VV(18): An Algerian-looking facteur ...

[Dave Monroe]

"She hurried through the station behind an Algerian-looking facteur who 
carried her one embroidered bag lightly on his shoulder, who smiled and 
joked with customs officials being driven slowly to frenzy by a beseeching 
mob of English tourists." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 393)

"Facteur" I'm reading as more-or-less equivalent to a (perhaps freelance, 
here) American Redcap, i.e., a train station porter, a luggage-handler for 
hire, whatever, though the online translations I managed were "factor" (as 
in "rhesus"), "maker" (as in facteur d'orgues, "organ maker"), and, 
intriguingly (and not altogether inappropriately, given that "bag ... on his 
shoulder"), "postman."  Note hint not only of that French Anglophobia ("a 
beseeching mob of English tourists," the "customs officials being driven 
slowly to frenzy" by them), but also of French colonialism 
("Algerian-looking," and recall that song "Learned from a para on French 
leave from the fighting in Algeria" [p. 18], not to mention that Pynchon is 
publishing his novel just as American involvement in the former French 
Indochine is escalating) ...
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