Bongo Bongo Bongo

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Ron Churgin writes to Bonnie:
"My reconstruction goes: Lespius enters the second box.  Goodfellow and
Porpentine enter the box next to Lespius together.  Victoria enters
Goodfellow and Porpentine's box and minutes later leaves crying followed by
Goodfellow.  Porpentine comes out of the box with a smoking gun and goes
after Lespius in the next box.  They struggle and Porpentine breaks Lespius'
glasses, blinding him.  "The man at the end of the corridor..." shoots
Porpentine.
 
Who is "the man at the end of the corridor"?  Is it Bongo-Shaftsbury?  I lose
track of the plot.  Of course, we the readers, only view the plot through the
reporting of others who don't really know the players and are just guessing
or fantasizing what they are up to (in the same way that we,the readers do).
 P.Aieul the cafe waiter, Yusef the factotum and anarchist spy, Rowley-Bugge
the moocher off fellow tourists, Waldetar the conductor, Gebrail the cab
driver, Girgis the hotel thief,  and Hanne the waitress, the functionaries of
Baedeker land.  Every section of that chapter is told from the point of view
of a person serving and observing tourists.  All except the finale, part
VIII, from which you quote."

The uncertainty of that last section is intentional--an homage/ripoff to/off
Robbe-Grillet in style.   Of course, the parallels that Bonnie points out in
discussing the characters, especially Porpentine's skin, *does* foreshadow
the eventuality of the Bomb.

It's also instructive to do a close comparison between this chapter and its
source, the short story "Under the Rose."

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)