David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
Marathe seemed on the edge of sleep.
Even the voice of Steeply had a different timbre inside the shadow. ‘They say it’s a
great and maybe even timeless love, Rod Tine’s for your Luria person.’
Marathe grunted, shifting slightly in the chair.
Steeply said ‘The sort that gets sung about, the kind people die for and then get
immortalized in song. You got your ballads, your operas. Tristan and Isolde.
Lancelot and what’s‐her‐name. Agamemnon and Helen, Dante and Beatrice.’
Marathe’s drowsy smile continued upward to become a wince. ‘Narcissus and Echo.
Kierkegaard and Regina. Kafka and that poor girl afraid to go to the postbox for the
mail.’
‘Interesting choice of example here, the mailbox.’ Steeply pretended to chuckle.
Marathe came alert. 'Take off your wig and be ******** inside it, Hugh Steeply B.S.S.
And the ignorance of you appalls me. Agamemnon had no relation with this queen.
Menelaus was husband, him of Sparta. And you mean Paris. Helen and Paris. He of
Troy.’
Steeply seemed amused in the idiotic way: ‘Paris and Helen, the face that launched
vessels. The horse: the gift which was not a gift. The anonymous gift brought to the
door. The sack of Troy from inside.’
Marathe rose slightly on his stumps in the chair, showing some emotions at this
Steeply. ‘I am seated here appalled at the naïveté of history of your nation. Paris
and Helen were the excuse of the war. All the Greek states in addition to the Sparta
of Menelaus attacked Troy because Troy controlled the Dardanelles and charged
the ruinous tolls for passage through, which the Greeks, who would like very dearly
the easy sea passage for trade with the Oriental East, resented with fury. It was for
commerce, this war. The one‐quotes "love" one‐does‐not‐quote of Paris for Helen
merely was the excuse.’
Steeply, genius of interviewing, sometimes affected more than usual idiocy with
Marathe, which he knew baited Marathe. ‘Everything reduces itself to politics for
you guys. Wasn’t that whole war just a song? Did that war even really take place,
that anybody knows of?’
‘The point is that what launches vessels of war is the state and community and its
interests,’ Marathe said without heat, tiredly. ‘You only wish to enjoy to pretend for
yourself that the love of one woman could do this, launch so many vessels of
alliance.’
Steeply was stroking the perimeters of the mesquite‐scratch, which made his shrug
appear awkward. ‘I don’t think I’d be so sure. Those around Rod the God say the
man would die twice for her. Say he wouldn’t have to even think about it. Not just
that he’d let the whole of O.N.A.N. come down, if it came to that. But’d die.’
Marathe sniffed. ‘Twice.’
‘Without even having to pause and think,’ Steeply said, stroking at his lip’s
electrolysistic rash in a ruminative fashion. ‘It’s the reason most of us think he’s still
there, why he’s still got President Gentle’s ear. Divided loyalties are one thing. But if
he does it for love — well then you’ve got a kind of tragic element that transcends
the political, wouldn’t you say?’ Steeply smiled broadly down at Marathe.
Marathe’s own betrayal of A.F.R.: for medical care for the conditions of his wife; for
Steeply might imagine to think love of a person, a woman. ‘Tragic saying as if
Rodney Tine of Nonspecificity were not responsible for choosing it, as the insane
are not responsible,’ said Marathe quietly.
Steeply now was smiling even more broadly. ‘It has a kind of tragic quality,
timeless, musical, that how could Gentle resist?’
Marathe’s tone now became derisive despite his legendary sangfroid in matters of
technical interviews: ‘These sentiments from a person who allows them to place
him in the field as an enormous girl with tits at the ****‐eyed angle, now
discoursing on tragic love.’
Steeply, impassive and slackly ruminative, picked at the lipstick of the corner of his
mouth with a littlest finger, removing some grain of grit, gazing out from their shelf
of stone. ‘But sure. The fanatically patriotic Wheelchair Assassins of southern
Quebec scorn this type of interpersonal sentiment between people.’ Looking now
down at Marathe. ‘No? Even though it’s just this that has brought you Tine, yours
for Luria to command, should it ever come to that?’
