, "Mrs Maas."
"Oh, call me Edna. What do you mean?"
"Behind his back," Punch was whining296, "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 generic297. 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 serenity298 about him she'd never seen. He used to hunch299 his shoulders and have a rapid eyeblink rate, and both now were gone, "Wait," he smiled, and dwindled300 down the hall. She scrutinized301 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 fluted302 gold lens of a beer pitcher303.
"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 seeping304 in, in its subliminal305, unidentifiable way since they'd entered the place, all strings306, reeds, muted brass307.
"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 dinosaur308 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 synthetic309. They could dispense310 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 timbres311, 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 min-utes, 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 per-centage. So you and Rabbit have something in com-mon 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 shuffle312 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 flirting313 with a wild suspicion. "Is this what Punch means when he says you're coming on like a whole roomful of people?" "That's what I am," said Mucho, "right. Every-body is." He gazed at her, perhaps having had his vision of consensus as others do orgasms, face now smooth, amiable314, 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, dis-tances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping315 miracle." His eyes brimming, re-flecting the color of beer.
"Baby," she said, helpless, knowing of nothing she could do for this, and afraid for him.
He put a little clear plastic bottle on the table between them. She stared at the pills in it, and then understood. "That's LSD?" she said. Mucho smiled back. "Where'd you get it?" Knowing.
"Hilarius. He broadened his program to include husbands."
"Look then," Oedipa said, trying to be business-like, "how long has it been, that you've been on this?"
He honestly couldn't remember.
"But there may be a chance you're not addicted316
yet."
"Oed," looking at her puzzled, "you don't get addicted. It's not like you're some hophead. You take it because it's good. Because you hear and see things,
even smell them, taste like you never could. Because the world is so abundant. No end to it, baby. You're an antenna317, sending your pattern out across a million lives a night, and they're your lives too." He had this pa-tient, motherly look now. Oedipa wanted to hit him in the mouth. "The songs, it's not just that they say some-thing, they are something, in the pure sound. Some-thing new. And my dreams have changed."
"Oh, goodo." Flipping her hair a couple times, furious, "No nightmares any more? Fine. So your latest little friend, whoever she is, she really made out. At that age, you know, they need all the sleep they can get."
"There's no girl, Oed. Let me tell you. The bad dream that I used to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that? I could never even tell you about it. But I can now. It doesn't bother me any more. It was only that sign in the lot, that's what scared me. In the dream I'd be going about a normal day's business and sud-denly, with no warning, there'd be the sign. We were a member of the National Automobile318 Dealers319' Associa-tion. N.A.D.A. Just this creaking metal sign that said nada, nada, against the blue sky. I used to wake up hollering."
She remembered. Now he would never be spooked again, not as long as he had the pills. She could not quite get it into her head that the day she'd left him for San Narciso was the day she'd seen Mucho for the last time. So much of him already had dissipated.
"Oh, listen," he was saying, "Oed, dig." But she couldn't even tell what the tune320 was.
When it was time for him to go back to the station, he nodded toward the pills. "You could have those."
She shook her head no.
"You're going back to San Narciso?"
"Tonight, yes."
"But the cops."
"I'll be a fugitive321." Later she couldn't remember if they'd said anything else. At the station they kissed goodbye, all of them. As Mucho walked away he was whistling something complicated, twelve-tone. Oedipa sat with her forehead resting on the steering322 wheel and remembered that she hadn't asked him about the Trys-tero cancellation on his letter. But by then it was too late to make any difference.
