For a moment, ten thousand stiffs humped under the snow in the Ardennes take on the sunny Disneyfied look of numbered babies under white wool blankets, waiting to be sent to blessed parents in places like Newton Upper Falls. It only lasts a moment. Then for another moment it seems that all the Christmas bells in the creation are about to join in chorus—that all their random pealing will be, this one time, coordinated, in harmony, present with tidings of explicit comfort, feasible joy.

But segway into the Roxbury hillside. Snow packs into the arches, the crosshatchings of his black rubber soles. His Ar’tics clink when he moves his feet. The snow in this slum darkness has the appearance of soot in a negative… it flows in and out of the night…. The brick surfaces by daylight (he only sees them in very early dawn, aching inside his overshoes, looking for cabs up and down the Hill) are flaming corrosion, dense, deep, fallen upon by frosts again and again: historied in a way he hasn’t noticed in Beacon Street….

In the shadows, black and white holding in a panda-pattern across his face, each of the regions a growth or mass of scar tissue, waits the connection he’s traveled all this way to see. The face is as weak as a house-dog’s, and its owner shrugs a lot.

Slothrop: Where is he? Why didn’t he show? Who are you?

Voice: The Kid got busted. And you know me, Slothrop. Remember? I’m Never.

Slothrop (peering): You, Never? (A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?

□□□□□□□

“Kryptosam” is a proprietary form of stabilized tyrosine, developed by IG Farben as part of a research contract with OKW. An activating agent is included which, in the presence of some component of the seminal fluid to date [1934] unidentified, promotes conversion of the tyrosine into melanin, or skin pigment. In the absence of seminal fluid, the “Kryptosam” remains invisible. No other known reagent, among those available to operatives in the field, will alter “Kryptosam” to visible melanin. It is suggested, in cryptographic applications, that a proper stimulus be included with the message which will reliably produce tumescence and ejaculation. A thorough knowledge of the addressee’s psychosexual profile would seem of invaluable aid.

—PROF. DR. LASZLO JAMF,
“Kryptosam” (advertising brochure), Agfa, Berlin, 1934