ATDTDA (9): Landmarks and anti-landmarks, 248-250

[Paul Nightingale]

More information on the Sfinciuno Itinerary, a strange
map that identifies “not only landmarks but
anti-landmarks”. Discursively, Prof Svegli describes
“two distinct versions of ‘Asia’ out there, one an
object of political struggle among the powers of the
Earth—the other a timeless faith by whose terms all
such earthly struggle is illusion” (249). What
matters, then, is who has the power to make
epistemological judgements; and the Prof concludes
that “maps begin as dreams, pass through a finite life
in the world, and resume as dreams again” (250). A map
must be brought (or dreamed) into being; that is to
say, it has to be imagined before it can be described
and doesn't simply record, or acknowledge, an external
reality. It will then ‘die’ but continue to enjoy a
post-death existence.

On the latter point one thinks of the post-death
existence of Webb, indeed of the way Reef continues to
think of him as alive: “... that’s how it felt anyway,
like his father was still alive ...” (213). Or: “...
seeking agreement or clarification from Webb’s blank
eyes or the rictus of what would soon be a skull’s
mouth”. Or even: “... more talk than he’d ever had
with Webb alive, whistled over by the ghosts of
Aztlan, entering a passage of austerity and
discipline, as if undergoing down here in the world
Webb’s change of status wherever he was now ...” (both
214). Going further back, we recall that Webb
identified, as an epistemological problem for the
bomber, the simple fact that anyone could use “nitro,
the medium of truth ... to tell their lies with” (85).

The Prof insists that “[t]he terrain is quite real,
quite of this world”; but the map “reveals worlds
which are set to the side of the one we have taken,
until now, to be the only world given us” (249). It
has to be decoded, or “redeemed from the invisible
with the aid of one particular configuration of lenses
and mirrors”. Only “the cartographer and the otherwise
insane artisans who produced it, plus the inevitable
heirs and assigns” have the ability to do so. Here,
one might think of Lew’s ability to decode the blurred
photo of the GB of H (240-241). In the photo, the
“shadowy figure” is put into context by “landmarks”:
“... in white with a cricketer’s bag, posed against
one of those noteworthy arrays of cloud the Headingley
ground was known for”. Renfrew’s response (“[s]lyly
nodding as if to himself”, 241) indicates that he
thinks Lew has revealed more of himself than of the
identity of the “shadowy figure”.