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1
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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tryst
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| n.约会；v.与…幽会 | |
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3
kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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9
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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12
warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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13
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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14
lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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15
paperback
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| n.平装本，简装本 | |
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16
variant
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| adj.不同的，变异的；n.变体，异体 | |
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17
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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18
awry
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| adj.扭曲的，错的 | |
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wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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20
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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21
persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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22
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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23
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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24
abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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26
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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27
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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28
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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29
spokes
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| n.（车轮的）辐条( spoke的名词复数 )；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 | |
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30
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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31
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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32
blandness
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| n.温柔，爽快 | |
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33
somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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34
autonomous
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| adj.自治的；独立的 | |
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auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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folklore
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| n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗 | |
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cataclysm
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| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
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38
dissents
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| 意见的分歧( dissent的名词复数 ) | |
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39
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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40
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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41
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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42
alcoholic
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| adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者 | |
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43
fanatic
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| n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的 | |
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44
aliases
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| n.别名，化名( alias的名词复数 ) | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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47
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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48
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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49
molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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50
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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51
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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52
secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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53
piston
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| n.活塞 | |
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54
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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55
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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56
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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57
subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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58
cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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59
gorilla
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| n.大猩猩，暴徒，打手 | |
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60
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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61
pistons
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| 活塞( piston的名词复数 ) | |
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62
twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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63
colon
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| n.冒号，结肠，直肠 | |
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64
frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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65
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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66
profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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67
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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68
screeched
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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69
virility
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| n.雄劲，丈夫气 | |
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70
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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71
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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72
residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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73
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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74
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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75
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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76
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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77
outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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78
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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79
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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80
disintegrate
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| v.瓦解，解体，（使）碎裂，（使）粉碎 | |
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81
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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82
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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83
warehouses
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| 仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 ) | |
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84
deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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85
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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86
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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87
herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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88
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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89
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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90
tentacles
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| n.触手( tentacle的名词复数 )；触角；触须；触毛 | |
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91
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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92
suede
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| n.表面粗糙的软皮革 | |
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93
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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94
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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95
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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96
alloy
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| n.合金，(金属的)成色 | |
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97
theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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98
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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99
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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100
bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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101
ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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102
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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103
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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104
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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105
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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106
addiction
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| n.上瘾入迷，嗜好 | |
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107
isolates
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| v.使隔离( isolate的第三人称单数 )；将…剔出（以便看清和单独处理）；使（某物质、细胞等）分离；使离析 | |
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108
corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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109
supervisor
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| n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师 | |
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110
automated
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| a.自动化的 | |
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111
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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112
specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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113
memoranda
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| n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
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114
memo
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| n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章 | |
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115
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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116
inputs
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| n.输入( input的名词复数 )；投入；输入端；输入的数据v.把…输入电脑( input的第三人称单数 ) | |
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117
binoculars
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| n.双筒望远镜 | |
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118
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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119
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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120
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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121
Buddhist
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| adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒 | |
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122
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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123
douse
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| v.把…浸入水中，用水泼；n.泼洒 | |
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124
flick
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| n.快速的轻打，轻打声，弹开；v.轻弹，轻轻拂去，忽然摇动 | |
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125
intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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126
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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127
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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128
lewd
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| adj.淫荡的 | |
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129
zippers
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| n.拉链( zipper的名词复数 )；用拉链的人，装拉链的包 | |
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130
thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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131
marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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132
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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133
dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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134
emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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135
Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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136
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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137
relevance
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| n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性 | |
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138
gauged
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| adj.校准的；标准的；量规的；量计的v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的过去式和过去分词 )；估计；计量；划分 | |
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139
spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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140
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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141
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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142
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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143
sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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144
sleeked
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| 使…光滑而发亮( sleek的过去式 ) | |
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145
capillaries
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| 毛细管，毛细血管( capillary的名词复数 ) | |
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146
vessels
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|
| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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147
mashed
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| a.捣烂的 | |
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148
trauma
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| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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149
attenuate
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| v.使变小，使减弱 | |
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150
consummated
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| v.使结束( consummate的过去式和过去分词 )；使完美；完婚；（婚礼后的）圆房 | |
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151
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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152
ravening
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| a.贪婪而饥饿的 | |
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153
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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154
retaliate
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| v.报复，反击 | |
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155
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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156
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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157
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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158
clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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159
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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160
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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161
obnoxious
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|
| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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162
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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163
anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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164
consensus
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| n.(意见等的)一致，一致同意，共识 | |
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165
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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166
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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167
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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168
