R
Radnichny
353; impetuous and unstable practical joker in Weird Letter Assignment
R.A.F. Medmenham
726; "techniques by which Constance Babington-Smith and her colleagues at R.A.F. Medmenham discovered the Rocket back in 1943 in recco photographs of Peenemünde"
the rising sun striking the rocket's exhaust, 6; "his rainbowed Valkyrie over Peenemünde" 151; "all around them were clouds, rainbows, drops of fire" 160; "the greengrocer is wishing on a rainbow today" 175; "the rainbow edges of what is almost on him" 203; "a rainbow-striped dirndl skirt" 208; "they move forever under it. . .as if it were the Rainbow" 209; "a peacock, courting, fanning his tail ... she saw it in the colors that moved in the flame as it rose off the platform, scarlet, orange, iridescent green" 223; "wild as a rainbow" 369; "the rainbow edge of the sound" 488; "It's a long rainbow, mostly [...] indigo and Kelly green" 524; "To purity of light--of bonds that sing,/And whips that trail their spectra as they fall" 532-33; Osbie "a sunburst in primary colors spiking out from his head" 536; "Slothrop sees a very thick rainbow" 626; "rainbow of sentinel ladies" 637; "beautiful Serpent, its coils in rainbow lashings" 721; "the great rainbow plumes" 722; "serpent coils that lash above the surface of the Earth in rainbow light" 726
Raketenflugplatz
162-63; German: "rocket site"; the original Raketenflugplatz was an abandoned dump in Berlin where the VfR launched their rockets in the early 1930s; 416
Raketen-Stadt
296; German: "Rocket-City"; created in the Mittelwerke by Ernst Ölsch (under Speer) "To Avoid Symmetry, Allow Complexity, Introduce Terror" 297; "these are the els and busses of an enormous transit system here in the Raketenstadt" 603; "plexiglass maps of the webs we maintain across the Zone" 660; and "the Floundering Four" 674; Daguerreotype of, taken by "a forgotten photographer [...] a habitué of mercury fumes" 725; "By now the city has grown so tall that elevators are long-haul affairs" 735
Rapallo Treaty
166; Agreement between Soviet Russia and Germany which contained extensive trade agreements including the lifting of trade restrictions between the two countries, thus allowing Krupp to sell their steel machines to the Soviets. Germany's powerful right wing was enraged at the recognition given the new Communist regime and on June 24, 1922 Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau, who negotiated the treaty on Germany's behalf, was shot and killed in the street; 338; 352 See also Rathenau, Walter
Rapier, Father
538; Jesuit preaching at double-agent convention/garden
ratchet
"wordless ratcheting cue" 51; "off on a...ratchet of rooms" 257; "a ratcheting noise" 282; "dragging himself up the ratchet's teeth" 547; "ratcheting like a phone number being dialed" 607; "Bicycle riders ratcheted by" 611; "The nonstop revue crosses its stage. . .in an endless ratchet" 681; "CATCH" 759; See also film/cinema references
rates of change
"To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled" 301; "a train of imperceptible light and dark" 642; See also delta-t
Rathaus
German: "town-hall"; in Nordhausen, 333
Rathenau, Walter (d. 1922)
163; German foreign minister who was assassinated; "prophet and architect of cartelized state" 164; seance of, 163-65; during WWI "was ramrodding the whole economy" 284; dealt the Rapallo Treaty ("elaborate piece of theatre" - 352) with Tchitcherine's father, 338; 581; 590; 616; See also Rapallo Treaty; [Sasuly's IG Farben]
Rat Ilya
229; rat at White Visitation
Rauhandle
98; Blicero's athletic young friend/lover(?) "how many years back into the peace"
Raum, Natasha
712; quoted regarding the "Hydra-Phänomen" and Slothrop's plucking-of-self, in her "'Regions of Indeterminacy in Albatross Anatomy,' Proceedings of the International Society of Confessors to an Enthusiasm for Albatross Nosology"
Ravenna
564; coastal northern Italian city
Ray
256; U.S. MP in Nice outside Slothrop's door
Rebecca
155; "Jewess" comrade of Leni's in KDP
Reed, Ishmael (b. 1938)
588; American novelist
Reed, Maurice ("Saxophone")
9; at Pirate's maisonette
Reeperbahn
652; in the district of Saint Pauli in Hamburg, a notorious street of ill-repute (where the Beatles played before getting famous) where Byron is traded to a prostitute
Reformation
267; The 16th century revolution (a Counterforce) that took place in the Western church, due primarily to the Catholic church's loss of spiritual credibility as a result of its increasing material wealth and power. See also Counterforce; Zwingli, Huldrych
Regents Park Zoo
121; in London
Reichsbank
284; Germany's leading financial institution.
