Infinite jest - David Wallace

‘Cuteness in fathers, this is rare.’ There was no way Marathe was going to touch the evident U.S.A. childhood expression Mummykins.

‘My old man worked for a heating-oil distributorship. Home heating-oil. Have your files got this? A tidbit for M. Fortier: U.S.O.U.S.’s Steeply, H.H.: late father a heating-oil-delivery dispatcher, Cheery Oil, Troy, New York.’

‘State of New York, U.S.A., prior to Reconfiguration.’

Hugh Steeply turned around but not all the way, scratching absently at his wens. ‘But then: syndication. “M*A*S*H.” The show was incredibly popular, and after a few years of Thursday nights it started also to run daily, during the day, or late at night, sometimes, in what I remember all too well was called syndication, where local stations bought old episodes and chopped them up and loaded them with ads, and ran them. And this, note, was while all-new episodes of the show were still appearing on Thursdays at 2100. I think this was the start.’

‘The cuteness, it was over.’

‘My old man started to find the syndicated reruns extremely important to him, too. As in like not to be missed.’

‘Even though he had viewed and enjoyed them before, these reruns.’

‘The fucking show ran on two different local stations in the Capital District. Albany and environs. For a while, this one station even had a “M*A*S*H” hour, two of them, back to back, every night, from 2300. Plus another half an hour in the early P.M., for the unemployed or something.’

Marathe said ‘Virtually a bombardment of this U.S.A. broadcast comedy program.’

After a brief pause of attention to some wens of the face, Steeply said ‘He started to keep a small television down at work. Down at the distributorship.’

‘For the broadcast of afternoon.’

Steeply appeared to Marathe uncalculating in his statements. ‘Broadcast TVs, toward the end they made some of them really small. Kind of a pathetic try at keeping cable down. Some as small as like wrist-size. You’d be too young to remember.’

‘I remember well a pre-digital television.’ Marathe, if Steeply’s anecdote of himself had a political point or communique, Marathe could not yet determine this.

Steeply moved his foul Belgian cigarette into his right hand to flick it out into the space below. ‘It progressed very slowly. The gradual immersion. The withdrawal from life. I remember guys from his bowling league calling, that he’d quit. Our Mummykins found out he’d dropped out of Knights of Columbus. Thursdays the jokes and cuteness stopped — him all hunched in front of the set, barely even eating from his tray. And every night late at night, for the nightly hour, the old man too wide awake, and hunched over weirdly, head out, as if pulled toward the screen.’

‘I too have seen this posture of viewing,’ Marathe grimly said, recalling his second-oldest of brothers and the Canadiens of the N.L. of H.

‘And he got anxious, ugly, if something made him miss even one. Even one episode. And he’d get ugly if you pointed out he’d already seen most of them about seven times before. Mummykins began to have to lie to get them out of engagements that would have infringed. Neither of them talked about it. I don’t remember any of us trying to name the thing out loud — this dark shift in his attachment to the program “M*A*S*H.” ‘

‘The organism of family simply shifted to accommodate.’

‘Which it wasn’t even all that consuming an entertainment,’ Steeply said. He sounded to Marathe uncalculated and somewhat younger. ‘I mean it was OK. But it was broadcast TV. Broad comedy and canned laughter.’

‘I am remembering well this rerunning program, do not worry about me,’ said Marathe.

‘It was at some point during this gradual shift the notebook first appeared. He began writing notes in a notebook as he viewed. But only when viewing “M*A*S*H.” And he never left the notebook lying around where you could get any kind of look at it. He wasn’t openly secretive about it; you couldn’t even point to that and say something was wrong. The “M*A*S*H” notebook just never seemed to be lying around.’

With the hand that was not below the blanket still gripping the Sterling UL35, Marathe was holding his thumb and forefinger up against the smear of red which was just over the Mountains of Rincon and craning his neck to see his shadow behind them on the hillside.

Steeply changed the hip which was out, in his standing, to his other hip. ‘As a child, this is when it became impossible to ignore the odor of obsession about the whole thing. The secrecy about the notebook, and the secrecy about the secrecy. The scrupulous recording of tiny details, in careful order, for purposes you could just tell were both urgent and furtive.’

‘This is unbalance,’ Marathe concurred. ‘This attaching of excessive importance.’

‘Jesus, you don’t know the half of it.’

