ATDDTA(10) The Sacrifice Card [272:16-27]

[Keith]

With just the two of them now, Deuce went into a period of no sleep  
or too little. Kept waking up all through the night. Woke once one  
midnight with no sources of light in the sky, some malodorous evil  
heap of slag from the processing of moon-chaste silver their night's  
bed, to see close beside him a luminous face suspended above where  
her own would have to be, would have to, for this spectre floated  
high, too high, off the ground, or where the ground was supposed to  
be. Nor was it exactly her face either. Because it did not reflect  
light, as from skies or hearthsides, but emitted its own, was marked  
by that clear sense of resource being recklessly spent, with nothing  
gotten back---an expression, you'd say, of sacrifice. Deuce didn't  
like that, didn't want sacrifices, for they were never in his plans,  
nor in any cards he knew how to play. [272:16-27]

In light of:

"Sloat now thinks Deuce must be "haunted by what he did" (266). Well,  
seeing Lake in the Nonpareil, Deuce has a Macbeth moment, seeing the  
ghost of Webb in Lake's features (262).' (Nightingale)

Is it too much of a stretch to see this passage as a description of  
Deuce seeing a vision of Webb's corpse, hanging by its foot from the  
adobe tower in Jeshimon, in the form of the tarot's Hanging Man,  
which is characterized by just such an image including a numinous  
shining face, and carries the meaning of self- 
sacrifice.......especially considering the reference "nor in any  
cards he knew how to play."

http://tinyurl.com/yof9ah

------------------------------------------------

"some malodorous evil heap of slag from the processing of moon-chaste  
silver their night's bed"

Are they sleeping on a slag-heap?

------------------------------------------------

The slag-heap spectre also hearkens back to Jasper's entry re: [240:3-5]

"Slowly, through the impure fen-light, the Professor's face became  
distinct, exhibiting a brightness... no, a denial of ordinary  
vision... a smile that would never break forth from any interior  
cordiality."

fen-light: Swamp water reflecting moonlight, or -- otherwise -- will- 
o'-the-wisp, /ignes fatui/, "fool's fire", Jack o' lantern, Corpse  
Fire: "the ghostly lights sometimes seen at night or twilight that  
hover over damp ground in still air -- often over bogs. It looks like  
a flickering lamp, and is sometimes said to recede if approached."

and ahead to the glow of Telluride:

[281:4-7] "through sunset and into the uncertainties of night. The  
high-country darkness, with little to break it but starlight off the  
flow of some creek or a fugitive lamp or hearth up in a miner's  
cabin, soon gave way to an unholy radiance ahead."

------------------------------------------------

So many references to light and its sources, from reflected to self- 
emitted, natural to human-made, often with ominous undertones.