Infinite Jest Part 5

The delay that preceded her reply was only marginally longer than the pause in a regular civilian conversation. The doctor had no ideas about what this observation might indicate.

'Do you guys see different kinds of suicides?'

The resident made no attempt to ask Kate Gompert what she meant. She used one finger to remove some material from the corner of her mouth.

'I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm s.h.i.+t and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 u 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bulls.h.i.+t. It's bulls.h.i.+t. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves.' Still that intriguing, unsettling combination of blank facial masking and conventionally animated vocal tone. The doctor's small nods were designed to appear not as responses but as invitations to continue, what Dretske called Momentumizers.

'I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all.'

'Play,' nodding in confirmation, making small quick notes.

'I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.'

The doctor was writing with great industry.

'The last thing more I'd want is hurt. I just didn't want to feel this way anymore. I don't... I didn't believe this feeling would ever go away. I don't. I still don't. I'd rather feel nothing than this.'

The doctor's eyes appeared keenly interested in an abstract way. They looked severely magnified behind his attractive but thick gla.s.ses, the frames of which were steel. Patients on other floors during other rotations had sometimes complained that they sometimes felt like something in a jar he was studying intently through all that thick gla.s.s. He was saying 'This feeling of wanting to stop feeling by dying, then, is -'

The way she suddenly shook her head was vehement, exasperated. 'The feeling is why why I want to. The feeling is the I want to. The feeling is the reason reason I want to die. I'm here because I want to die. That's why I'm in a room without windows and with cages over the lightbulbs and no lock on the toilet door. Why they took my shoelaces and my belt. But I notice they don't take away the feeling do they.' I want to die. I'm here because I want to die. That's why I'm in a room without windows and with cages over the lightbulbs and no lock on the toilet door. Why they took my shoelaces and my belt. But I notice they don't take away the feeling do they.'

'Is the feeling you're explaining something you've experienced in your other depressions, then, Katherine?'

The patient didn't respond right away. She slid her foot out of her shoes and touched one bare foot with the toes of the other foot. Her eyes tracked this activity. The conversation seemed to have helped her focus. Like most clinically depressed patients, she appeared to function better in focused activity than in stasis. Their normal paralyzed stasis allowed these patients' own minds to chew them apart. But it was always a t.i.tanic struggle to get them to do anything to help them focus. Most residents found the fifth floor a depressing place to do a rotation.

'What I'm trying to ask, I think, is whether this feeling you're communicating is the feeling you a.s.sociate with your depression.'

Her gaze moved off. 'That's what you guys want to call it, I guess.'

The doctor clicked his pen slowly a few times and explained that he's more interested here in what she she would choose to call the feeling, since it was her feeling. would choose to call the feeling, since it was her feeling.

The resumed study of the movement of her feet. 'When people call it that I always get p.i.s.sed off because I always think depression depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state.' She seemed to the doctor decidedly more animated now, even as she seemed unable to meet his eyes. Her respiration had sped back up. The doctor recalled cla.s.sic hyperventilatory episodes being characterized by carpopedal spasms, and reminded himself to monitor the patient's hands and feet carefully during the interview for any signs of tetanic contraction, in which case the prescribed therapy would be I.V. calcium in a saline percentage he would need quickly to look up. sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state.' She seemed to the doctor decidedly more animated now, even as she seemed unable to meet his eyes. Her respiration had sped back up. The doctor recalled cla.s.sic hyperventilatory episodes being characterized by carpopedal spasms, and reminded himself to monitor the patient's hands and feet carefully during the interview for any signs of tetanic contraction, in which case the prescribed therapy would be I.V. calcium in a saline percentage he would need quickly to look up.

'Well this' this' - she gestured at herself - 'isn't a state. This is a - she gestured at herself - 'isn't a state. This is a feeling. feeling. I feel it all over. In my arms and legs.' I feel it all over. In my arms and legs.'

'That would include your carp- your hands and feet?'

'All over. over. My head, throat, b.u.t.t. In my stomach. It's all over everywhere. I don't know what I could call it. It's like I can't get enough outside it to call it anything. It's like horror more than sadness. It's more like horror. It's like something horrible is about to happen, the most horrible thing you can imagine - no, worse than you can imagine because there's the feeling that there's something you have to do right away to stop it but you don't know what it is you have to do, and then it's happening, too, the whole horrible time, it's about to happen and also it's happening, all at the same time.' My head, throat, b.u.t.t. In my stomach. It's all over everywhere. I don't know what I could call it. It's like I can't get enough outside it to call it anything. It's like horror more than sadness. It's more like horror. It's like something horrible is about to happen, the most horrible thing you can imagine - no, worse than you can imagine because there's the feeling that there's something you have to do right away to stop it but you don't know what it is you have to do, and then it's happening, too, the whole horrible time, it's about to happen and also it's happening, all at the same time.'

