- "Things then did not delay in turning curious" (3.1).
- Oedipa thinks that the affair with Metzger would be the logical starting point for her later discovery of the Tristero System that would end her sense of encapsulation in a Tower. (No, we don't know what the Tristero Sytem is yet, and her sense of encapsulation refers to her memory of Remedios Varo's painting at the end of Chapter One. Pynchon is kind of infamously confusing.)
- Oedipa is bothered by the fact that this all logically seems to fit together as if "there were revelation in progress all around her" (3.1).
- We learn that much of the revelation comes from Pierce's stamp collection, which has to be inventoried and appraised.
- When Oedipa and Pierce were dating, she often felt as though she was competing with the stamp collection for Pierce's attention, those "thousand of little colored windows into deep vistas of space and time" (3.2).
- Oedipa receives a letter from Mucho, and we learn that she didn't tell him about the affair with Metzger. We also learn that she doesn't feel too guilty because Mucho has a soft spot for sleeping with underage girls. Yuck.
- The letter is news-less, but there is a typo on the outside of the envelope: "REPORT ALL OBSCENE MAIL TO YOUR POTSMASTER" (3.4).
- Oedipa asks Metzger what a "potsmaster" is and he tells her it's the guy who works in the back kitchen and cleans all the heavy dishes and equipment.
- Oedipa and Metzger feel a need to get out of Echo Courts, where they have resorted to having sex in the walk-in closet since Miles has given out passkeys to all his friends so they can come in and watch the bizarre sexual acts.
- Oedipa and Metzger go to a bar called the Scope, which is frequented by employees from Yoyodyne (the huge aerospace company), and Oedipa feels like the employees are all staring at her and Metzger.
- The jukebox begins to make strange noises, and the approaching bartender explains that their bar is a hotspot for electronic music.
- A man named Mike Fallopian swings into a seat at the table and begins preaching about his organization, the Peter Pinguid Society (which we will shortly see is meant to mock the real right-wing libertarian group the John Birch Society).
- Fallopian explains that the Society is named after Peter Pinguid, a Confederate general who in 1863 took his ship—the aptly named "Disgruntled"—around Cape Horn to attempt to attack San Francisco and open up a second front in the Civil War.
- Though Pinguid makes it all the way to San Francisco, Czar Nicholas II of Russia has sent a fleet there to make sure that the British and French do not intervene in the war.
- On March 9, 1864, there was some sort of clash between Pinguid and the Russians, the details of which have never been clearly sorted out. The ships fire at each other but are too far apart to hit one another, and in the morning the Russians have disappeared.
- Fallopian isn't bothered by the convoluted history. "Who cares?" he says. "We don't try to make scripture out of it" (3.22).
- Fallopian claims that this was the first military conflict between the Americans and the Russians, and that Pinguid was their first casualty, "not the fanatic our more left-leaning friends over in the Birch society chose to martyrize" (Fallopian is probably the only person in history to call the John Birch Society "left-leaning") (3.24).
- Fallopian reports that Pinguid was convinced that there was some sort of alliance between the Russians (who freed their serfs in 1861) and the Union.
- Pinguid ultimately disgraced himself by resigning—though the Pinguid Society members feel he was forced to by "Lincoln and the Czar"—and spent the rest of his life acquiring wealth by speculating in real estate (3.32).
- Oedipa spits out her drink at this and collapses in giggles.
- At this moment, a fat mail courier wearing a Yoyodyne badge enters the bar and begins distributing mail to its patrons, Fallopian included.
- Oedipa and Metzger find it strange that Yoyodyne sends inter-office mail in the middle of the night, but they don't know what to make of it.
- Oedipa goes to the bathroom, where she finds some graffiti advertising an orgy, and instructs the reader to get in touch with Kirby through WASTE (hint: We're going to learn more about WASTE later in the book).
- Beneath the inscription is a line running tangent to a circle, which meets a triangle connected to a trapezoid. Oedipa does not realize that it is a muted post-horn, but she copies WASTE's address and the symbol in her notebook anyway.
- Back at the table, Fallopian reveals that the Peter Pinguid Society is using Yoyodyne inter-office mail on the sly in order to subvert the U.S. Postal Service, which they are opposed to since it is a government monopoly.
- In order to make sure that they keep up a reasonable volume of letters, all Society members are required to send one letter per week or be fined. The result is that they send each other tons of pointless empty notes.
