ATDDTA (6): An all-but-religious way, 179-182

[Paul Nightingale]

Bekah writes:

> I suspect it is supposed to be the Kid.  They meet in the Anarchist
> saloon very shortly after Lew has told Nate about his doubts.
> (179-181)
> 

It remains, of course, impossible to say, which I think is supposed to be
the point: anyone 'could' be the Kid. Everything we know is filtered, a
result of speech or supposition of whatever kind.

At the chapter's opening: "It did not take him long to convince himself that
the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range ..." etc
(171).

The Kid is a figure of folklore: his "family had supposedly come over as
refugees from Germany ..." (171).

Discussing Butch Cassidy's gang, which no one can ever be sure about either:
"[I]t was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only
aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change." (172)

The paranoia that attends not knowing: "The search for the mysterious
dynamiter had in its relentlessness begun to affect families entirely
unconnected with the case ..." (174), leading to the arrest of Burke's
brother.

After Nate's visit, Lew is drunk when he meets the stranger in the
Anarchists' saloon, where he "had fallen into the habit of dropping in for a
sociable beer ... and little by little found himself being seduced in a
political ... way" (179). Hence he might well be acquainted with the
"customer giving him one of those unfinished-business looks" (181). They
have an ongoing conversation about, well, politics. Being "in an
experimental frame of mind [Lew] decided to go ahead on the assumption that
he was [ie the Kid]".

This unnamed character is European, if not German (as, I suppose, is Herman,
182), which explains the references to "back where I've been" (181). The
novel has established the prevailing view that anyone of (working-class)
European descent 'must' be a murderous anarchist bastard.

The time-scale is suitably vague here. He meets the Kid-a-like the evening
after his meeting with Nate; so a whole day has gone by, not minutes.
Subsequently, there is little to tell us how long the Cyclomite habit
continues. Just before the explosion, Lew's "dumb luck" (184) refers, I
think, to his ongoing quest for knowledge: now he is no longer ("in effect")
on the case, something has happened. At the beginning of this particular
section Nate appears to "[figure] nothing had changed, regional office on
the job, all serene" (182). It seems he still expects to hear from Lew: "But
now there might as well be hired roughnecks with wire-cutters up on every
pole in the thousand miles between them, for all Nate was ever going to find
out from Lew anymore."

This might, of course, be a performance for the benefit of clients who need
the business-as-usual message. However, the new paragraph begins: "It was
about then that what Lew came to regard as his Shameful Habit began."
Visiting "the pleasant little desert oasis of Los Fatzos" he still seems to
be on the case, or going through the motions, following up a lead. Then the
habit kicks in, the strange behaviour that ensues being what takes him ("in
effect") off the case (notwithstanding the use of "quitting the case", 184).
It would be a little far-fetched, I think, to conclude that Dr Oyswharf is
in on the conspiracy to 'get rid of' Lew!