Reichstag building
368; in Berlin, shelled out and resembling a giant shitting ape
Reinickendorf
154; a neighborhood in Berlin encompassing the northwest of the city area, including the Berlin-Tegel Airport, Lake Tegel, spacious settlements of detached houses as well as housing estates; Pökler "reported to the rocket facility at"
Reithinger, Dr.
According to Sasuly, Reithinger, who worked as director of statistics in NW7 under Ilgner, "had been considered one of the outstanding statisticians of Germany. [He] had traveled in many countries [...] and in each country met with leading statisticians and economists on a basis of scientific interest and arranged the exchange of satistical data." (p.98); his VOWI office was the Statistical Department of NW7, 630
religion
"something vaguely religious" 66; Chain of Being, 77; "every true god must be both organizer and destroyer" 99; "God is creator and destroyer, sun and darkness, all sets of opposites brought together" 100; "rocket-mysticism" 154; "presence of the Creator much more direct" 214; "Judaized" 219; Krishna, 276; "ice-saints" 281; "There may be no gods, but there is a pattern" 322; Chance = God, 323, 613; "Allah has smiled on us" 365; "breath of God" 454; God's signature, 463; Manichaean, 631, 727; always about death, 701; Pan, 720; Buddha, 733; "By all the holy names of God" 734; See also Puritans; Christianity; Hand of Providence/God; Islam
"Nature does not know extinction, all it knows is transformation" 1; "Death is a debt to nature due" 26; "lapsing back now to green wilderness" 28; toothpaste tube "waiting now--its true return--to be melted for solder" 130; "The real movement is not from death to any rebirth. It is from death to death-transfigured" 166; "some teeming cycle of departure and return" 198; "no cycles, no returns" 318; to the Center (Hereros), 319; "men turning to coal" 351; 412; serpent eating its tail, 413; Slothrop's transmutation dream about Greta, 447; Bicycle Rider in the Sky, 501; trees growing through cracks at Peenemünde, 502; Slothrop's Rider (celestial cyclist), 509; serpentine, 520; "restore us to our Earth and to our freedom" 525; "unclipped topiary hedges, growing back into reality" 535; "a Jesuit [...] here to preach, like his colleague Teilhard de Chardin, against return" 539; "at least the physical things They have taken, from Earth and from us, can be dismantled, demolished--returned to where it all came from" 540; "To affirm Their mortality is to affirm Return" 540; 560; Destiny, 576; "that familiar division between return and one-shot visitation" 584; wheels in the sky, 620; Cosmic windmill, 624; "They took us at the gates of green return" 627; "cables lay rusting across the sodden meadows, going to flakes, to ions and earth" 627; "prehistoric wastes. . .transmuted to the very substance of History" 639; windmill, 670; Serpent/Pan, 720-21; America, 722-23; 726; garbage trucks, 757; See also Counterforce; Center; excrement; mandala; serpent
Reunion
110; the only other island where van der Groov knew there were Dodoes
Rexist
Rexist Movement was formed in 1930 by Léon Degrelle, allegedly to eliminate political contamintion of the Roman Catholic religion. From a wing of the ruling Catholic Party, the Rexist Movement evolved into an opposition party and, under Degrelle's guidance, elected 21 deputies to the Belgian Parliament in 1936. With the aid of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Degrelle turned the Rexists into a fascist organization; Louis Borgesius attended their meetings, 546; See also NSB credentials
Reyes, Cipriano
383; "intervened for" G. Portales once
Rheinelbe Union
284; combined by Stinnes into a super-cartel with Siemens-Schuchert after WWI;
Rhenish Missionary Society
100; in South-West Africa, 315; 316;
Reynolds
453; coefficient named after
RHIP
190; Rank Has Its Privileges; 448
Rigoletto
132.21; An opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career.