- Fallopian also reveals that he is writing a book about the history of private mail delivery in the U.S., and he intends to link the Civil War to the postal reform movement, which was growing at that time.
- He saw the federal government's stamping out of independent mail routes "as a parable of power, its feedings, growth and systematic abuse" (3.54).
- The narrator notes that this night begins Oedipa's encounter with the Tristero, which he compares to someone watching a late-night play that has been put on only for them. He hints that we will learn much more about the Tristero later in the book.
- While Oedipa and Metzger wait for some issues relating to Inverarity's estate to be sorted out, they decide to take a day trip to Fangoso Lagoons—one of Inverarity's big real estate projects—with the Paranoids and their girlfriends.
- As they drive, Oedipa thinks of the Pacific Ocean as some special undisturbed place that might offer redemption for Southern California.
- They stop at Lake Inverarity (the Fangoso Lagoons resort is in the center of it), and wander down to a marina together.
- The Paranoids decide to steal a boat called the "Godzilla II."
- As they approach, a friend of Metzger's named Manny Di Presso emerges from beneath a blue tarp wearing a scuba suit and asks to come with them.
- It turns out he is both a lawyer and an actor, a man that Metzger told Oedipa about when they were together in Echo Courts. Di Presso was assigned to play Metzger in a television pilot about Metzger's career, but the show bombed and now he is back to working as a lawyer.
- Right now, Di Presso is running from one of his clients—Tony Jaguar—who is in gambling trouble and wants to borrow money from him. Jaguar is big in Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia.
- They all hop off at Fangoso Lagoons and begin setting up their picnic.
- Di Presso explains the nature of the lawsuit. It turns out that Tony Jaguar had served in the Italian military in World War II.
- He remembered a massacre of an American battalion in 1943 that took place on the shores of Lago di Pietà. Afterward, the Germans had thrown all the bodies into the lake, and Tony decided to dredge the lake and see what he could salvage.
- All he found was bones, but he became convinced that he could sell them to "some American someplace" through his connections in Cosa Nostra.
- The bones were initially bought by an import-export firm, and through a convoluted route were acquired by Beaconsfield Cigarette Company.
- Inverarity threw a few of them in his lake for scuba divers staying at the resort to find (which is why Di Presso was wearing a scuba suit: he was examining the disputed bones), but the rest were used by Beaconsfield as they did research for their new filter made from bone charcoal.
- Metzger—ever the lawyer—is relieved to find that there is no cause for a lawsuit since Inverarity never owned Beaconsfield directly, only a subsidiary company, but everyone else seems not to care.
- Then one of the Paranoid's girls points out that there is a strange resemblance between this entire story and a Jacobean revenge play they recently went to see called The Courier's Tragedy.
- Di Presso sees one of Tony Jaguar's men coming after him in a boat, and so hops on board the "Godzilla II," marooning everyone else on the island.
- Oedipa and Metzger wait out the afternoon and evening listening to the Paranoids describe The Courier's Tragedy "related near to unintelligible by eight memories unlooping progressively into regions as strange to map as their rising coils and clouds of pot smoke" (3.113).
- Eventually they are rescued by the Fangoso Lagoons Security Force, and the next night Oedipa and Metzger decide to go see the play.
- What follows is the plot of The Courier's Tragedy, which goes on in the book for a ten full pages. As narrated, the play consists of little but a very convoluted plot, but it is meant to mirror the events going on in the novel itself, and it is the first time Oedipa learns of the Trystero. We're going to narrate it in full, but feel free to gloss this and skip to the next italicized section if you're not hooked.
- The play begins with the main character, Niccolo, telling his friend, Domenico, what happened to his father.
- He tells him that Angelo, Duke of Squamaglia, murdered Niccolo's father—the good Duke of Faggio—by poisoning the feet of a Saint Narcissus statue that the good Duke kissed every Sunday at mass.
- Angelo then put his illegitimate son Pasquale in charge of Faggio, although Niccolo was the rightful heir.
- Pasquale plots to kill Niccolo by having a henchman named Ercole stick him in a canon and fire him out of it.
- But Ercole was loyal to the deceased good Duke, and so sticks a goat into the canon instead and sneaks Niccolo out dressed as an old woman.
- At present, Niccolo is posing as a Thurn and Taxis mail courier (the dominant mail system during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire) in Angelo's court.
- Niccolo pretends to be trying to open up a new market in Squamaglia since Angelo insists on using an independent mail system.
