ATDTDA (18): No please, not now, 498-499

[Paul Nightingale]

>From blonde sex to an aggrieved Cyprian, Yashmeen in the interim having
decided to leave for Gottingen and Hilbert's "obsessiveness" (499).
Appropriately enough, Cyprian equates her longing to his own ("I know
nothing about Riemann, but I do at least understand obsessiveness"); and her
departure does echo his own summer trip (an escape from Knightsbridge, "to
everyone's mutual relief", 497) to Berlin. She recognises her marginalised
position ("... sent here, most of us, aren't we really, to stay out of the
way, not be a bother ...", 499); but he is, it seems, incapable of offering
any comparable insight. 

The scene ends with him unable to "take his eyes from the long, compelling
curve of her bared neck". Modigliani or Riemann?

Earlier, she had to look away to turn him on, "direct her own [gaze] to
other matters" (493), precisely what she is doing now: "... he still would
not take his eyes from ..." and "... it was unmistakably desire" (499). At
the end, his obsession matches her own, "of rather a specialised sort".