'So you'd say anxiety is a big part of your depressions.'

It was now not clear whether she was responding to the doctor or not. 'Everything gets horrible. Everything you see gets ugly. Lurid Lurid is the word. Doctor Garton said is the word. Doctor Garton said lurid, lurid, one time. That's the right word for it. And everything sounds harsh, spiny and harsh-sounding, like every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth. And smelling like I smell bad even after I just got out of the shower. It's like what's the point of was.h.i.+ng if everything smells like I need another shower.' one time. That's the right word for it. And everything sounds harsh, spiny and harsh-sounding, like every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth. And smelling like I smell bad even after I just got out of the shower. It's like what's the point of was.h.i.+ng if everything smells like I need another shower.'

The doctor looked intrigued rather than concerned for a moment as he wrote all this down. He preferred handwritten notes to a laptop because he felt M.D.s who typed into their laps during clinical interviews gave a cold impression.

Kate Gompert's face writhed for a moment while the doctor was writing. 'I fear this feeling more than I fear anything, man. More than pain, or my mom dying, or environmental toxicity. Anything.'

'Fear is a major part of anxiety,' the doctor confirmed.

Katherine Gompert seemed to come out of her dark reverie for a moment. She stared full-frontal at the doctor for several seconds, and the doctor, who'd had all discomfort at being stared at by patients trained right out of him when he'd rotated through the paralysis/-plegia wards upstairs, was able to look directly back at her with a kind of bland compa.s.sion, the expression of someone who was compa.s.sionate but was not, of course, feeling what she was feeling, and who honored her subjective feelings by not even trying to pretend that he was. Sharing them. The young woman's expression, in turn, revealed that she had decided to take what amounted for her to her own gamble, this early in a therapeutic relations.h.i.+p. The abstract resolve on her face now duplicated what had been on the doctor's face when he'd taken the gamble of asking her to sit up straight.

'Listen,' she said. 'Have you ever felt sick? I mean nauseous, like you knew you were going to throw up?'

The doctor made a gesture like Well sure.

'But that's just in your stomach,' Kate Gompert said. 'It's a horrible feeling but it's just in your stomach. That's why the term is "sick to your stomach." ' She was back to looking intently at her lower carpopedals. 'What I told Dr. Garton is OK but imagine if you felt that way all over, inside. All through you. Like every cell and every atom or brain-cell or whatever was so nauseous it wanted to throw up, but it couldn't, and you felt that way all the time, and you're sure, you're positive the feeling will never go away, you're going to spend the rest of your natural life feeling like this.'

The doctor wrote down something much too brief to correspond directly to what she'd said. He was nodding both while he wrote and when he looked up. 'And yet this nauseated feeling has come and gone for you in the past, it's pa.s.sed eventually during prior depressions, Katherine, has it not?'

'But when you're in the feeling you forget. The feeling feels like it's always been there and will always be there, and you forget. It's like this whole filter drops down over the whole way you think about everything, a couple weeks after -'

They sat and looked at each other. The doctor felt some combination of intense clinical excitement and anxiety about perhaps saying the wrong thing at such a crucial juncture and fouling up. His last name was needle-pointed in yellow braid on the left breast of the white coat he was required to wear. 'I'm sorry? A couple weeks after -? '

He waited for seven breaths.

'I want shock,' she said finally. 'Isn't part of this whole concerned kindness deal that you're supposed to ask me how I think you can be of help? Cause I've been through this before. You haven't asked what I want. Isn't it? Well how about either give me ECT 29 29 again, or give me my belt back. Because I can't stand feeling like this another second, and the seconds keep coming on and on.' again, or give me my belt back. Because I can't stand feeling like this another second, and the seconds keep coming on and on.'

'Well,' the doctor said slowly, nodding to indicate he had heard the feelings the young woman was expressing, 'Well, I'm happy to discuss treatment options with you, Katherine. But I have to say right now I'm curious about what you started it sounded like to me to maybe start to indicate what might have occurred, something, two weeks ago to make you feel these feelings now. Would you be comfortable talking to me about it?'

'Either ECT or you could just sedate me for a month. You could do that. All I'd need is I think a month at the outside. Like a controlled coma. You could do that, if you guys want to help.'

The doctor gazed at her with a patience she was meant to see.

And she gave him back a frightening smile, a smile empty of all affect, as if someone had contracted her circ.u.morals with a thigmotactic electrode. The teeth of the smile evidenced a clinical depressive's cla.s.sic inattention to oral hygiene.

She said 'I was thinking I was about to say you'll think I'm crazy if I tell you. But then I remembered where I am.' She made a small sound that was supposed to be laughter; it did sound jagged, dentate.

'I was going to say I've thought sometimes before like the feeling maybe had to do with Hope.'