- Meanwhile, Angelo is trying to consolidate the duchies of Squamaglia and Faggio by marrying his sister—Francesca—to their illegitimate son Pasquale.
- Domenico tries to betray Niccolo to Angelo, but is intercepted by the faithful henchman Ercole, who tortures and kills Domenico.
- In Act II, a cardinal is tortured and killed for not blessing Francesca's super-incestuous marriage to her own son.
- Ercole learns of the marriage and sends a courier to Faggio to rile up public opinion.
- Meanwhile, Niccolo learns that his father's most elite and royal military troop, the Lost Guard, disappeared around the time his father was murdered.
- He again makes the mistake of telling this to someone who is loyal to Angelo, another courier named Vittorio.
- In Act III, Pasquale has an orgy with a bunch of women and what he thinks is an ape (but is actually a man in an ape suit... don't you love Pynchon?).
- They turn out to be Ercole's agents, and they torture and kill Pasquale.
- A man named Gennaro comes forward and says he will serve as Duke of Faggio until Niccolo is restored.
- When Act IV begins, Angelo is in a nervous frenzy because he has heard of the coup against Pasquale, and he knows that Gennaro is going to attack Squamaglia.
- Ercole and Niccolo have not yet heard of the coup.
- Angelo summons Niccolo (who, remember, is disguised as a Thurn and Taxis mail courier), and asks him to deliver a letter to Gennaro telling him that Angelo has good intentions and that they should not invade.
- After Niccolo leaves, Vittorio betrays his identity. At the same moment, Domenico's body is found, which had a note tucked into its shoe that also betrayed Niccolo's identity.
- At this moment, the play becomes much more ambiguous than before. There is, as the narrator describes it, a "ritual reluctance" to say a certain word, which we later learn is "Trystero" (3.125).
- Angelo flies into a rage and sends some men after Niccolo (he doesn't identify them, but they are Trystero's agents).
- Meanwhile, Gennaro learns that Niccolo is coming and he and his troops rejoice. Yet when they learn that he is in Thurn and Taxis colors, they realize that the Trystero will come after him and the mood grows somber.
- They realize they are right near the place where the Lost Guard disappeared.
- Back in Squamaglia, Ercole's luck runs out. His loyalties are betrayed, and he is killed in a mass stabbing.
- Niccolo stops on his way to see Gennaro and reads Angelo's letter (remember that he didn't know about the coup).
- He rejoices when he realizes he will be restored, but then the Trystero agents Angelo sent after him come and brutally murder him.
- One of Gennaro's men finds Niccolo's body and brings Gennaro news of his death.
- Yet, in the midst of it all, a miracle occurred and Angelo's letter has now become a full confession in which he admits to murdering the Lost Guard and turning their bones into ink (Oedipa thinks it is very strange how similar this is to the disappearance of the American troops in Lago di Pietà… and the fact that their bones were turned into cigarette filters).
- Lamenting Niccolo's death, Gennaro says "No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow/ Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero" (3.130). In other words, once the Trystero have their sights on you, there's no escaping.
- In the fifth and final act, Gennaro lays waste to Squamaglia, killing Angelo and the other traitors.
- At this point the plot of The Courier's Tragedy ends and Oedipa goes looking for the program's director, a man named Randolph Driblette who also played the Gennaro character. Metzger thinks she is nuts, but she wants to ask him about the bones, though she is not sure why she is so curious.
- Oedipa enters to find Driblette undressing from his Gennaro costume.
- Driblette discourages her from reading too much into the play (is this a thinly-veiled warning to the reader as well?).
- He thinks she is a scholar and doesn't understand their obsession with texts.
- Oedipa wants the original text regardless, and he directs her to Zapf's Used Books where they sell an anthology called Jacobean Revenge Plays.
- When Oedipa tries to discuss Trystero with him, she thinks that he acts just as reluctant to discuss it as the characters in the play did.
- Driblette tells her that all there is to study is what happened inside his head. He thinks the text itself is unimportant. He says, "I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, sometimes other orifices also" (3.167).
- He again discourages her from reading too much into it, telling her that she could waste her life that way.
- As Oedipa leaves, she is bothered by the fact that she meant to discuss the bones with him, but instead ended up discussing Trystero.
- Metzger picks her up, and as they ride in the car, she realizes that "the whimsies of nighttime reception were bringing them KCUF down from Kinneret, and that the disk jockey talking was her husband, Mucho" (3.174).