Riickert, Helen
381; "a blond with a Dutch surname" competing for Miss Rheingold 1946
Rijkswijksche Bosch
113; in Holland, where film of Schwarzkommando will be "discovered" in fake ruins of rocket-firing site
Rilke, Rainer Maria (d. 1926)
rinderpest
317; "cattle dead of" 323;
Rinso, Lieutenant
449; Charles' paranoia that Rinso's plotting to murder him, on the Toiletship
Rioja, La
612; a wasteland "on the eastern slopes of the Andes" where Correa was found dead
Ripov, Nikolai
700; of Commissariat for Intelligence Activities; checks up on Tchitcherine; during Tchitcherine's haunting, 703; 719
Rippenstoss, Heinz
167; German: "kick in the groin" (or "nudge in the ribs"); "irrepressible Nazi wag and gadabout" at Rathenau seance and asker of the question "Is God really Jewish?"
Rivadavia
263; "where the true South begins" in Argentina; From "The South" in the short story collection Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (Grove Press, 1962, p. 169):
- "Every Argentine knows that the South begins at the other side of Rivadavia. Dahlmann was in the habit of saying that this was no mere convention, that whoever crosses this street enters a more ancient and sterner world."
Avenida Rivadavia, in Buenos Aires, is an immensely long street (Porteños claim it is the longest in the world) which runs east to west for nearly two hundred blocks from Plaza de Mayo to Morón, outside the city limits.
Rizla liquorice cigarette paper
93; Rizla Website
Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène (1805-1871)
French magician considered to be the father of modern conjuring. The first magician to use electricity, he also improved the signalling method for the "thought transference" trick. Harry Houdini named himself after Robert-Houdin; "the great conjurer" 675
Robin
59; childhood friend recalled by Jessica
Robot Blitz
85; German buzz bomb (aka "robot bomb" and "V-1") attack on London
Roca, Gen. Julio Argentino
Roca distinguished himself militarily with victories in the "Indian wars" (ending in 1879), opening up the pampas to settlement by whites and turning him into a political hero which he parlayed into his election as president in 1880; "campaign to open the pampas by exterminating the people who live there" 387
Rocket
incoming mail, 6; A4, 8, 396, 406, 411, 464; farting buzzbombs, 21; "explode first. . .then you hear them coming in" 23; "slender church steeples" 29 (& 624); "a piece of time neatly snipped out" 48; "a rocket has suddenly struck" 59; V-1 and V-2, 86; "the sounds of V-1 and V-2, one the reverse of the other" 144; premonitions in Psi section, 146; "rocket-mysticism" 154; "between the two points, in the five minutes, it lives an entire life." 209; assembly at Mittelwerke, 304; "Germans [...] who called the rocket Der Phau ["the peacock"], 223; "terrible passage reduced. . .to bourgeois terms" 239; Slothrop's discovery of blueprint, 242; and manhood, 324; "hidden inside the summer Zone, the Rocket is waiting" 359; 5 launching switch positions, 361; cult of A4 (A: "aggregate"), 391; Pökler's dreams of, 399; leading to freedom of outerspace, 400; money v. dreams, 400; Pökler as an extension of, 402; as fat Japanese arrow, 403; A3, 406; growing towards a predestined shape (Schicksal), 416; A5, 416; mapped on to face, 423; A4 test sites moved to Blizna, Poland in '43 - Sarnaki is Ground Zero, 424; problem rockets--"reluctant virgins" 426; 10K pounds sterling, 438; "half bullet, half arrow" 453; charisma of, 464; "the kingly voice of the Aggregate" 470; Rocket Noon, 500; fins=mandala, 563 (illus. 624); "The sand-colored churchtops [...] like rocket fins guiding the streamlined spires" 624; "A4. . .concealed behind an uncrossable wall that separated real pain and terror from summoned deliverer." 666; 673; firing vectors, 706; "Rocket state-cosmology" 726; "Rocket as Torah" 727; "an evil Rocket for the World's suicide" 727; "it comes as the Revealer" 728; Goebbels' "avenger" 747; origin of countdown, 753; See also V2 Page - very good; Schwarzgerät; V-1 Rocket at Wikipedia V-2 Rocket at Wikipedia
Rocketman (aka Raketemensch, aka Slothrop)
