Atdtda26: Partying as Venice sinks, 743-744

[Paul Nightingale]

At first Foley Walker flatters Scarsdale Vibe’s sense of self-importance:
“Guess that makes you American royalty”. By the end of the section, however,
he has given another indication that he is less than loyal/servile: “Just
happy that they didn’t get you”, recalling his own contemplation of murder
on 726. Here, the section ends on an ambiguous note: “If Scarsdale heard an
emphasis on ‘they’ he gave no indication” (744). Cf. his alert response on
724: “... but what happened to ‘we’ ...”. Hence his response to the vision
of Foley dancing: “Later Scarsdale was astonished to see Foley out carousing
...” etc (744). One might think of him in Gottingen asking Kit about
“entertainment in this town” (621); and he offers an image of vitality, one
that Scarsdale perhaps finds alien(ating).

In the dining room, relations are normalised, waiters managing to maintain a
servile façade as “the building [settles] into the primeval Venetian ooze
beneath” (744). Business as usual, then. Outside, perhaps taken from his
comfort zone in search of Foley, his movement reversing the earlier “...
deliberate way back into the shelter of the lighted and melodious palazzo”
(743), Scarsdale is confronted by another “local maniac” (744) as
firecrackers recall the earlier gunfire. Scarsdale’s incomprehension
here--one form of celebration replacing another--might be juxtaposed to his
earlier triumphalism (743).