Callisto and Aubade, meanwhile, discover that the wounded bird that Callisto has been nursing has died. He placates Saul, breaks up fights, and calls a repairman to fix his broken refrigerator. After observing the Duke di Angeles quartet mime playing music-even while his other guests grow louder and more disorderly-Mulligan decides to “try and keep his lease-breaking party from deteriorating into total chaos” (97). Mulligan’s party gradually winds down, while Callisto and Aubade’s vigil culminates suddenly and violently. Callisto finds this sameness ominous, an “ome of apocalypse” (85). He did not know if he was equal to the task (87).Ĭallisto also periodically sends Aubade to the apartment window, to check on the outside temperature, which has remained at 37 degrees Fahrenheit for the past three days. He was forced, in the sad dying fall of middle age, to a radical reevaluation of everything he had learned up to then all of the cities and seasons and casual passions of his days had now to be looked at in a new and elusive light. These memoirs concern his discovery of the concept of entropy-a state of simultaneous chaos and stasis-and its application to modern life: They lie together on Callisto’s bed, Callisto alternately nursing a wounded bird and dictating his memoirs to Aubade. Meanwhile, Aubade and Callisto strive to maintain their equilibrium in their upstairs apartment, from where they can hear the distracting noises of Mulligan’s party. He describes the fight to Mulligan as concerning “communication theory” (89). Saul has recently had a fight with his wife Miriam, and he believes that they are now on the verge of divorcing. Mulligan’s friend Saul also appears, by climbing up on to the fire escape outside of the kitchen. Three female undergraduates from nearby George Washington University arrive and are immediately taken up by Sandor Rojas. A group of US Navy men show up, under the impression that Mulligan’s apartment is a bordello. As the party continues, late guests continue to arrive, both invited and uninvited. Guests at Mulligan’s party include Sandor Rojas, a libidinous Hungarian who is described as having a “chronic case of Don Giovannism” (86), and a jazz quartet who call themselves the Duke di Angelis quartet.
Callisto’s apartment has been transformed into a greenhouse and aviary, a self-contained, self-regulating space that Callisto and Aubade almost never leave: “Hermetically sealed, it was a tiny enclave of regularity within the city’s chaos, alien to the vagaries of the weather, of national politics, of any civil disorder” (83-84).Īt the story’s opening, Mulligan’s party has been underway for almost two days and “seem to be gathering its second wind” (82).
The second occurs at the apartment directly above Mulligan’s, belonging to Callisto, a middle-aged Italian intellectual, and Aubade, his waifish young French-Annamese girlfriend. The first of the two settings is the apartment of a young man named Meatball Mulligan, at which a large, raucous party is taking place. “Entropy” takes place in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1957.
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