ATDTDA (19): Kind of bland, 544-545

[Paul Nightingale]

Another fast-forward when Kit next sees Pleiade: "It would not occur to him
until much later ..." etc. He asks where she was "the other night" and she
tells him to buy her a drink. The Gentleman's Code has been restored, then,
so she doesn't expect a rekening. The "culte de la mayonnaise" invokes
nationalism, a desire for a coherent national identity, in juxtaposition
(and sharp contrast) to the way the nihilists earlier dismissed "little
Belgium" as "a pawn" (543). They make a date at the Mayonnaise Works, "where
[he will] perhaps understand things it is given only to a few to know"
(545). She promises enlightenment: he will be included among the "few". If
the Mayonnaise Works, and by extension "la culte de la mayonnaise", promise
stable identity (ie for Belgians collectively) within an imagined community,
then to invoke the idea of an elite (which is what "only a few" amounts to)
constructs inclusion/exclusion.

Moreover, Kit, given his travails recently, has anything but a stable
identity. And one might note the 'joke' he makes, automatically, when
Pleiade asks him what he knows of La Mayonnaise: "He shrugged. 'Maybe up to
the part that goes ...'" etc. He signals an ignorance that her promise can
address.

Kit reminds Root that he doesn't trust Pleiade, although he intends to keep
their date. And then: ". if you never see me again ." perhaps takes us back
to the Stupendica's engine room.