David Wallace - Infinite jest

Marathe willed himself not to rise on his stumps again. ‘No, but not another’s pain as a pleasurable end in itself. I did not mean where my pleasure is in your pain. How to say better. Imagine there arises a situation in which your deprivation or pain is merely the consequence, the price, of my own pleasure.’

‘You mean you’re talking a tough-choices, limited-resources-type situation.’

‘But in the simplest of examples. The most child-like case.’ Marathe’s eyes momentarily gleamed with enthusiasm. ‘Suppose that you and I, we both wish to enjoy a hot bowl of the Habitant soupe aux pois.’

Steeply said ‘You mean…’

‘But yes. French-Canadian-type pea soup. Produit du Montreal. Saveur Maison. Prête a Servir.’ 171 [171]

‘What is it with you people and this stuff?’

‘In this case imagining both you and I are in the worst way craving for Habitant Soup. But there is one can only, of the small and well-known Single-Serving Size.’

‘An American invention, by the way, the 3-S, let’s insert.’

The part of Marathe’s mind that hovered above and watched coldly, it could not know whether Steeply was being deliberately parodically dense and annoying, to arouse Marathe to some revealing passion. Marathe made his rotary gesture of impatience, slowly. ‘But OK,’ he said neutrally. ‘It is simple here. We both want the soup. So me, my pleasure from eating the Habitant soupe aux pois has the price of your pain at not eating soup when you badly crave it.’ Marathe was patting his pockets for something. ‘And the reverse, if you are who eats this serving. By the U.S.A. genius of for each “pursuivre le bonheur,” [172] then, who can decide who may receive this soup?’

Steeply stood with weight on one leg. ‘Example’s a bit oversimplified. We bid on the soup, maybe. We negotiate. Maybe we divide the soup.’

‘No, for the ingenious Single-Serving Size of serving is notoriously for only one, and we are both large and vigorous U.S.A. individuals who have spent the afternoon watching huge men in pads and helmets hurl themselves at one another in the High Definition of InterLace, and we are both ravenous for the satiation of a complete hot bowl’s serving. Half the bowl would only torment this craving I have.’

The fast shadow of pain across the face of Steeply showed Marathe’s choice of example was witty: the divorced U.S.A. man has much experience with the small size of Single-Serving products. Marathe said:

‘OK. OK, yes, why should I, as the sacred individual, give you half of my soup? My own pleasure over torment is what is good, for I am a loyal U.S.A., a genius of this individual desire.’

The bonfire slowly was filling out. Another cross of colored lights circled the airport area of Tucson. Steeply’s movements of smoothing the wig and twisting fingers through the snarls of hair became perhaps more abrupt and frustrated. Steeply said ‘Well whose soup is it legally? Who actually bought the soup?’

Marathe shrugged. ‘Not relevant for my question. Suppose a third party, now unfortunately deceased. He appears at our flat with a can oísoupe aux pots to eat while watching recorded U.S.A. sporting and suddenly is clutching his heart and falls to the carpeting deceased, holding the soup we are now both so wishing.’

‘Then we bid on the soup. Whoever’s got the most desire for the soup and is willing to fork over the higher price buys out the other’s half, then the other just jogs on down — jogs or rolls on down to Safeway and buys himself some more soup. Whoever’s willing to put his money where his hunger is gets the dead guy’s soup.’

Marathe shook his head without any heat. ‘The Safeway store and bidding, these are also not relevant to my question I hope the example of pea soup to raise. Which perhaps this is a dull-witted question.’

Steeply was at the wig with both hands, for repair. Former perspiration had mashed its form inward on one side, as well as small clots and small burrs from the falls of his descent to the outcropping. Presumably there was no comb or brushes in his small evening’s-wear purse. The rear of his dress was dirty. The straps of his prostheses’ brassiere dug cruelly into the meat of his back and shoulders. Again there was for Marathe the picture of something soft being slowly throttled.

Steeply was responding ‘No, I know what you want to raise all right. You want to talk politics. Scarcity and allocating and tough choices. All right. Politics we can understand. All right. Politics we can discuss. I bet I know where you’re — you want to raise the question of what prevents 310 million individual American happiness-pursuers from all going around bonking each other over the head and taking each other’s soup. A state of nature. My own pleasure and to hell with all the rest.’

Marathe had his handkerchief out. ‘What does this wish to mean, this bonking?’

‘Because this simplistic example shows just how far apart across the chasm our people’s values are, friend.’ Steeply was saying this. ‘Because a certain basic amount of respect for the wishes of other people is required, is in my interest, in order to preserve a community where my own wishes and interests are respected. OK? My total and overall happiness is maximized by respecting your individual sanctity and not simply kicking you in the knee and running off with the soup.’ Steeply watched Marathe blow one nostril into the handkerchief. Marathe was one of the rare types who did not examine the hankie after he blew. Steeply said:

‘And but then I can anticipate somebody on your side of the chasm retorting with something like, quote, Yes my very good ami, but what if your rival for the pleasurable soup is some individual outside your community, for example, you’ll say, let’s just make the example that it a hapless Canadian, foreign, “MM autre,” separated from me by a chasm of history and language and value and deep respect for individual freedom — then in this wholly random instance there would be no community-minded constraints on my natural impulse to bonk your head and commandeer the desired soup, since the poor Canadian is outside the equation of “pursuivre le bonheur” of each individual, since he is not a part of the community whose environment of mutual respect I depend on for pursuing my interest of maximal pleasure-to-pain.’