'Hope.'

Her arms had been crossed over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s the whole time, and though the room was overheated the patient rubbed each palm continually over her upper arms, behavior one a.s.sociates with chill. The position and movement s.h.i.+elded her inner arms from view. The doctor's eyebrows had gone synclinal from puzzlement without his awareness.

'Bob.'

'Bob.' The doctor was anxious that his failure to have any idea what the girl was referring to would betray itself and accentuate her feelings of loneliness and psychic pain. Cla.s.sic unipolars were usually tormented by the conviction that no one else could hear or understand them when they tried to communicate. Hence jokes, sarcasm, the psychopathology of unconscious arm-rubbing.

Kate Gompert's head was rolling like a blind person's. 'Jesus what am I doing doing here. Bob Hope. Dope. Sinse. Stick. Gra.s.s. Smoke.' She made a quick duBois-gesture with thumb and finger held to rounded lips. 'The dealers down where I buy it some of them make you call it Bob Hope when you call, in case anybody's accessed the line. You're supposed to ask is Bob in town. And if they have some they say "Hope springs eternal," usually. It's like a code. One kid makes you ask him to please commit a crime. The dealers that stay around any length of time tend to be on the paranoid side. As if it would fool anybody who knew enough to bother to access the band on the call.' She seemed decidedly more animated. 'And one particular guy with snakes in a tank in a trailer in Allston, he -' here. Bob Hope. Dope. Sinse. Stick. Gra.s.s. Smoke.' She made a quick duBois-gesture with thumb and finger held to rounded lips. 'The dealers down where I buy it some of them make you call it Bob Hope when you call, in case anybody's accessed the line. You're supposed to ask is Bob in town. And if they have some they say "Hope springs eternal," usually. It's like a code. One kid makes you ask him to please commit a crime. The dealers that stay around any length of time tend to be on the paranoid side. As if it would fool anybody who knew enough to bother to access the band on the call.' She seemed decidedly more animated. 'And one particular guy with snakes in a tank in a trailer in Allston, he -'

'So drugs, then, you're saying you feel may be a factor,' the doctor interrupted.

The depressed young woman's face emptied once more. She engaged briefly in something the staffers on Specials called the Thousand-Meter Stare.

'Not "drugs," "drugs," ' she said slowly. The doctor smelled shame in the room, sour and uremic. Her face had become distantly pained now. ' she said slowly. The doctor smelled shame in the room, sour and uremic. Her face had become distantly pained now.

The girl said: 'Stopping.'

The doctor felt comfortable saying once again that he was not sure he understood what she was trying to share with him.

She now went through a series of expressions that made it clinically impossible for the doctor to determine whether or not she was entirely sincere. She looked either pained or trying somehow to suppress hilarity. She said 'I don't know if you'll believe me. I'm worried you'll think I'm crazy. I have this thing with pot.'

'Meaning marijuana.'

The doctor was oddly sure that Kate Gompert pretended to sniff instead of engaging in a real sniff. 'Marijuana. Most people think of marijuana as just some minor substance, I know, just like this natural plant that happens to make you feel good the way poison oak makes you itch, and if you say you're in trouble with Hope - people'll just laugh. Because there's much worse drugs out there. Believe me I know.'

'I'm not laughing at you, Katherine,' the doctor said, and meant it.

