AtDTDA (12) all-but-impenetrable signs and codes 339

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

After "Red hair! Freckles, Audition enough O. K.!", we are treated to:

          Which is how Dally found her way into the white-slave 
          simulation industry and the tunnels of Chinatown, 
          began to learn some of the all-but-impenetrable signs 
          and codes, a region of life witheld, a secret life of citys 
          that those gypsy years with Merle had always denied her. . . .

Dally regards her 'gypsy years with Merle' as being stuck out in the boonies,
but there's the undeniable occult nature of this gypsy life with Merle, what 
with his immersion in Alchemy and old Magic, and this sort of training leads 
to a predisposition to be alert in the presence of 'all-but-impenetrable signs 
and codes'. There's a tendency for Our Beloved Author to scatter these sigils 
and ciphers hither and yon, like a Jersey trash depository strewn with body 
parts and and other varietys of red herring. Note, right in the center of the 
book:
         
          What better place for the keepers of the seals and codes 
          to convene? 542

Seals and codes and ciphers and sigils and suchlike signs take up a great 
deal of space in "Against the Day". I'm not sure where it's supposed to lead, 
but Kit and Dally have their fates interlocked, and this little echo, this 
reminder of the places for seals and codes and other sub-rosa forms of 
communication within the novel is emphasized in this repetition and pairing.
 
That repetition/variation of:

          A visitor from quite far away might almost have 
          imagined two separate species having 
          to do, one with the other . . . 337

          giving over all the impression of a Visitor 
          from very far away indeed.
          M & D, 266.

. . . . produces an "alien" quality, underscoring the exaggerated Xenophopia 
on display in this "White Slavery as Entertainment Industry" sequence. But
it also denotes the vast gap between male and female at the time:

          . . . .crowded with men in black suits and stark white high 
          collars, in the tangible glare of noontide that came pushing 
          uptown, striking tall highlights from shiny top hats, projecting 
          shadows that looked almost solid . . . . The women by contrast 
          were rigged out in lighter colors, ruffles, contrasting lapels, hats 
          of velvet or straw full of artificial flowers and feathers and 
          ribbons, broad angled brims throwing faces into girlish 
          penumbras as becoming as paint and powder. 337

This Eros/Thanatos pairing is part of the background noise---the foley,
as it were, of the novel:

          . . . . understood that some reverse process had gone on, 
          not leavening but condensing to this stone gravity. 336

          . . . .shadows that looked almost solid. . . . 337

          . . . .watching shadows of birds move across sunlit walls. . . . 337

. . . .like the photographic concept of contre-jour, a shadow in the middle of a 
blaze. And the notion of light descending into matter.