‘And for you also,’ Marathe said, ‘excessive unbalance. For your father progresses downhill in this obsessing, but always so slowly that always you could question yourself, whether you were maybe yourself the one out of balance, attaching too much importance to any one thing — a notebook, a posture. Crazy making.’

‘And the toll on Mummykins.’

Marathe had turned the chair to a slight angle to be able to see his shadow, which appeared blunt and deformed by the topography of the steep hillside above the outcropping, and in general pathetic and small. There would be no titanic or menacing Bröckengespenstphänom with the sunrise of dawn. Marathe said ‘The whole organism of family becomes out of balance, questioning its perceptions.’

‘The old man — then he started developing this habit of quoting little lines and scenes from “M*A*S*H,” to illustrate some idea, make some point in conversation. At the beginning of the habit he seemed casual about it, as if the little bits and scenes simply occurred to him. But this changed, but slowly. Plus I remember he started seeking out feature films that also featured the television program’s actors.’

Marathe pretended to sniff.

‘Then at some point it was as if he was no longer able to converse or communicate on any topic without bringing it back to the program. The topic. Without some system of references to the program.’ Steeply gave small indications of paying attention to the small squeaks as Marathe turned his chair slightly this way and that way, achieving different angles of sight on his small shadow. Steeply exhaled air through the nostrils with a forceful sound. ‘Though it wasn’t as though he was wholly uncritical of it.’

It sometimes from somewhere blue occurred to Marathe that he did not dislike this Steeply, though like or respect would be too far in going, to say.

‘It was not that type of obsession with it, it, you are saying.’

‘It was gradual and slow. He started at some point I remember to refer to the kitchen as the Mess Tent and his den as the Marsh or Swamp. These were fictional locations on the show. He began renting films with even crowd-extra or cameo appearances by the program’s actors. He bought what was then called a Betamixer,[263] a kind of early magnetic-video recorder. He began a practice of magnetically recording each week’s 29 broadcasts and reruns. He stored the tapes, organizing them in baroque systems of cross-reference that had nothing discernible to do with dates of recording. I remember Mummykins didn’t say anything when he moved his bedding and began to sleep at night in the easy chair in his den, the Swamp. Or pretend to. Sleep.’

‘But you had your suspicions of not real sleeping.’

‘It was gradually obvious he was viewing his magnetic recordings of the program “M*A*S*H” throughout the night, probably over and over again, using a crude white plastic earplug to hide the noise, scribbling feverishly in his notebook.’

In contrast with the violence and transperçant puncturing of the sunset, the dawn sun seemed slowly exhaled from the more rounded salience of the Mountains of Rincon, its heat a moister heat and the light the vague red of a type of fond sentiment; and U.S.O.U.S.’s Steeply’s standing shadow was cast back over the outcropping toward Marathe behind him, close enough that Marathe might reach his arm out and touch the shadow.

‘You can tell I don’t have a good recall of the exact progression of the thing,’ Steeply said.

‘The gradual.’

‘I do know that Mummykins, I remember one day in the garbage can out behind the house she found a number of letters addressed to a “M*A*S*H” character named — this I fucking-A sure remember — Major Burns. She found them.’

Marathe did not allow himself the chuckle. ‘While searching inside the can of waste in the back. For evidence of unbalance.’

Steeply waved Marathe off. He was incapable of amused. ‘She didn’t search through the garbage. Mumkinsky had too much class. She probably forgot and threw away the day’s Troy Record before she’d clipped her food-coupons. She was an inveterate coupon-clipper.’

‘This was prior to the days of North American laws of recircling[264] of newspapers.’

Steeply did not wave off or give a glare. He wore the look of concentrating. This character — this I remember, too well — was portrayed by I remember the actor Maury Linville, a plain old employee of 20th Century Fox.’

‘Which later upstarted the fourth network of the Large Four.’

Steeply’s luridly run makeup from the heat of the day before had now over the night hardened into a configuration of almost horror. ‘But the letters, the letters were addressed to Major Burns. Not to Maury Linville. And not c/o Fox Studios or wherever, but addressed to an involved military address, with a Seoul routing code.’

‘In the South Korea of history.’

‘The letters were hostile, savage, and lavishly descriptive. He’d come to think the show’s character Major Burns embodied some type of cataclysmic, Armageddon-type theme that was slowly assembling itself on the program and progressively being hinted at and emerging in the gradual succession of seasons of this “M*A*S*H.” ‘ Steeply felt at his lip. ‘I remember Mum-mykins never mentioned the letters. From the garbage. She just left them around where my kid sister and I would see them.’