Marathe had settled back on his bottom in the chair. ‘Your U.S.A. word for fanatic,
"fanatic," do they teach you it comes from the Latin for "temple"? It is meaning,
literally, "worshipper at the temple."
‘Oh Jesus now here we go again,’ Steeply said.
‘As, if you will give the permission, does this love you speak of, M. Tine’s grand love.
It means only the attachment. Tine is attached, fanatically. Our attachments are our
temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with
faith.’
Steeply made motions of weary familiarity. ‘Herrrrrre we go.’
Marathe ignored this. ‘Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A.
only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your
attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you
wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one
person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go
mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.’
‘How are your wife and kids doing, up there, by the way?’
‘You U.S.A.’s do not seem to believe you may each choose what to die for. Love of a
woman, the sexual, it bends back in on the self, makes you narrow, maybe crazy.
Choose with care. Love of your nation, your country and people, it enlarges the
heart. Something bigger than the self.’
Steeply laid a hand between his misdirected breasts: ‘Ohh . . . Can‐ada.. ..’
Marathe leaned again forward on his stumps. ‘Make amusement all you wish. But
choose with care. You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what
you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice. You, M. Hugh Steeply: you
would die without thinking for what?’
The A.F.R.’s extensive file on Steeply included mention of his recent divorce.
Marathe already had informed Steeply of the existence of this file. He wondered
how badly Steeply doubted what he reported, Marathe, or whether he assumed its
truth simply. Though the persona of him changed, Steeply’s car for all field
assignments was this green sedan subsidized by a painful ad for aspirin upon its
side — the file knew this stupidity — Marathe was sure the sedan with its aspirin
advertisement was somewhere below them, unseen. The fanatically beloved car of
M. Hugh Steeply. Steeply was watching or gazing at the darkness of the desert floor.
He did not respond. His expression of boredom could be real or tactical, either of
these.
Marathe said, ‘This, is it not the choice of the most supreme importance? Who
teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? What to love enough not
to think two times?’
‘This from a man who —’
Marathe was willing that his voice not rise. ‘For this choice determines all else. No?
All other of our you say free choices follow from this: what is our temple. What is
the temple, thus, for U.S.A.’s? What is it, when you fear that you must protect them
from themselves, if wicked Québecers conspire to bring the Entertainment into
their warm homes?’
Steeply’s face had assumed the openly twisted sneering expression which he knew
well Québecers found repellent on Americans. ‘But you assume it’s always choice,
conscious, decision. This isn’t just a little naïve, Rémy? You sit down with your little
accountant’s ledger and soberly decide what to love? Always?’
‘The alternatives are —’
‘What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes
to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her
and in that instant are lost to sober account‐keeping and cannot choose but to
love?’
Marathe’s sniff held disdain. ‘Then in such a case your temple is self and sentiment.
Then in such an instance you are a fanatic of desire, a slave to your individual
subjective narrow self’s sentiments; a citizen of nothing. You become a citizen of
nothing. You are by yourself and alone, kneeling to yourself.’
A silence ensued this.
Marathe shifted in his chair. ‘In a case such as this you become the slave who
believes he is free. The most pathetic of bondage. Not tragic. No songs. You believe
you would die twice for another but in truth would die only for your alone self, its
sentiment.’
Another silence ensued. Steeply, who had made his early career with Unspecified
Services conducting technical interviews, used silent pauses as integral parts of
his techniques of interface. Here it defused Marathe. Marathe felt the ironies of his
position. One strap of Steeply’s prostheses’ brassiere had slipped into view below
his shoulder, where it cut deeply into his flesh of the upper arm. The air smelled
faintly of creosote, but much less strongly smelling than the ties of train tracks,
which Marathe had smelled at close range. Steeply’s back was broad and soft.
Marathe eventually said:
‘You in such a case have nothing. You stand on nothing. Nothing of ground or
rock beneath your feet. You fall; you blow here and there. How does one say:
"tragically, unvoluntarily, lost."