'But I love it so much so much. Sometimes it's like the center of my life. It does something to me, I know, that's not good, and I got told point-blank not to smoke, on the Parnate, because Dr. Garton said no one knew what certain combinations do yet and it'd be roulette. But after a while I always think to myself it's been a while and things will be different somehow this time if I do, even on the Parnate, so I do again, I start again. I'll start out doing just like a couple of hits off a duBois after work, to get me through dinner, because dinner with my mother and me is - well, but and pretty soon after a while I'm in my room with the fan pointed out the window all night, doing one-hitters and exhaling at the fan, to kill the smell, and I make her say I'm not there if anybody calls, and I lie about what I'm doing in there all night even if she doesn't ask, sometimes she asks and sometimes she doesn't. And then after a while I'm smoking joints at work, at breaks, going in the bathroom and standing on the toilet and blowing it out the window, there's this tiny window up high with the gla.s.s frosted and all filthy and cobwebby, and I hate having my face up next to it, but if I clean it off I'm afraid Mrs. Diggs or somebody will be able to tell somebody's been doing something up around the window, standing there in high heels on the rim of the toilet, brus.h.i.+ng my teeth all the time and using up Collyrium 30 30 by the bottleful and switching the console to audio and always needing more water before I answer the console because my mouth's too dry to talk, especially on the Parnate, the Parnate makes my mouth dry anyways. And pretty soon I'm totally paranoid they know I'm stoned, at work, sitting there in the office, high, reeking and I'm the only one that can't tell I reek, I'm like so obsessed with Do They Know, Can They Tell, and then after a while I'm having my mother call in sick for me so I can stay home after she goes in to work and have the whole place to myself with n.o.body to worry about Do They Know, and smoke out the fan, and spray Lysol all over and stir Ginger's litter box around so the whole place reeks of Ginger, and smoke and draw and watch terrible daytime stuff on the TP because I don't want my mother to see any cartridge-orders on days I'm supposed to be in bed sick, I start to get obsessed with Does She Know. I'm getting more and more miserable and fed up with myself for smoking so much, this is after a couple weeks of it, is all, and I start getting high and thinking about nothing except how I have to quit smoking all this Bob so I can get back to work and start saying I'm here when people call, so I can start living some kind of d.a.m.n by the bottleful and switching the console to audio and always needing more water before I answer the console because my mouth's too dry to talk, especially on the Parnate, the Parnate makes my mouth dry anyways. And pretty soon I'm totally paranoid they know I'm stoned, at work, sitting there in the office, high, reeking and I'm the only one that can't tell I reek, I'm like so obsessed with Do They Know, Can They Tell, and then after a while I'm having my mother call in sick for me so I can stay home after she goes in to work and have the whole place to myself with n.o.body to worry about Do They Know, and smoke out the fan, and spray Lysol all over and stir Ginger's litter box around so the whole place reeks of Ginger, and smoke and draw and watch terrible daytime stuff on the TP because I don't want my mother to see any cartridge-orders on days I'm supposed to be in bed sick, I start to get obsessed with Does She Know. I'm getting more and more miserable and fed up with myself for smoking so much, this is after a couple weeks of it, is all, and I start getting high and thinking about nothing except how I have to quit smoking all this Bob so I can get back to work and start saying I'm here when people call, so I can start living some kind of d.a.m.n life life instead of just sitting around in pajamas pretending I'm sick like a third-grader and smoking and watching TP again, and so after I've smoked the last of whatever I've got I always say No More, This Is It, and I throw out my papers and my one-hitter, I've probably thrown about fifty one-hitters in dumpsters, including some nice wood and bra.s.s ones, including a couple from Brazil, the land-barge guys must go through our sector's dumpster once a day looking to get another good one-hitter. And anyways I quit. I do stop. I get sick of it, I don't like what it does to me. And I go back to work and work my f.a.n.n.y off, to make up for the last couple weeks and get a leg up on like building momentum for a whole new start, you know?' instead of just sitting around in pajamas pretending I'm sick like a third-grader and smoking and watching TP again, and so after I've smoked the last of whatever I've got I always say No More, This Is It, and I throw out my papers and my one-hitter, I've probably thrown about fifty one-hitters in dumpsters, including some nice wood and bra.s.s ones, including a couple from Brazil, the land-barge guys must go through our sector's dumpster once a day looking to get another good one-hitter. And anyways I quit. I do stop. I get sick of it, I don't like what it does to me. And I go back to work and work my f.a.n.n.y off, to make up for the last couple weeks and get a leg up on like building momentum for a whole new start, you know?'

The young woman's face and eyes were going through a number of ranges of affective configurations, with all of them seeming inexplicably at gut-level somehow blank and maybe not entirely sincere.

'And so,' she said, 'but then I quit. And a couple of weeks after I've smoked a lot and finally stopped and quit and gone back to really living, after a couple of weeks this feeling feeling always starts creeping in, just creeping in a little at the edges at first, like first thing in the morning when I get up, or waiting for the T to go home, after work, for supper. And I try to deny it, the feeling, ignore it, because I fear it more than anything.' always starts creeping in, just creeping in a little at the edges at first, like first thing in the morning when I get up, or waiting for the T to go home, after work, for supper. And I try to deny it, the feeling, ignore it, because I fear it more than anything.'

'The feeling you're describing, that starts creeping in.'

Kate Gompert finally took a real breath. 'And then but no matter what I do it gets worse and worse, it's there more and more, this filter drops down, and the feeling makes the fear of the feeling way worse, and after a couple weeks it's there all the time, the feeling, and I'm totally inside it, I'm in it and everything has to pa.s.s through it to get in, and I don't want to smoke any Bob, and I don't want to work, or go out, or read, or watch TP, or go out, or stay in, or either do anything or not do anything, I don't want anything anything except for the feeling to go except for the feeling to go away away. But it doesn't. Part of the feeling is being like willing to do anything to make it go away. Understand that. Anything Anything. Do you understand? It's not wanting to hurt myself it's wanting to not hurt not hurt.'

