ATDTDA (21): A man's pretty much obliged, 597-601

[Paul Nightingale]

The tables are turned on Yashmeen when she finds herself paired-up, so to
speak, with “the statue of the little goose-girl”. Humfried opens the
section by observing that the event/act “may often be only a pretext for the
posing and solution of some narrative puzzle”; he speaks of “a crime ...
often of the gravest sort” in order to deny that justice be at all,
necessarily, part of the equation.

This speech serves as a kind of epigraph to the rest of the section, and
Humfried remains outside of the action, a commentator of sorts; although his
commentary (“He is slightly ... somewhere else”), while referencing Gunther,
seems to apply just as much to himself.

The event/pretext in question is Yashmeen overhearing what Gunther has told
Heinrich. What ensues is farcical: cf. the scene in Ostend (561). Such
narratives are built on repetition, of course; and the game Yashmeen plays
with the duelling society cap (599) is reminiscent of the fort-da game
described by Freud. Ultimately, Gunther decides that Kit has indeed
committed an offence, one that means they should duel. As stated, the
offence seems to be against himself and Yashmeen also (“You have insulted
me, you have insulted my fiancee ...”); but it concerns ownership of her,
the policing of her movements. Concerned with ritual, Gunther can ignore
what she says (“I’m not your fiancée ...”) in order to proceed through
pre-determined stages: “... as challenged party you shall have the choice of
weapons ...” etc.

Gunther then compares the honourable European system of duelling to an
American gunfight: cf. the scene between Willis and Jimmy Drop “in classic
throwdown posture” (309-310). The point of duelling is to be left with an
‘inscription’, a form of writing, a signature, so that a man may then bear
for all to see evidence of his personal bravery” (600). Each incidence will
return the participants to a mythical original. Such a detailed exposition
is reduced, by Kit, to “that ... on your face, looks like a Mexican tilde”
(another kind of ‘inscription’, of course). Duelling, then, is another
“pretext”; and Kit's mockery of Gunther undermines the ritual all the more.
The dispute, ostensibly over Yashmeen, soon moves on to mathematics, and
errors of calculation, all of which feature as a return of the repressed,
perhaps. By the end of the section, the duel itself has been forgotten; and
Yashmeen has wandered off with a male equivalent of Wren (601). The
goose-girl has been long forgotten, signifier giving way to signifier
endlessly.