VV (19) Stencil and Fausto

[Samuel Moyer]

"Stencil has seen your confession to Paola."

"Then you know," Maijstral said, "I only made it into this world through the
good offices of one Stencil."

Stencil hung his head.  "It may have been his father."

"Making us brothers." (444)


Going back to the confession (318-9):

Now there is your grandmother, child, who also comes into this briefly.
Carla Maijstral: she died as you know last March, outliving my father by
three years.....

Womb of rock.  What subterranean confessions we wandered into!  Carla must
have told him at some point the circumstances surrounding his birth.  It had
been near the time of the June Disturbances, in which old Maijstral was
involved.  Precisely how never came clear.  But deeply enough to alienate
Carla both from him and from herself.  Enough so that one night we both
........ The boy Fausto could only gather from listening in to her evening
prayers that it was an Englishman; a mysterious being named Stencil.

Off to the Epilogue: 1919 for the rest of this story (well not the June
Disturbances... we can do that later, but of the elder Stencil and Carla)

Page 482:
Stencil had supper in his room.  He'd drawn no more than a few times on his
pipe when there was a timid knock.

"Oh, come. Come."
A girl, obviously pregnant, who stood, only watching him.
"Do you speak English, then."
"I do.  I am Carla Maijstral."  She remained erect, shoulderblades and
buttocks touching the door.
"He will be killed, or hurt," she said.  "In wartime a woman must expect to
lose her husband. But now there is peace."
etc....


Obviously Fausto has misunderstood his mother.  His father is not Sydney
Stencil at all... but by Sydney's letting go of his spy (elder Maijstral),
Carla doesn't commit suicide.  Why she is praying for Sydney all those years
later within earshot of Fausto, I don't know, but he got the wrong
impression.

Page 483 Still Carla talking to S. Stencil:
"My father - " curious he'd not caught that flickering edge of hysteria in
her voice until now - "when I was only five also began to stay away from
home.  I never found out why.  But it killed my mother.  I will not wait for
it to kill me."
Threatening suicide?  (Sydney is considering- then goes on to agree to
release the spy, etc...)


Something that I can't figure out at the moment: Who gives us this Epilogue?
It is not H. Stencil is it?  I have more problems with the narrators of this
novel than... well, anyone want to tell me?  Is it the same narrator who
gives us Chapter one, etc.?

I sort of think that we have one narrator, but that the narrator includes
all these Stencilizations, which are historical (so to speak).  But not this
one, right?

Ok, assuming Stencil doesn't have the info from the Epilogue, then he might
have believed, as Fausto did, that they might be brothers.  But Stencil
never does agree.  In fact, if Stencil does tell the Epilogue, then it is
obvious he did know what his fathers role was.

Anyway, someone set me straight on this.

Cheers,
Sam