359; a comic book character from the '40s and Tyrone's alter-ego; 366; comic-book dialogue, 371; 376; exists in nongeographical space ("Providence's little pal"), 379; war cry: "Hauptstufe" - "leaps broad highways in a single bound!" 380; "Fickt nicht mit der Raketemensch!" 436; 512; 596; "You poor fucker." 741
Rohmer, Sax (c.1883-1959)
Sax Rohmer, aka Arthur Sarsfield Wade, was an internationally popular British writer who created the evil genius Fu Manchu, the Chinese hero-villain of many novels. Dr. Fu Manchu (1913) was the first in the series of which there were several more over the next 45 years, over which time Fu Manchu evolved from an entirely self-serving villain into a dedicated anti-Communist; "great Manichaean saga" 641
Rohr
681; German: "tube" or "pipe"; Jehovah's witness who is "Keeper of the Antenna" for Germans to communicate with U-boats
Rommel, Erwin (1891-1944)
Aka the "Desert Fox," Rommel is most famous for commanding the Afrika Korps in North Africa in 1941, driving the British out of Libya and into Egypt. Anglo-American forces finally compelled his surrender in Tunisia in 1943. He escaped and commanded German forces in Italy and then in northern France preparing for the Allied invasion of 1944. Seeing the writing on the wall, he begged Hitler to end the war. Although innocent, he was implicated in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and opted for suicide over arrest and a sure conviction; "Old Blood 'n' Guts" handed Rommel's ass to him in the desert" 287
Roosevelt, Eleanor (1882-1962)
The wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor was a social-activist first lady during his presidency. After his death, she held various posts in the United Nations; Chiclitz's "Eleanor Roosevelt routine. 'The othuh day, my son Idiot--uh, Eliot--and I, were baking cookies'" 566
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
32nd president (Democrat) of the U.S., 1932-45. He started the "New Deal" program in 1933 to combat the Great Depression, which involved abandoning the gold standard, devaluing the dollar, state intervention in the credit market, agricultural price support, and the passage of the Social Security Act (1935) which provided for old-age and unemployment insurance;135; "died back in the spring [12 April]" 373; "it seemed he'd just keep getting elected, term after term, forever. But somebody had decided to change that. So he was put to sleep" 374; "a being They assembled, a being They would dismantle" 374; caricature of on Toiletship, 450; "'Mister Swope was ace buddies with old'" 565; "Roosevelt's 'election' in 1932" 581; "Harvard, beholden to all kinds of money old and new, commodity and retail" 581
The Rorschach inkblots were developed by a Swiss psychiatrist, Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922), in an effort to reduce the time required in psychiatric diagnosis. His test consists of 10 cards, half in color and half in black and white. The subject is shown the 10 blots one at a time, the task being to describe what she sees in the blots or what they remind her of. There are no right or wrong answers; "'a so-called, "projec-tive" test'" 81; See also paranoia/connectedness
Rosas, Juan Manuel de (1793-1877)
After losing an Argentinian election in 1835, Rosas led a revolt and ruled as dictator, through terror and bloodshed, from 1835 to 1852; "The tyrant Rosas has been dead a century, but his cult flourishes" 264
Rose
680; woman around a fire in the "dingy yellow amphitheatre"
Roseland Ballroom
63; in Boston--where Slothrop drops his harmonica down the toilet in the men's room while vomiting; 623; 688
Italian composer of light comic opera and pleasant, melodious, crowd-pleasing music; "an abbreviated version of L'Inutil Precauzione (that imaginary opera with which Rosina seeks to delude her guardian in The Barber of Seville)" 204; Rue Rossini, 248, 253, 257; William Tell Overture 262; overture to La Gazza Ladra, vs. Beethoven, 273, 440; his music: "love without payment of any kind" 274; 376; "'The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber's in the crockery, the magpie's stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together. . .'" 440; "Rossini [...] full of light and kindness" 622; "long-suppressed Rossini violin concerto (op. posth.)" 684; "Now I know it's not as keen as old Rossini [snatch of La Gazza Ladra here]" 685
