Gravity's Rainbow Read Online Free Page A

others, love
     him both profanely and in the Name of what he is . . . it could be no one’s fantasy
     but H. A. Loaf’s. There is at least one Loaf in every outfit, it is Loaf who keeps
     forgetting that those of the Moslem faith are not keen on having snaps taken of them
     in the street . . . it is Loaf who borrows one’s shirt runs out of cigarettes finds
     the illicit one in your pocket and lights up in the canteen at high noon, where presently
     he is reeling about with a loose smile, addressing the sergeant commanding the red-cap
     section by his Christian name. So of course when Pirate makes the mistake of verifying
     the fantasy with Loaf, it’s not very long at all before higher echelons know about
     it too. Into the dossier it goes, and eventually the Firm, in Their tireless search
     for negotiable skills, will summon him under Whitehall, to observe him in his trances
     across the blue baize fields and the terrible paper gaming, his eyes rolled back into
     his head reading old, glyptic old graffiti on his own sockets. . . .
    The first few times nothing clicked. The fantasies were O.K. but belonged to nobody
     important. But the Firm is patient, committed to the Long Run as They are. At last,
     one proper Sherlock Holmes London evening, the unmistakable smell of gas came to Pirate
     from a dark street lamp, and out of the fog ahead materialized a giant, organlike
     form. Carefully, black-shod step by step, Pirate approached the thing. It began to
     slide forward to meet him, over the cobblestones slow as a snail, leaving behind some
     slime brightness of street-wake that could not have been from fog. In the space between
     them was a crossover point, which Pirate, being a bit faster, reached first. He reeled
     back, in horror, back past the point—but such recognitions are not reversible.
It was a giant Adenoid.
At least as big as St. Paul’s, and growing hour by hour. London, perhaps all England,
     was in mortal peril!
    This lymphatic monster had once blocked the distinguished pharynx of Lord Blatherard
     Osmo, who at the time occupied the Novi Pazar desk at the Foreign Office, an obscure
     penance for the previous century of British policy on the Eastern Question, for on
     this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of Europe:
     
    Nobody knows-where, it is-on-the-map,
    Who’d ever think-it, could start-such-a-flap?
    Each Montenegran, and Serbian too,
    Waitin’ for some-thing, right outa the blue—oh honey
    Pack up my Glad-stone, ’n’ brush off my suit,
    And then light me up my bigfat, cigar—
    If ya want my address, it’s
    That O-ri-ent Express,
    To the san-jak of No-vi Pa-zar!
     
    Chorus line of quite nubile young women naughtily attired in Busbies and jackboots
     dance around for a bit here while in another quarter Lord Blatherard Osmo proceeds
     to get
assimilated
by his own growing Adenoid, some horrible transformation of cell plasma it is quite
     beyond Edwardian medicine to explain . . . before long, tophats are littering the
     squares of Mayfair, cheap perfume hanging ownerless in the pub lights of the East
     End as the Adenoid continues on its rampage, not swallowing up its victims at random,
     no, the fiendish Adenoid has a
master plan
, it’s choosing only certain personalities useful to it—there is a new election, a
     new preterition abroad in England here that throws the Home Office into hysterical
     and painful episodes of indecision . . . no one knows
what
to do . . . a halfhearted attempt is made to evacuate London, black phaetons clatter
     in massive ant-cortege over the trusswork bridges, observer balloons are stationed
     in the sky, “Got it in Hampstead Heath, just sitting
breathing
, like . . . going in, and out . . .” “Any sort of
sound
down there?” “Yes, it’s horrible . . . like a stupendous
nose
sucking in snot. . . wait, now it’s . . . beginning to . . . oh,
no
 . . . oh, God, I can’t describe it, it’s so