Scene 131: matty pemulis da birthday
Characters present
Characters referenced
Connects to
Summary
Matty Pemulis — Michael's older brother, a prostitute, twenty-three today — eats soup alone at the Man o' War Grille while Inman Square's degradation parades past the window: a bag lady defecating on the pavement, a brewing Brazilian street-fight, two underweight girls (Kate Gompert and Ruth van Cleve, unnamed), and finally the spectral, grave-ready figure of Poor Tony Krause, recognizable only by boa and red leather coat. Between window-frames the narration descends into Matty's complete, unblocked recall of his Da — the Irish docker who came over from Louth in 1989 and began raping Matty "up the ass" when he was ten, the nightly ritual of pretended sleep, the caresses "just over the line" from fatherly affection, the rhetorical trap by which the boy's own fear was made the provocation, with five-year-old Mickey silent as a tomb in the next cot. Only "maturer perspective" lets Matty conclude that no son could ask for that, and find one thing to be thankful for: that Da at least used a lube. The scene closes on Da's death when Matty was seventeen — choking on a fountain of aspirated blood, face screwed into a rictusized grin — and on Matty, who still toasts the man's final memory with his first shot, whenever he indulges.
What to notice
One move, and it is grammatical. Da's night-rhetoric runs unquoted inside Matty's total recall, and every accusation amputates itself before its noun: "no better than a.", "taken for a.", "As if the Da were a." — the period landing where the word should be. The device reproduces the abuse's own mechanism on the page: the broken sentence forces you, like the child, to supply the unsayable word yourself, so the accusation seems to originate in the accused — which is exactly how Matty's fear got converted into provocation, "Why then so then I've a mind to give you just what you're thinking t'fear." — you thought it, so you asked for it. The scene's whole argument about complicity manufactured in a ten-year-old lives in that stub of an indefinite article.
Beats
- p. 682: dateline 14 NOVEMBER YDAU; the Man o' War on Prospect; Matty, the family's neat eater, hands in lap; "Matty Pemulis was a prostitute and today he was twenty-three."
- pp. 682-683: the bag lady lowers herself and moves her bowels in full view; college kids "didn't know whether to be totally illed or totally awed"; Matty's permanent involuntary smile — Da always saying to Wipe it off.
- p. 683: Da's biography — boat from Louth in Leinster, 1989; coiling rope on the Southie docks; dead of "pancreatic complaints" when Matty was seventeen; the Brazilian face-off passes the window, both men missing the dollop on the walk.
- pp. 683-684: two underweight girls cross the window; behind them Poor Tony Krause — "sucked-out, hollow-eyed, past ill, grave-ready," skin "the greenish white of extreme-depth marine life," still making his infinite series of grand entrances, "a queenly hauteur now both sickening and awesome."
- pp. 684-685: the abuse, in total recall — the cat's-eye sliver of hallway light, the door's moonrise-slow opening, malt-liquor smell, the weight changing the bed's angle; caresses just over the line; the trap of fear ("who are we, a sone, to be scared so of our own Da?... Why then so then I've a mind to give you just what you're thinking t'fear"); the late realization "that the event was laid out before the first slim line of doorlight broadened"; the feigned-sleep arms race (clacking teeth, cartoon snores); Mickey face to the wall, "Never a word between them"; the Vaseline cap's stone-in-pond plop, the ice-cold finger.
- p. 685: the one thing maturer perspective yields thanks for — "that the Da'd at least used a lube"; the origin of the man's familiarity with its nighttime use still unilluminable.
- pp. 685-686: Da's actual death vs. the old-film version — choking on atomized aspirated blood, Matty coated spray-paint-russet holding the yellow wrists, Mum lumbering off for a crash cart; cat-yellow eyes open, the godawful rictusized grin; Matty still toasts him with his first shot. [n.278]
Themes in this scene
- Fathers and Sons: the book's darkest paternity — a father who manufactures his son's fear and then punishes him for it; against JOI's absent-via-films fathering and Gately's vanished father, Da Pemulis is the actively predatory pole, and the toast-to-his-memory is filial bondage outliving the man.
- Addiction and Recovery: Da's drunkenness is the abuse's medium and its rules ("you never knew from minute to minute whether you were to be kissed or hit"); Matty's own indulging — toasting the abuser with the first shot — shows the inheritance running on schedule.
- Communication and Solipsism: "Never a word between them about anything more than the chances of being kissed v. hit" — two brothers in one room, each alone with it; Matty's lifelong unwipeable smile is a mask grown into the face.
- Memory and Forgetting: trauma without the mercy of blocking — "Matty had complete recall of the whole thing.... He remembered every inch and pimple of every single time" (p. 684); only "maturer perspective" can reprocess what recall preserves intact, and the first-shot toast to Da's memory keeps the archive ritually open.