Rossokovski
501; left Peenemünde with White Russian Army; 504
rösti
258;
concept developed by Max Weber; Führer-principle, 81; "there should be no room for a terrible disease like charisma" 81; "we'll have shown again the stone determinacy [...] of every soul" 86; "Pavlov believed the ideal [...] is the true mechanical explanation" 89; "scrubbed and routinized fingers" 91; "cage his old gods, snare them in words" 99; "that vaguely criminal face on your ID card, its soul snatched by the government camera as the guillotine shutter fell" 134; "another long-routinezed nudge of horn, flip of hoof" 142; "Destiny will betray you, crush your ideals, deliver you into the same detestable Bürgerlichkeit as your father [...] fly from pain to duty, from joy to work, from commitment to neutrality." 162; "death-by- government" 176; "the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace" 177; 201; "well before he loses his innocence and becomes one of them" 205; "There's just no passion at all" 216; "the Rocket's terrible passage reduced. . .to bougeois terms" 239; "dusty Dracularity, the West's ancient curse" 263; of Mittelwerke, 295; 324; 325; N.T.A., 339; writing down ajtys, 357; 416; A4's charisma, 464; routinization of sex, 467-68; "bureaucracy of departure" 470; "verbal, ranked and uniformed" 478; 508; 525; topiary, 535; "when the rages came over him, breaking through from beneath the rationalized look" 579; "the Masons had long, long degenerated into just another businessmen's club" 588; "grim rationalizing of the world" 588; Magician and the magical mandrake root, 625; "vague excitement at break in routine" 651; "You are perverting a great discovery to the uses of commerce" 665; keying waves, 698; Hexes-Stadt (you either become a bureaucrat or choose the world), 718; "the only enterprise is administrating" 718; "'Technique is just a substitute for when you get older'" 718; "The routines go on" 721; "Passageways of routine" 724; "The heroes will go on, kicked upstairs to oversee the development of bright new middle-line personnel" 752; [Attempting to impose order on GR]; See also control; grid; MMPI; naming; Rorschach Test; Routinization of Charisma
Rowena
200; one of two ladies with the General playing croquet as Slothrop falls from the tree, draped in a purple sheet
Royal Fellow
37; "Royal Fellow-baiting" 171;
Rozhdestvenski, Admiral
349-51; in December 1904, "command[ed] a fleet of 42 Russian men-o'-war" into the South African port of Lüderitzbucht" with Tchitcherine's father on board; "1904 was when Admiral Rozhdestvenski sailed his fleet halfway around the world to relieve Port Arthur" 452
Rózsavölgyi, Dr. Géza
79; (Hungarian: "of the pink valley"); Hungarian; works in ARF wing;aka "Rosie" 80; violently anti-Soviet; "still with the project" 273; at Twelfth House, 632-35; son of Sandor the bulb salesman in Transylvania, 647; 692
Rózsavölgyi, Sandor
647; father of Géza, "ace [lightbulb] salesman [...] who covered all the Transylvanian territory"
Rücksichtslos
German: "inconsiderate" or "ruthless"); See Toiletship
Rudi
155; "La Boheme Student" comrade of Leni's in KPD; 156; 158
Rundstedt offensive
52; Gerd von Rundstedt (1875-1953) was one of Adolf Hitler's ablest military leaders in World War II. In 1944, this German field marshal directed the Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge). General Dwight D. Eisenhower called him the ablest of the German generals of World War II. 131
RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS [thanks to our Russian correspondent, Comrade Alexis B.]
- 340: lepeshka: a bread roll, often made of a blend of rye and wheat flours
- 512: budka: booth (traffic police in Moscow patrol from raised booths that look out over the street, which are called budkas)
- 513: pogoni: the bars on the shoulders of military uniforms from which dangle the stars, tassles, &c.