‘You are not meaning your sister was a goat.’

Steeply was not provokable into some different emotion, however, Marathe observed. ‘Younger sister. But my old man, the progression of the program from fun to obsession — crucial distinctions had collapsed, I think, now. Between the fictional Burns and this Linville who portrayed Burns.’

Marathe raised a brow for concurring: ‘This is signifying a severe loss of balance.’

‘I remember something about he seemed to believe the name of the character Burns also somehow hiddenly signified the English verb for the promise of the consuming fire of apocalypse.’

Marathe looked puzzled or else squinted because of a rising sun. ‘But he threw the letters into the waste receptacle, you stated, instead of the Snail’s Mail.’

‘He’d already started missing whole weeks at a time from work. He’d been at Cheery for decades. He was only a few years from retirement.’

Marathe was looking at his lap’s blanket’s brightening colors of plaid.

‘Mo Cheery and the old man — they’d bowled together, they were in Knights of Columbus together. Missing all the weeks of work made things awkward. Mo didn’t want to can the old man. He wanted the old man to see somebody.’

‘A professional person.’

‘A lot of this I wasn’t even there for. The “M*A*S*H” thing. I was at college by the time the really crucial distinctions had collapsed.’

‘Studying the multiple cultures.’

‘My kid sister had to keep me abreast of developments during the term. Good old Mo Cheery’d come by the house, view magnetic tapes of the show with the old man a while, listen to the old man’s theories and views, then on his way out he’d collar Mummykins and take her out into the garage and talk to her very quietly about the fact that the old man was in a high-angle psychic nose-dive and needed with all due regard in his opinion to see somebody in the direst fucking way. My kid sister said the Mumkinsky always acted like she had no idea what Mo Cheery was talking about.’

Marathe smoothed at his blanket.

‘Mumkinsky being a type of pet family name,’ Steeply said, looking a little bit of embarrassed.

Marathe nodded.

‘I’m trying to reconstruct this out of memory,’ Steeply said. ‘The old man is by this time pretty much unable to converse about anything except the television program “M*A*S*H.” The theory of the theme of this Burns-slash-Burning apocalypse now sort of spreads out to become huge and complex theories about wide-ranging and deeply hidden themes having to do with death and time, on the show. Like evidence of some sort of coded communication to certain viewers about an end to our familiar type of world-time and the advent of a whole different order of world-time.’

‘Your mother continues to play-act at normalcy, however.’

Tm trying to reconstruct things that weren’t even clear at the time,’ Steeply said, his wet and then dried makeup now grotesque in his concentration in the sunrise, like a mask of a mentally ill clown. He said ‘One theory involved the fact, which the old man found extremely significant, that the historical Korean Police Action of the U.N. lasted only roughly two-odd years, but that “M*A*S*H” itself was by then into something like its seventh year of new episodes. Some characters of the program were getting gray hair, receding hair, face-lifts. The old man was convinced this signified intentional themes. According to my kid sister, who bore the brunt of time spent with him, watching,’ Steeply said, ‘the old man’s theories were almost inconceivably complex and wide-ranging. As the years of new seasons went on and some actors retired and characters were replaced by other characters, the old man generated baroquoco theories about what it was that had quote-underline ‘‘‘really” happened to the absent characters. Where they’d gone, where they were, what it all augured. Then the next thing was one or two of the letters started to appear, canceled and returned, stamped as unde-liverable, or to addresses that were not just nonexistent but absurd.’

‘Unbalanced letters were no longer being discarded as waste, but now mailed.’

‘And Mummykins was uncomplaining throughout. It was enough to break your heart. She was a rock. She did, granted, begin taking prescription anti-anxiety medication.’

Land of the freely brave: Marathe did not say this aloud. He looked at his pocket’s watch and was trying to remember a time when he had ever with Steeply had to consider the tact of departing.

Steeply, at this time, gave the impression somehow of having several cigarettes going at one time. ‘Somewhere along late in the progression the old man let it be known he was working on a secret book that revised and explicated much of the world’s military, medical, philosophical and religious history by analogies to certain subtle and complex thematic codes in “M*A*S*H.” ‘ Steeply would stand on one foot to raise the other foot to look at a shoe’s inflicted damage, all the time smoking. ‘Even when he went in to work, there were problems. Heating-oil customers who called for deliveries or information or whatever began to complain that the old man kept trying to engage them in bizarre theoretical discussions of the thematics of “M*A*S*H.” ‘