Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 984
David Foster Wallace
Hal is hunched, examining his finger for eye-material. ‘In all the excitement we’ve neglected the most obvious response, then, O. Your answer for the exam, and then I can go dry the ankle.’ He can hear PemuJis asking Petropolis Kahn and Stephan Wagenknecht something off down the hall through the cracked door.
‘I think I already tried the obvious response on her, but hit me.’
‘Pemulis just made his first pass and left the door ajar. I’m sitting here nude in a draft through an open door neglecting the maybe deceptively obvious fact that something like, what, three-quarters of the Concavity’s northern border runs contiguous to Quebec.’
‘Exactamundo.’
‘So that so what if Ottawa didn’t formally subjoin the Concavity to any particular province. Really big favor, I’m sure. Because the map speaks for itself. Bits of western New Brunswick and a smidgeon of Ontario aside, the Concavity — the physical fact and fallout of the Concavity — it’s Quebec’s problem. Something like 750 clicks of border along the Concavity, with attendant seepage, for Notre Rai Pays.’
‘Yes plus the brunt of the airborne wastes from the high-altitude ATHSCMEs, plus being the province that gets splatted when the E.W.D. vehicles overshoot the Concavity. This is what í tried right off the bat on her.’
‘So what’s the
‘Although people aren’t exactly flocking to New Brunswick or Lake Ontario either. And the coastal ATHSCMEs send the coastal phenols out over Fundy, and supposedly the lobsters out there are like monsters in old Japanese films, and supposedly Nova Scotia glows, at night, in satellite photos.’
‘Still and all, O., tell her proportionally speaking it’s Quebec that’s borne the brunt of what Canada had to take. The brunt