The doctor hadn't even pretended to try to take notes on all this. He couldn't keep himself from trying to determine whether the ambient blank insincerity the patient seemed to project during what appeared, clinically, to be a significant gamble and move toward trust and self-revealing was in fact projected by the patient or was somehow counter-transferred or -projected onto the patient from the doctor's own psyche out of some sort of anxiety over the critical therapeutic possibilities her revelation of concern over drug-use might represent. The time this thinking required looked like sober and thoughtful consideration of what Kate Gompert said. She was again gazing at her feet's interactions with the empty boating sneakers, her face moving between expressions a.s.sociated with grief and suffering. None of the clinical literature the doctor had read for his psych rotation suggested any relation between unipolar episodes and withdrawal from cannabinoids.

'So this has happened in the past, prior to your other hospitalizations, then, Katherine.'

Her face, foreshortened by its downward angle, was working in the spread, writhing configurations of weeping, but no tears emerged. 'I just want you to shock me. Just get me out of this. I'll do anything you want.'

'Have you explored this possible connection between your cannabis use and your depressions with your regular therapist, Katherine?'

She did not respond directly as such. Her a.s.sociations began to loosen, in the doctor's opinion, as her face continued to work dryly.

'I had shock before and it got me out of this. Straps. Nurses with their sneakers in little green bags. Anti-saliva injections. Rubber thing for your tongue. General. Just some headaches. I didn't mind it at all all. I know everybody thinks it's horrible. That old cartridge, Nichols and the big Indian. Distortion. They give you a general here, right? They put you under. It's not that bad. I'll go willingly.'

The doctor was summarizing her choice of treatment-option, as was her right, on her chart. He had extremely good penmans.h.i.+p for a doctor. He put her get me out of this get me out of this in quotation marks. He was adding his own post-a.s.sessment question, in quotation marks. He was adding his own post-a.s.sessment question, Then what?, Then what?, when Kate Gompert began weeping for real. when Kate Gompert began weeping for real.

And just before 0145h. on 2 April Y.D.A.U., his wife arrived back home and uncovered her hair and came in and saw the Near Eastern medical attache and his face and tray and eyes and the soiled condition of his special recliner, and rushed to his side crying his name aloud, touching his head, trying to get a response, failing to get any response to her, he still staring straight ahead; and eventually and naturally she - noting that the expression on his rictus of a face nevertheless appeared very positive, ecstatic, even, you could say - she eventually and naturally turning her head and following his line of sight to the cartridge-viewer.

Gerhardt Scht.i.tt, Head Coach and Athletic Director at the Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield MA, was wooed fiercely by E.T.A. Headmaster Dr. James Incandenza, just about begged to come on board the moment the Academy's hilltop was shaved flat and the place was up and running. Incandenza had decided he was going to bring Scht.i.tt on board or bust - this even though Scht.i.tt had then just lately been asked to resign from the staff of a Nick Bollettieri camp in Sarasota because of a really unfortunate incident involving a riding crop.

By now, though, pretty much everybody now at E.T.A. feels as though stories about Scht.i.tt's whole corporal-punitive thing must have been pumped up out of all sane proportion, because even though Scht.i.tt still does favor those high and s.h.i.+ny black boots, and yes the epaulets, still, and now a weatherman's telescoping pointer that's a clear stand-in for the now-forbidden old riding crop, he has, Scht.i.tt, at near what must be seventy, mellowed to the sort of elder-statesman point where he's become mostly a dispenser of abstractions rather than discipline, a philosopher instead of a king. His felt presence is here mostly verbal; the weatherman's pointer has not made corrective contact with even one athletic bottom in Scht.i.tt's whole nine years at E.T.A.

Still, although he now has all these Lebensgefahrtins Lebensgefahrtins31 and prorectors to administer most of the necessary little character-building cruelties, Scht.i.tt does like his occasional bit of fun, still. and prorectors to administer most of the necessary little character-building cruelties, Scht.i.tt does like his occasional bit of fun, still.

So but when Scht.i.tt dons the leather helmet and goggles and revs up the old F.R.G.-era BMW cycle and trails the sweating E.T.A. squads up the Comm. Ave. hills into East Newton on their P.M. conditioning runs, making judicious use of his pea-shooter to discourage straggling sluggards, it's usually eighteen-year-old Mario Incandenza who gets to ride along in the sidecar, carefully braced and strapped, the wind blowing his thin hair straight back off his oversized head, beaming and waving his claw at people he knows. It's possibly odd that the leptosomatic Mario I., so damaged he can't even grip a stick, much less flail at a moving ball with one, is the one kid at E.T.A. whose company Scht.i.tt seeks out, is in fact pretty much the one person with whom Scht.i.tt speaks candidly, lets his pedagogical hair down. He's not close to his prorectors, particularly, Scht.i.tt, and treats Aubrey deLint and Mary Esther Thode with a formality that's almost parodic. But often of a warm evening sometimes Mario and Coach Scht.i.tt will find themselves out alone under the East Courts' canvas pavilion or the towering copper beech west of Comm.-Ad., or at one of the initial-scarred redwood picnic tables off the path out behind the Headmaster's House where Mario's mother and uncle live, Scht.i.tt savoring a post-prandial pipe, Mario enjoying the smells of the calliopsis alongside the grounds' quincunx paths, the sweetish pines and the briers' yeasty musk coming up from the hillside's slopes. And he actually likes the sulphury odor of Scht.i.tt's obscure Austrian blend. Scht.i.tt talks, Mario listens, generally. Mario is basically a born listener. One of the positives to being visibly damaged is that people can sometimes forget you're there, even when they're interfacing with you. You almost get to eavesdrop. It's almost like they're like: If n.o.body's really in there, there's nothing to be shy about. That's why bulls.h.i.+t often tends to drop away around damaged listeners, deep beliefs revealed, diary-type private reveries indulged out loud; and, listening, the beaming and brady-kinetic boy gets to forge an interpersonal connection he knows only he can truly feel, here.