Connections
Backward
- n.278's first-person intrusion ("is what I'd want to know") — one of the endnote apparatus's rare overt "I" voices, indicting the silent mother; pairs with the Moms-question that haunts the Incandenza plot (Avril's seen-everything-said-nothing politeness).
Forward
- Pemulis-family corroboration: Da is dead well before YDAU (died when Matty was 17, ≈2003/YTMP), consistent with n.324's reference to Pemulis's late Da (see scene n324). No conflict found; this scene is the primary account of the death.
- Explains Michael Pemulis from outside: the boy face-to-the-wall at five is the future trust-no-one empiricist of n.321/n.324 ("trust math") and the engineer of chemical self-protection; cf. his mirror-revenge on Miles Penn (n.129) and his horror of authority figures' discretion.
- The two girls ahead of Poor Tony are Kate Gompert and Ruth van Cleve, seen from inside in scene 136 (pp. 698-700); Poor Tony's own view of the same block, same minutes, is scene 133 (pp. 689-692) — three lenses on one converging street, closing toward the purse-snatch at pp. 714ff (scene 141).
- Scene 133 reveals the connection Matty registers only as recognition: Poor Tony's "old former crewmate Mad Matty Pemulis" (p. 692, scene 133) — Matty ran with the Krause/Cheese/Reese crew; Equus Reese's starlet image of PT (p. 684) is shared crew lore.
- Da's deathbed (yellow eyes, aspirated blood) rhymes with the novel's other gruesome bedside vigils — Gately's mother's cirrhosis, Joelle's Own Personal Daddy material — the parent's body as the addiction's terminal exhibit.
Notable passages
- p. 682: "Matty Pemulis was a prostitute and today he was twenty-three." — the scene's whole economy in one flat sentence.
- pp. 683-684: Poor Tony passing the window, "never so much walking as making an infinite series of grand entrances into pocket after pocket of space" — the great late portrait of PT, sickening and awesome at once.
- p. 684: "Matty had complete recall of the whole thing.... He remembered every inch and pimple of every single time." — the anti-repression thesis; trauma without the mercy of blocking.
- p. 685: "It was years before he snapped to the fact that his Da'd have fooked him in t'boom no matter what he'd done." — the maturer perspective; abuse decoupled from the child's behavior.
- pp. 685-686: the death paragraph ("a veritable fountain of the darkest possible blood... the very most godawful rictusized grin of pain") and the closing toast — fathers-sons extraction anchor.
Endnotes digested here
What links here
- "Not so with Matty Pemulis": total recall and the maturer perspective
- Cross-witness: Matty watches a spectral Poor Tony pass the window
- Glimpsed from the Man o' War Grille
- Origins: the Louth-immigrant father, the Southie docks, the Irish-immigrant home
- Seen through the Man o' War window by Matty Pemulis
- The Da's death, and the toast Matty still lifts to him
- The Irish-immigrant Allston home and the abusive father
- The abuse: the late-night ritual, the Da's rationalizing, Micky silent in the cot
- The mugging: the walk to Inman Square with Ruth van Cleve, and the lightpost
- The present: twenty-three, a prostitute, eating soup at the Man o' War Grille
- Scene 133: poor tony post seizure prowl
- Scene 136: kate ruth prospect trek
- Scene n332: pemulis expelled
- Hal alone in Viewing Room 6
- Hal in V.R. 6 (Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat) (pp. 686–687)
- Hal in V.R. 6 with Wave Bye-Bye
- Hal in V.R. 6 with Wave Bye-Bye — "You just never quite occurred out…"
- Hal in V.R. 6: Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat (pp. 686–687)
- Hal vs. Stice, the bleacher talk
- Hal vs. Stice, the bleacher talk (p. 682)
- Hal watches Himself's cartridges
- Matty Pemulis and his Da
- Matty Pemulis at the Man o' War Grille
- Matty Pemulis's birthday soup
- Matty Pemulis's birthday, and Da
- Matty Pemulis's birthday, and Da (p. 684)
- Matty Pemulis's birthday, and Da — "He remembered the oval sound of…"
- Matty Pemulis's birthday, and Da — "It was years before he snapped…"
- Poor Tony passing the window, grave-ready
- Steeply & Poutrincourt at the match (pp. 673–682)
- the Kodiak and the wastecan
- the Kodiak and the wastecan — "Hal spits way more than is…"
- the Steeply–Poutrincourt colloquy: Wayne is pure force; the difference is the head
- the Steeply–Poutrincourt colloquy: the part of Hal that leaves and hovers
- the Steeply–Poutrincourt colloquy: the susceptible will
- the alcoholic father's death, toasted with the first shot
- the alcoholic father's death, toasted with the first shot — "Matty still toasted the man’s final…"
- the player who is only intermittently present
- the player who is only intermittently present — "Some days you can almost see…"
- the post-Stice debrief: is your stock going up or down
- the post-Stice debrief: the body at rest, squeezing the wrong hand's ball
- the smile that won't turn off
- two brothers, one horror, and no words for it