V (Ch 3) vii

[jbor]

It's a good ten minutes (92.12) at least from when Hanne last sees Porpy and
Varkumian together to when she notices that the pimp has been "replaced" by
Victoria "in a flowered dress". (92.26) Thus, whether or not Victoria has
been there all the time is unanswerable imo. Narrative vantage is located
exclusively with Hanne, and she has not been inside the bierhall in the
interval.

The way Victoria hangs her head after Porpy says "So that he may know" makes
me think that this comment refers to her father knowing about she and
Goodfellow already. (Even though the beer froth on her upper lip tends to
undermine the melodrama of it all somewhat! -- a typical Pynchonian
subversive detail!)

Personally, I don't think that Victoria cares one jot for Fashoda/the coming
war. Whatever she "may think" (i.e. about what Porpy and Goodfellow are
really up to), she has "guessed". But the conversation she has initiated
with Porpy seems to revolve around herself and Goodfellow, nothing more than
that. Porpy's final remark seems almost a rebuke:

    "How can you--" exasperated-- "men can get killed, don't you see, for
   'understanding' someone. The way you want it. Is your whole family daft?
   Will they be content with nothing less than the heart, lights and liver?"
                                                                  (93.9)

The way I read it is that Victoria -- by her love for Goodfellow and wish to
protect him, by being here talking to Porpy now, by just knowing that they
are both really spies -- is placing Porpy in even greater danger. Porpy's
rhetorical questions seem to indicate that Sir Alastair has also been
blundering ever onward into dire peril in the looming "Situation" himself,
and that Porpy is exasperated by how close his own sense of "duty" (to Sir
Alastair, and now to Victoria) is taking him towards his own death.

The conversation between the two is lifted almost per se from the earlier
short story ('Under the Rose'), but there is much more subsidiary detail
provided by the *omniscient* narrator there. There are changes, however:
Varkumian enters and joins Porpy *after* he and Victoria have spoken, and
Victoria excuses herself then; and the final tableau where Porpy is shot
occurs near the Sphinx rather than at the opera.

I guess I'm getting the feeling that Porpy is himself in love with Victoria
more from the earlier short story than from the chapter in the novel: it's
very difficult to distance the one from the other (tho' somewhat necessary
imo). But whether or not Porpy's sense of loyalty towards Victoria is simply
foolish (i.e. because he loves her) or is actually part of his brief (i.e
being the daughter of the peer of the realm he has been assigned to protect
his job actually extends to protecting her as well), this seems to me to be
the reason that he takes a bullet which was actually meant for Goodfellow.

best

----------
>From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: V (Ch 3) vii
>Date: Mon, Dec 11, 2000, 11:31 PM
>

> Yes, seems to me Victoria as mistress is only the understandable but mistaken
> speculation of one of one of the observers--don't  remember which one at the
> moment. However what I was also thinking in reading the bierhalle scene was
that
> just moments before Hanne sees Victoria and Porpentine together she had seen
> Porpentine and Varkunian (the pimp) conspiring about something. Are we to read
> anything into this V correspondence? Are we led to ponder at this point
whether
> V is some kind of reality rather than a mere figment. In other words was an
> essential V present at both sightings (by Hanne). Was Victoria there all the
> time, as would have been Vaukunian? Wonder if anyone else was struck by the
two
> Vs. I better go back and read the scene one more time  May be misremembering
> again.