Scht.i.tt has the sort of creepy wiriness of old men who still exercise vigorously. He has surprised blue eyes and a vivid white crewcut of the sort that looks virile and good on men who have lost a lot of hair anyway. And skin so clean-sheet-white it almost glows; an evident immunity to the sun's UV; in pine-shaded twilight he is almost glowingly white, as if cut from the stuff of moons. He has a way of focusing his whole self's concentration very narrowly, adjusting his legs' spread for the varicoceles and curling one arm over the other and sort of drawing himself in around the pipe he attends to. Mario can sit motionless for really long periods. When Scht.i.tt exhales pipe-smoke in different geometric shapes they both seem to study intently, when Scht.i.tt exhales he makes little sounds variant in plosivity between P and B.

'Am realizing whole myth of efficiency and no waste that is making this continent of countries we are in.' He exhales. 'You know myths?'

'Is that like a story?'

'Ach. A made-up story. For some children. An efficiency of Euclid only: flat. For flat children. Straight ahead! Plow ahead! Go! This is myth.'

'There aren't any flat children, really.'

'This myth of the compet.i.tion and bestness we fight for you players here: this myth: they a.s.sume here always the efficient way is to plow in straight, go! The story that the shortest way between two places is the straight line, yes?'

'Yes?'

Scht.i.tt can use the stem of the pipe to point, for emphasis: 'But what then when something is in the way way when you go between places, no? Plow ahead: go: collide: when you go between places, no? Plow ahead: go: collide: kabong kabong.'

'Willikers!'

'Where is their straight shortest then, yes? Where is the efficiently quickly straight of Euclid then, yes? And how many two places are there without there is something in the way between them, if you go?'

It can be entertaining to watch the evening pines' mosquitoes light and feed deeply on luminous Scht.i.tt, who is oblivious. The smoke doesn't keep them away.

'When I am boyish, training to compete for best, our training facilities on a sign, very largely painted, stated WE ARE WHAT WE WALK BETWEEN.'

'Gosh.'

It's a tradition, one stemming maybe from Wimbledon's All-England locker rooms' tympana, that every big-time tennis academy has its own special traditional motto on the wall in the locker rooms, some special aphoristic nugget that's supposed to describe and inform what the academy's philosophy's all about. After Mario's father Dr. Incandenza pa.s.sed away, the new Headmaster, Dr. Charles Tavis, a Canadian citizen, either Mrs. Incandenza's half-brother or adoptive brother, depending on the version, C.T. had taken down Incandenza's founding motto - TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST32 - and had replaced it with the rather more upbeat THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE. - and had replaced it with the rather more upbeat THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE.

Mario is an enormous fan of Gerhardt Scht.i.tt, whom most of the other E.T.A. kids regard as probably bats, and as w/o doubt mind-looseningly discursive, and show the old pundit even token respect mostly because Scht.i.tt still personally oversees the daily drill-a.s.signments and can, if aggrieved, have Thode and deLint make them extremely uncomfortable more or less at will, out there in A.M A.M. practice.

