AtDTDA: (8) Mrs. Piper

[Monte Davis]

I was revisiting some seance and seance-like scenes in earlier Pynchon 
in light (mamluk-lamp-light) of this one. Notice the multiple 
distancing:  we do not witness this seance itself. We don't even get the 
medium's version of it

"It was something that had come out during the séance tonight, none of 
which Madame Eskimoff had any direct memory of..."

Turn the lights up, and what we have here is:

1) Eskimoff & Lew & the Cohen reconstructing/interpreting
2) a "third voice" translation of
3)... somebody... speaking through a dead Turk named Mahmoud
4)  who is using Eskimoff's voice...
5) via an indistinct wax-cylinder recording, which ends with a burst of 
noise and a Turkish woman's lament...

And hey presto, we wind up with: "Not always decipherable," aded the 
Cohen, "but in this case Eastern-Questionable, beyond a doubt..."

Actionable intelligence, fer shure. Sign me up for 600+ pages of covert 
action; Renfrew/Werfner are crazy, but out folks here are on the case.

Face it, this intel makes the Fall 2002 Follies (holding firm to the 
Tenets of our Feith) seem like sweet reason itself. And yet P  pulls us 
along with the prosaic detail -- the mundane specificity of the 
negotiation is a hoot:

"He [Mahmoud] was responding as best he could to Clive Crouchmas's 
detailed inquiries as to per-kilometer guarantees for various branches 
and extensions of the Smyrna-Casaba line."

Can't you hear the calculator clicking? Mmmm, due diligence through the 
Veil of Unknowing. I 
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