Marathe, during this time, was smiling up and to the left, north, rolling his head like a blind person. His favorite personal place of off-duty in the U.S.A.’s city Boston was in the Public Garden of summer, a broad and treeless declivity leading down to the mare des canards, the duck pond, a grassy wedge facing south and west so that the grass of the slope turns pale green and then gold as the sun circles over the head, the pond’s water cool and muddy green and overhung with impressionist willows, persons beneath the willows, also pigeons, and ducks with tight emerald heads gliding in circles, their eyes round stones, moving as if without effort, gliding upon the water as if legless below. Like films’ idylls in cities the moment before the nuclear blast, in old films of U.S.A. death and horror. He was missing this time in U.S.A. Boston MA of refilling the pond for the ducks’ return, the willows greening, the winelight of a northern sunset curving gently in to land without explosion. Children flew taut kites and adults lay supine on the slope absorbing the suntan, eyes closed as if in concentration. He was giving out a small and desolate smile, as of fatigue. His wrist’s watch was unilluminated. Steeply threw a butt without turning away from Marathe to watch it fall.

‘And you’ll accuse me of you’ll say I won’t only poke him in the eye and commandeer the whole serving of soup for myself,’ Steeply said, ‘but will, after eating it, I’ll give him the dirty bowl and spoon and maybe even the no-deposit Habitant can to have to deal with, saddle him with my greed’s waste, all under some sham-arrangement of quote Interdependence that’s really just a crude nationalist scheme to indulge my own U.S. individual pleasure-lust without the complications or annoyance of considering some neighbor’s own desires and interests.’

Marathe said ‘You will notice that I do not with sarcasm say “And herrrrrrrrrre we go off together once more,” which you enjoy saying.’

Steeply’s use of the body to shelter the lighting match for his smoking was not feminine, either. His parody of Marathe’s accent sounded guttural and U.S.A.-Cajun with the cigarette in the mouth. He looked up past the flame. ‘But no? Am I off-base?’

Marathe had an almost Buddhist way of studying the blanket on his lap.

For some seconds he behaved as if almost asleep, nodding very smally with the rise and fall of his lungs. The ponderous rectangles of moving light within Tucson’s nightly spread were ‘Barges of Land’ ministering to nests of dump-sters in the deep part of night. Part of Marathe always felt almost a desire to shoot persons who anticipated his responses and inserted words and said they were from Marathe, not letting him speak. Marathe suspected Steeply of knowing this, sensing this in Marathe. All two of Marathe’s older brothers from childhood had engaged in this, arguing every side and silencing Rémy by inserting his words. Both had kissed trains head-on before reaching marriageable age; [173]Marathe had been part of the audience for the death of the better one. Some of the Barges of Land’s waste would be vectored into the Sonora region of Mexico, but much would be shipped north for displacement-launch into the Convexity. Steeply was regarding him.

‘No, Rémy? Am I off-base in terms of what you’d say?’

The smile around Marathe’s mouth cost him all his training in restraint. ‘The cans containing Habitant, they say boldly “Veuillez Recycler Ce Conte-nant.” You are not false, maybe. But I think I am asking less for nations’ arguing and more for the example of you and me only, we two, if we pretend we are both of your U.S.A. type, each separate, both sacred, both desiring soupe aux pots. I am asking how is community and your respect part of my happiness in this moment, with the soup, if I am a U.S.A. person?’

Steeply worked a finger under one strap of the brassiere to relieve the throttling pressure. T don’t get you.’

‘Well. We both crave badly the entire recyclable Single-Serving can of this Habitant.’ Marathe sniffed. Tn my mind I know it is true that I must not simply make a bonking of your head and take away the soup, because my overall happiness of pleasure of the long term needs a community of “rien de bonk.” [174] But this is the long term, Steeply. This is down the road of my happiness, this respecting of you. How do I calculate this distant road of long term into my action of this moment, now, with our dead comrade clutching the soup and both of us with spittle on our chins as we regard the soup? My question is trying to say: if the most pleasure right now, en ce moment, is in the whole serving of Habitant, how is my self able to put aside this moment’s desire to make bonk on you and take this soup? How am I able to think past this soup to the future of soup down my road?’

Tn other words delayed gratification.’

‘Good. This is well. Delayed gratification. How is my U.S.A. type able in my mind to calculate my long-term overall pleasure, then decide to sacrifice this intense soup-craving of this moment to the long term and overall?’

Steeply sent out two hard tusks of smoke from the nostrils of his nose. His expression was one of patience together with polite impatience. T think it’s called simply being a mature and adult American instead of a childish and immature American. A term we might use might be “enlightened self-interest.”