One of the reasons the late James Incandenza had been so terribly high on bringing Scht.i.tt to E.T.A. was that Scht.i.tt, like the founder himself (who'd come back to tennis, and later film, from a background in hard-core-math-based optical science), was that Scht.i.tt approached compet.i.tive tennis more like a pure mathematician than a technician. Most jr.-tennis coaches are basically technicians, hands-on practical straight-ahead problem-solving statistical-data wonks, with maybe added knacks for short-haul psychology and motivational speaking. The point about not crunching serious stats is that Scht.i.tt had clued Incandenza in, all the way back at a B.S. 1989 33 33 U.S.T.A. convention on photoelectric line-judging, that he, Scht.i.tt, knew real tennis was really about not the blend of statistical order and expansive potential that the game's technicians revered, but in fact the opposite - U.S.T.A. convention on photoelectric line-judging, that he, Scht.i.tt, knew real tennis was really about not the blend of statistical order and expansive potential that the game's technicians revered, but in fact the opposite - not not-order, limit, limit, the places where things broke down, fragmented into beauty. That real tennis was no more reducible to delimited factors or probability curves than chess or boxing, the two games of which it's a hybrid. In short, Scht.i.tt and the tall A.E.C.-optics man (i.e. Incandenza), whose fierce flat serve-and-haul-a.s.s-to-the-net approach to the game had carried him through M.I.T. on a full ride w/ stipend, and whose consulting report on high-speed photoelectric tracking the U.S.T.A. mucky-mucks found dense past all comprehending, found themselves totally simpatico on tennis's exemption from stats-tracking regression. Were he now still among the living, Dr. Incandenza would now describe tennis in the paradoxical terms of what's now called 'Extra-Linear Dynamics.' the places where things broke down, fragmented into beauty. That real tennis was no more reducible to delimited factors or probability curves than chess or boxing, the two games of which it's a hybrid. In short, Scht.i.tt and the tall A.E.C.-optics man (i.e. Incandenza), whose fierce flat serve-and-haul-a.s.s-to-the-net approach to the game had carried him through M.I.T. on a full ride w/ stipend, and whose consulting report on high-speed photoelectric tracking the U.S.T.A. mucky-mucks found dense past all comprehending, found themselves totally simpatico on tennis's exemption from stats-tracking regression. Were he now still among the living, Dr. Incandenza would now describe tennis in the paradoxical terms of what's now called 'Extra-Linear Dynamics.' 34 34 And Scht.i.tt, whose knowledge of formal math is probably about equivalent to that of a Taiwanese kindergartner, nevertheless seemed to know what Hopman and van der Meer and Bollettieri seemed not to know: that locating beauty and art and magic and improvement and keys to excellence and victory in the prolix flux of match play is not a fractal matter of reducing chaos to pattern. Seemed intuitively to sense that it was a matter not of reduction at all, but - perversely - of expansion, the aleatory flutter of uncontrolled, metastatic growth - each well-shot ball admitting of n possible responses, 2 And Scht.i.tt, whose knowledge of formal math is probably about equivalent to that of a Taiwanese kindergartner, nevertheless seemed to know what Hopman and van der Meer and Bollettieri seemed not to know: that locating beauty and art and magic and improvement and keys to excellence and victory in the prolix flux of match play is not a fractal matter of reducing chaos to pattern. Seemed intuitively to sense that it was a matter not of reduction at all, but - perversely - of expansion, the aleatory flutter of uncontrolled, metastatic growth - each well-shot ball admitting of n possible responses, 2n possible responses to those responses, and on into what Incandenza would articulate to anyone who shared both his backgrounds as a Cantorian possible responses to those responses, and on into what Incandenza would articulate to anyone who shared both his backgrounds as a Cantorian 35 35 continuum of infinities of possible move and response, Cantorian and beautiful because continuum of infinities of possible move and response, Cantorian and beautiful because in infoliating, contained, contained, this diagnate infinity of infinities of choice and execution, mathematically uncontrolled but humanly this diagnate infinity of infinities of choice and execution, mathematically uncontrolled but humanly contained, contained, bounded by the talent and imagination of self and opponent, bent in on itself by the containing boundaries of skill and imagination that brought one player finally down, that kept both from winning, that made it, finally, a game, these boundaries of self. bounded by the talent and imagination of self and opponent, bent in on itself by the containing boundaries of skill and imagination that brought one player finally down, that kept both from winning, that made it, finally, a game, these boundaries of self.

'You mean like the baselines are boundaries?' Mario tries to ask.

'Lieber Gott nein,' with a plosive disgusted sound. Scht.i.tt likes best of all smoke-shapes to try to blow rings, and is kind of lousy at it, blowing mostly wobbly lavender hot dogs, which Mario finds delightful.

