Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon Page A

have any cigarettes?” asks Jessica.
    “He’s going to bolt,” Roger screams.
    “For God’s sake, Mexico, slowly now.” Testing each footstep, they move upslope over
     the ruin’s delicate balance. It’s a system of lever arms that can plunge them into
     deadly collapse at any moment. They draw near their quarry, who scrutinizes now the
     doctor, now Roger, with quick shifts of his head. He growls tentatively, tail keeping
     up a steady slap against the two sides of the corner they’ve backed him into.
    As Roger, who carries the light, moves rearward, the dog, some circuit of him, recalls
     the other light that came from behind in recent days—the light that followed the great
     blast so seethed through afterward by pain and cold. Light from the rear signals death
     / men with nets about to leap can be avoided—
    “Sponge,” screams the doctor. Roger flings himself at the dog, who has taken off in
     Pointsman’s direction and away toward the street whilst Pointsman, groaning, swings
     his toiletbowl foot desperately, misses, momentum carrying him around a full turn,
     net up like a radar antenna. Roger, snoot full of ether, can’t check his lunge—as
     the doctor comes spinning round again Roger careens on into him, toilet bowl hitting
     Roger a painful thump in the leg. The two men fall over, tangled in the net now covering
     them. Broken beams creak, chunks of rain-wet plaster tumble. Above them the unsupported
     wall begins to sway.
    “Get out of there,” hollers the sentry. But the efforts of the pair under the net
     to move away only rock the wall more violently.
    “We’re for it,” the doctor shivers. Roger seeks his eyes to see if he means it, but
     the window of the Balaclava helmet now contains only a white ear and fringe of hair.
    “Roll,” Roger suggests. They contrive to roll a few yards down toward the street,
     by which time part of the wall has collapsed, in the other direction. They manage
     to get back to Jessica without causing any more damage.
    “He’s run down the street,” she mentions, helping them out of the net.
    “It’s all right,” the doctor sighs. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
    “Ah but the evening’s
young
,” from Roger.
    “No, no. Forget it.”
    “What will you do for a dog, then.”
    They are under way again, Roger at the wheel, Jessica between them, toilet bowl out
     a half-open door, before the answer. “Perhaps it’s a sign. Perhaps I should be branching
     out.”
    Roger gives him a quick look. Silence, Mexico. Try not to think about what
that
means. He’s not one’s superior after all, both report to the old Brigadier at “The
     White Visitation” on, so far as he knows, equal footing. But sometimes—Roger glances
     again across Jessica’s dark wool bosom at the knitted head, the naked nose and eyes—he
     thinks the doctor wants more than his good will, his collaboration. But wants
him.
As one wants a fine specimen of dog. . . .
    Why’s he here, then, assisting at yet another dognapping? What stranger does he shelter
     in him so mad—
    “Will you be going back down tonight, doctor? The young lady needs a ride.”
    “I shan’t, I’ll be staying in. But you might take the car back. I must talk with Dr.
     Spectro.”
    They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of
     what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals—but which, in its own time, arose
     not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any
     apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God’s actual locus
     (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments
     that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any
     zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the
     industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests
     of drive belts, flowing and patient