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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169
cancellation
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| n.删除，取消 | |
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170
delinquents
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| n.（尤指青少年）有过失的人，违法的人( delinquent的名词复数 ) | |
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171
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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172
tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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173
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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174
bleach
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| vt.使漂白；vi.变白；n.漂白剂 | |
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175
incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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176
fluorescent
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| adj.荧光的，发出荧光的 | |
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177
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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178
transistor
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| n.晶体管，晶体管收音机 | |
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179
lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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180
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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181
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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182
scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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183
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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184
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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185
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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186
voyeur
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| n.窥淫狂者，窥隐私者 | |
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187
welder
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| n电焊工 | |
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188
lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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189
lulling
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的现在分词形式） | |
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190
miscarriage
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| n.失败，未达到预期的结果；流产 | |
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191
nibbling
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的现在分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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192
virtuoso
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| n.精于某种艺术或乐器的专家，行家里手 | |
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193
lotions
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| n.洗液，洗剂，护肤液( lotion的名词复数 ) | |
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194
fabrics
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| 织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地 | |
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195
ulcers
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| n.溃疡( ulcer的名词复数 )；腐烂物；道德败坏；腐败 | |
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196
alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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197
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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198
grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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199
postulated
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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200
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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201
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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202
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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203
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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204
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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205
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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206
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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207
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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208
tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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209
tattooed
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| v.刺青，文身( tattoo的过去式和过去分词 )；连续有节奏地敲击；作连续有节奏的敲击 | |
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210
blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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211
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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212
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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213
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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214
frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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215
furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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216
virtuously
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| 合乎道德地，善良地 | |
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217
plowing
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| v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
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218
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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219
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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220
vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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221
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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222
arthritis
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| n.关节炎 | |
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223
tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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224
carmine
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| n.深红色，洋红色 | |
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225
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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226
arthritic
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| adj.关节炎的 | |
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227
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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228
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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229
delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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230
clairvoyant
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| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
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231
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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232
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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233
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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234
buffering
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| 缓冲（作用）； 减震； 阻尼； 隔离 | |
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235
screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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236
grooves
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| n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏 | |
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237
freshman
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| n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女) | |
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238
calculus
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| n.微积分；结石 | |
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239
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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240
projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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241
spectra
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| n.光谱 | |
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242
bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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243
pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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244
dozed
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| v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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245
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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246
rendezvoused
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| v.约会，会合( rendezvous的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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247
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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248
ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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249
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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250
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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251
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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252
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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253
hindrance
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| n.妨碍，障碍 | |
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254
meshed
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| 有孔的，有孔眼的，啮合的 | |
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255
atrophied
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|
| adj.萎缩的，衰退的v.（使）萎缩，（使）虚脱，（使）衰退( atrophy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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256
saturating
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| 浸湿，浸透( saturate的现在分词 )； 使…大量吸收或充满某物 | |
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257
eucalyptus
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| n.桉树，桉属植物 | |
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258
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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259
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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260
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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261
meandered
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| （指溪流、河流等）蜿蜒而流( meander的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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262
fanatics
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| 狂热者，入迷者( fanatic的名词复数 ) | |
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263
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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264
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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265
spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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266
deviated
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| v.偏离，越轨( deviate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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267
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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268
idiocies
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| n.极度的愚蠢( idiocy的名词复数 )；愚蠢的行为；白痴状态 | |
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269
penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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270
reverting
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| 恢复( revert的现在分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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271
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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272
replicate
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| v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的 | |
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273
converged
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| v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的过去式 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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274
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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275
egos
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| 自我，自尊，自负( ego的名词复数 ) | |
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276
paranoia
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| n.妄想狂，偏执狂；多疑症 | |
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277
sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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278
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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279
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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280
surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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281
glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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282
statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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283
atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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284
Nazi
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| n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的 | |
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285
coax
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| v.哄诱，劝诱，用诱哄得到，诱取 | |
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286
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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287
snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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288
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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289
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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290
spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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291
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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292
eyewitness
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| n.目击者，见证人 | |
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293
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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294
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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295
chubby
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| adj.丰满的，圆胖的 | |
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296
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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297
generic
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| adj.一般的，普通的，共有的 | |
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298
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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299
hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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300
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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301
scrutinized
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| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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302
fluted
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| a.有凹槽的 | |
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303
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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304
seeping
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| v.（液体）渗( seep的现在分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出 | |
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305
subliminal
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| adj.下意识的，潜意识的；太弱或太快以至于难以觉察的 | |
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306
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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307
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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308
dinosaur
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| n.恐龙 | |
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309
synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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310
dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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311
timbres
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| n.音色，音品( timbre的名词复数 ) | |
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312
shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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313
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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314
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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315
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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316
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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317
antenna
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| n.触角，触须；天线 | |
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318
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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319
dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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320
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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321
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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322
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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