Free Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon Page B

diminishing usefulness, but nobody was willing to try.
Despite his youth he was said to give an impression of access to resources
beyond his own, of being comfortable in the shadows and absolutely
unprincipled, with an abiding contempt for any distinction between life and
death. Sending him to America seemed appropriate.
    Lew found him sympathetic . . . the oblique planes of his face
revealing an origin somewhere in the Slavic vastnesses of Europe as yet but
lightly traveled by the recreational visitor .
. . . They got into the habit of earlymorning coffee at the Austrian
Pavilion, accompanied by a variety of baked goods. “And this might be of
particular interest to you, Mr. Basnight, considering the widely known KuchenteigsVerderbtheit or pastrydepravity of the American detective . . . . ”
    “Well we . . . we try not to talk about that.”
    “ So? in Austria it is widely remarked upon.”
    Despite young Khäutsch’s police
skills, somehow the Archduke kept giving him the slip. “Perhaps I am too clever
to deal efficiently with Habsburg stupidity,” mused Khäutsch. One night when it
seemed Franz Ferdinand had dropped off the map of greater Chicago, Khäutsch got
on the telephone and began calling around town, eventually reaching White City
Investigations.
    “I’ll go have a look,” said Lew.
    After a lengthy search including
obvious favorites like the Silver Dollar and Everleigh House, Lew found the
Archduke at last in the Boll Weevil Lounge, a Negro bar down on South State in
the Thirties, the heart of the vaudeville and black entertainment district in
those days, hollering his way into an evening which promised at least a
troublesome moment or two. Barrelhouse piano, green beer, a couple of pool
tables, girls in rooms upstairs, smoke from twoforapenny cigars. “Squalid!”
screamed the Archduke. “I love it!”
    Lew kind of enjoyed it himself in
this part of town, unlike some of the ops at White City, who seemed skittish
around Negroes, who’d been arriving lately in everincreasing numbers from down
South. Something about the neighborhood drew him, maybe the food—surely
the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange
phosphate—although right at the moment you could not call the atmosphere
welcoming.
    “ What here are you looking at, you
wish to steal eine . . . Wassermelone, perhaps?”
    “Ooooo,” went several folks in
earshot. The insultee, a large and dangerouslooking individual, could not
believe he was hearing this. His mouth began to open slowly as the Austrian
prince continued—
    “Something about. . . your . . . wait. . . deine Mutti, as you
would say, your . . . your mama, she
plays third base for the Chicago White Stockings, nicht wahr? ” as customers begin
tentatively to move toward the egresses, “a quite unappealing woman, indeed she
is so fat, that to get from her tits to her ass, one has to take the ‘El’!
Tried once to get into the Exposition, they say, no, no, lady, this is the
World’s Fair, not the World’s Ugly!”
    “Whatchyou doin, you fool, you can
get y’ass killed talking like that, what are you, from England or some
shit?”
    “Um, Your Royal Highness?” Lew
murmured, “if we could just have a word—”
    “It is all right! I know how to talk
to these people! I have studied their culture! Listen— ’ st los, Hund? Boogieboogie, ja? ”
    Lew, supposed to be disciplined in
the ways of the East, would not allow himself the luxury of panic, but at
times, like now, could’ve used maybe a homeopathic dose, just to keep his
immunity up. “Hopelessly insane,” he announced, waving a thumb F.F.’s way,
“escaped in his time from some of the fanciest bughouses of Europe, very little
remaining of the brains he was born with, except possibly,” lowering his voice,
“how much money you bring with you, there, Highness?”
    “Ah, I understand,” murmured the imperial
scapegrace. Turning to the room, “When Franz Ferdinand drinks,” he