Atdtda [4]: What Kit knows, 99-104 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

Foley Walker's seduction immediately gives Kit access to Foley's back-story.
Everything does connect, and we have already been told that Tesla's World
System "uses the planet as an element in a gigantic resonant circuit" (33);
similarly, Kit has access to "the electricians' grapevine" (99). We should
hardly be surprised that Foley decides to tell all. If this is "a chore
growing, with the years, ever more wearying" (100), it simply underlines his
place in the scheme of things, part of the bureaucracy that serves Wealth.
He is doomed to repeat, ever in search of the original, unrecoverable moment
(just as, eg, Veikko reads to recover the moment he first received the
postcard, 84).

Foley explains why he can say he is Scarsdale Vibe; from being a
"substitute" (100) (a signifier for the absent signified, Wealth) he becomes
a kind of guardian angel. His "voices" facilitate a "critical acceleration
in the growth of the legendary Vibe fortune" (101); and Foley ends up
thinking for Vibe, who can no longer make a move independently.

Hence, Foley can say he is "more Scarsdale Vibe than Scarsdale Vibe himself"
(102). Kit, however, remains doubtful: his state of innocence means he still
believes in "Scarsdale Vibe his mighty self" (100). Receiving the money the
following day he "took it as a message from perhaps farther beyond where
it'd actually come from" (103). Another religious experience, another key
moment ("assaulted all at once by a yearning"): he is "unaccountably, ready
to sign up with Foley's plan for his life". This version of events is given
retrospectively ("or that's how he'd think of it later"); yet hindsight
makes his view no more perspicuous: ever elusive, his readiness to sign
cannot be accounted for, or turned into words.

Foley describes the deal as "paid conscription"; as he went to war, so will
Kit "hav[e] to learn all that college stuff". Perhaps he even sees Kit as a
younger self, signing up to a deal: "us below". And perhaps "[e]ternal
youth" (104) is enjoyed here by Foley himself seeing Kit replicate his own
actions from 40-ish years earlier. The section ends with Tesla also
"recall[ing]" what it was like "at [Kit's] age". Foley might be a seducer;
he is also a father-figure of sorts. Tesla too: if he thinks of what it was
like for him at Kit's age, it might be tempting for Kit to think ahead to
Tesla's age. If Foley can stand in for Vibe, both Foley and Tesla can stand
in for Webb; and Kit follows them as he refuses to follow Webb.