Chapter Seven Thomas Pynchon V. She hangs on the western wall Dudley Eigenvalue, D.D.S.

., browsed among treasures in his Park Avenue office/r esidence. Mounted on black velvet in a locked mahogany case, showpiece of the o ffice, was a set of false dentures, each tooth a different precious metal. The upper right canine was pure titanium and for Eigenvalue the focal point of the set. He had seen the original sponge at a foundry near Colorado Springs a year ago, having flown there in the private plane of one Clayton ("Bloody") Chiclitz . Chiclitz of Yoyodyne, one of the biggest defense contractors on the east coas t, with subsidiaries all over the country. He and Eigenvalue were part of the s ame Circle. That was what the enthusiast, Stencil, said. And believed. For those who keep an eye on such things, bright little flags had begun to appe ar toward the end of Eisenhower's first term, fluttering bravely in history's g ay turbulence, signaling that a new and unlikely profession was gaining moral a scendancy. Back around the turn of the century, psychoanalysis had usurped from the priesthood the role of father-confessor. Now, it seemed, the analyst in hi s turn was about to be deposed by, of all people, the dentist. It appeared actually to have been little more than a change in nomenclature. Ap pointments became sessions, profound statements about oneself came to be prefac ed by "My dentist says . . ." Psychodontia, like its predecessors, developed a jargon: you called neurosis "malocclusion," oral, anal and genital stages "deci duous dentition," id "pulp" and superego "enamel." The pulp is soft and laced with little blood vessels and nerves. The enamel, mo stly calcium, is inanimate. These were the it and I psychodontia had to deal wi th. The hard, lifeless I covered up the warm, pulsing it; protecting and shelte ring. Eigenvalue, enchanted by the titanium's dull spark, brooded on Stencil's fantas y (thinking of it with conscious effort as a distal amalgam: an alloy of the il lusory flow and gleam of mercury with the pure truth of gold or silver, filling a breach in the protective enamel, far from the root). Cavities in the teeth occur for good reason, Eigenvalue reflected. But even if there are several per tooth, there's no conscious organization there against th e life of the pulp, no conspiracy. Yet we have men like Stencil, who must go ab out grouping the world's random caries into cabals. Intercom blinked gently. "Mr. Stencil," it said. So. What pretext this time. He 'd spent three appointments getting his teeth cleaned. Gracious and flowing, Dr . Eigenvalue entered the private waiting room. Stencil rose to meet him, stamme ring. "Toothache?" the doctor suggested, solicitous. "Nothing wrong with the teeth," Stencil got out. "You must talk. You must both drop pretense." From behind his desk, in the office, Eigenvalue said, "You're a bad detective a nd a worse spy." "It isn't espionage," Stencil protested, "but the Situation is intolerable." A term he'd learned from his father. "They're abandoning the Alligator Patrol. Sl owly, so as not to attract attention." "You think you've frightened them?" "Please." The man was ashen. He produced a pipe and pouch and set about scatter ing tobacco on the wall-to-wall carpeting. "You presented the Alligator Patrol to me," said Eigenvalue, "in a humorous lig ht. An interesting conversation piece, while my hygienist was in your mouth. We re you waiting for her hands to tremble? For me to go all pale? Had it been mys elf and a drill, such a guilt reaction might have been very, very uncomfortable ." Stencil had filled the pipe and was lighting it. "You've conceived somewhere the notion that I am intimate with the details of a conspiracy. In a world suc h as you inhabit, Mr. Stencil, any cluster of phenomena can be a conspiracy. So no doubt your suspicion is correct. But why consult me? Why not the Encyclopae dia Britannica? It knows more than I about any phenomena you should ever have i nterest in. Unless, of course, you're curious about dentistry." How weak he loo ked, sitting there. How old was he - fifty-five - and he looked seventy. Wherea

s Eigenvalue at roughly the same age looked thirty-five. Young as he felt. "Whi ch field?" he asked playfully. "Peridontia, oral surgery, orthodontia? Prosthet ics?" "Suppose it was prosthetics," taking Eigenvalue by surprise. Stencil was buildi ng a protective curtain of aromatic pipe smoke, to be inscrutable behind. But h is voice had somehow regained a measure of self-possession. "Come," said Eigenvalue. They entered a rear office, where the museum was. Here were a pair of forceps once handled by Fauchard; a first edition of The Surgeo n Dentist, Paris, 1728; a chair sat in by patients of Chapin Aaron Harris; a br ick from one of the first buildings of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. Eigenvalue led Stencil to the mahogany case. "Whose," said Stencil, looking at the dentures. "Like Cinderella's prince," Eigenvalue smiled, "I'm still looking for the jaw t o fit these." "And Stencil, possibly. It would be something she'd wear." "I made them," said Eigenvalue. "Anybody you'd be looking for would never have seen them. Only you, I and a few other privileged have seen them." "How does Stencil know." "That I'm telling the truth? Tut, Mr. Stencil." The false teeth in the case smiled too, twinkling as if in reproach. Back in the office, Eigenvalue, to see what he could see, inquired: "Who then i s V.?" But the conversational tone didn't take Stencil aback, he didn't look surprised that the dentist knew of his obsession. "Psychodontia has its secrets and so d oes Stencil," Stencil answered. "But most important, so does V. She's yielded h im only the poor skeleton of a dossier. Most of what he has is inference. He do esn't know who she is, nor what she is. He's trying to find out. As a legacy fr om his father." The afternoon curled outside, with only a little wind to stir it. Stencil's wor ds seemed to fall insubstantial inside a cube no wider than Eigenvalue's desk. The dentist kept quiet as Stencil told how his father had come to hear of the g irl V. When he'd finished, Eigenvalue said, "You followed up, of course. On-the -spot investigation." "Yes. But found out hardly more than Stencil has told you." Which was the case. Florence only a few summers ago had seemed crowded with the same tourists as a t the turn of the century. But V., whoever she was, might have been swallowed i n the airy Renaissance spaces of that city, assumed into the fabric of any of a thousand Great Paintings, for all Stencil was able to determine. He had discov ered, however, what was pertinent to his purpose: that she'd been connected, th ough perhaps only tangentially, with one of those grand conspiracies or foretas tes of Armageddon which seemed to have captivated all diplomatic sensibilities in the years preceding the Great War. V. and a conspiracy. Its particular shape governed only by the surface accidents of history at the time. Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in it s fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom o f a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, comp artmented off into sinuous cycles each of which come to assume greater importan ce than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are cha rmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the peculiar moral habits of our grandparents. We produce and attend mu sical comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of a continuous tra dition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.