The thing with Scht.i.tt: like most Europeans of his generation, anch.o.r.ed from infancy to certain permanent values which - yes, OK, granted - may, admittedly, have a whiff of proto-fascist potential about them, but which do, nevertheless (the values), anchor nicely the soul and course of a life - Old World patriarchal stuff like honor and discipline and fidelity to some larger unit - Gerhardt Scht.i.tt does not so much dislike the modern O.N.A.N.ite U.S. of A. as find it hilarious and frightening at the same time. Probably mostly just alien alien. This should not be rendered in exposition like this, but Mario Incandenza has a severely limited range of verbatim recall. Scht.i.tt was educated in pre-Unification Gymnasium Gymnasium under the rather Kanto-Hegelian idea that jr. athletics was basically just training for citizens.h.i.+p, that jr. athletics was about learning to sacrifice the hot narrow imperatives of the Self - the needs, the desires, the fears, the multiform cravings of the individual appet.i.tive will - to the larger imperatives of a team (OK, the State) and a set of delimiting rules (OK, the Law). It sounds almost frighteningly simple-minded, though not to Mario, across the redwood table, listening. By learning, in under the rather Kanto-Hegelian idea that jr. athletics was basically just training for citizens.h.i.+p, that jr. athletics was about learning to sacrifice the hot narrow imperatives of the Self - the needs, the desires, the fears, the multiform cravings of the individual appet.i.tive will - to the larger imperatives of a team (OK, the State) and a set of delimiting rules (OK, the Law). It sounds almost frighteningly simple-minded, though not to Mario, across the redwood table, listening. By learning, in palestra, palestra, the virtues that pay off directly in compet.i.tive games, the well-disciplined boy begins a.s.sembling the more abstract, gratification-delaying skills necessary for being a 'team player' in a larger arena: the even more subtly diffracted moral chaos of full-service citizens.h.i.+p in a State. Except Scht.i.tt says the virtues that pay off directly in compet.i.tive games, the well-disciplined boy begins a.s.sembling the more abstract, gratification-delaying skills necessary for being a 'team player' in a larger arena: the even more subtly diffracted moral chaos of full-service citizens.h.i.+p in a State. Except Scht.i.tt says Ach, Ach, but who can imagine this training serving its purpose in an experialist and waste-exporting nation that's forgotten privation and hards.h.i.+p and the discipline which hards.h.i.+p teaches by requiring? A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness: but who can imagine this training serving its purpose in an experialist and waste-exporting nation that's forgotten privation and hards.h.i.+p and the discipline which hards.h.i.+p teaches by requiring? A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness: 'The happy pleasure of the person alone, yes?'

'Except why do you let deLint tie Pemulis and Shaw's shoes to the lines, if the lines aren't boundaries?'

'Without there is something bigger. Nothing to contain and give the meaning. Lonely. Verstiegenheit Verstiegenheit.' 36 36 'Bless you.'

'Any something. The what: what: this is more unimportant than that there is this is more unimportant than that there is something something.'

Scht.i.tt one time was telling Mario, as they respectively walked and tottered down Comm. Ave. eastward into Allston to see about getting a gourmet ice cream someplace along there, that when he was Mario's age - or maybe more like Hal's age, whatever - he (Scht.i.tt) had once fallen in love with a tree, a willow that from a certain humid twilit perspective had looked like a mysterious woman aswirl with gauze, this certain tree in the public Platz Platz of some West German town whose name sounded to Mario like the sound of somebody strangling. Scht.i.tt reported being seriously smitten with the tree: of some West German town whose name sounded to Mario like the sound of somebody strangling. Scht.i.tt reported being seriously smitten with the tree: 'I went daily to there, to be with the tree.'

They respectively walked and tottered, ice-cream-bound, Mario moving like the one of them who was truly old, mind off his stride because he was trying to think hard about what Scht.i.tt believed. Mario's thinking-hard expression resembles what for another person would be the sort of comically distorted face made to amuse an infant. He was trying to think how to articulate some reasonable form of a question like: But then how does this surrender - the - personal - individual - wants - to - the - larger - State - or - beloved -tree-or-something stuff work in a deliberately stuff work in a deliberately individual individual sport like compet.i.tive junior tennis, where it's just you v. one other guy? sport like compet.i.tive junior tennis, where it's just you v. one other guy?

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they're not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense?

Scht.i.tt's thrust, and his one great irresistible attraction in the eyes of Mario's late father: The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse excuse or or occasion occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-compet.i.tive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again. for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-compet.i.tive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.

Mario thinks of a steel pole raised to double its designed height and clips his shoulder on the green steel edge of a dumpster, pirouetting halfway to the cement before Scht.i.tt darts in to catch him, and it almost looks like they're doing a dance-floor dip as Scht.i.tt says this game the players are all at E.T.A. to learn, this infinite system of decisions and angles and lines Mario's brothers worked so brutishly hard to master: junior athletics is but one facet of the real gem: life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

Scht.i.tt then falls into the sort of silence of someone who's enjoying mentally rewinding and replaying what he just came up with. Mario thinks hard again. He's trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquis.h.i.+ng the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? Three pa.s.sing Allstonian street-kids mock and make fun of Mario's appearance behind the pair's backs. Some of Mario's thinking-faces are almost o.r.g.a.s.mic: fluttery and slack. And then but so what's the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?

It's always Scht.i.tt who ends up experimenting with some exotic ice-cream flavor, when they arrive. Mario always chickens out and opts for good old basic chocolate when the moment of decision at the counter comes. Thinking along the lines of like Better the flavor you know for sure you already love.