ATDTDA (15): Squealing is good for you, 420-422 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

Before the meeting we’re told that Alonzo is “[e]xempt ... from the
unannounced punishments it was the lot of the squealed-upon to undergo
literally at any moment on the old Commandment’s whim” (421). A few lines
down we’re introduced to his “kindly seamed face”. As he talks we’re made
aware of the “nonregulation” sport, “screams delayed by distance” etc (422).
Characterisation here is elusive: “... to appearance the slow and amiable
smile of the drug habitué, but in fact an all but nihilistic dismissal of
whatever the world might present him” (421). So: “to appearance” (who makes
the attempted reading here, Alonzo, anyone who might happen to see him?) is
juxtaposed to “in fact” (which of course requires the authority to make such
a declaration). One might suppose “the drug habitué” increasingly impervious
to “whatever the world might present him”; so the distinction made here
involves intent. Hence: “... bodies had begun, actually, to fall, and
screams delayed by distance to float at last up from the green fields and
through the Commandant’s window to accompany his long recitation, punctuated
with tuneful quotations on his personal gold-plated IG Mundharfwerke” (422),
one soundtrack juxtaposed to another, extracurricular ‘sport’ and (possibly)
improvised musical inserts. The incongruity here (and the Commandant is of
course responsible for/author of both soundtracks) is matched by the
“desktop chaotically littered with books, papers, and (embarrassingly)
outright refuse ...” etc. Such chaos is a series of competing narratives, a
record of the Commandant’s actions/activities; but one that refuses to order
itself and erase contradiction, thereby indicating a single narrating
presence. And who, exactly, is embarrassed here? Alonzo, anyone who might
happen to see the desktop? And is this embarrassment on behalf of the
Commandant, who is presumably incapable of any such feeling? Questions that
cannot be answered.