Atdtda30: I can, but I'm notsure I want to, 836-838

[Paul Nightingale]

The continued absence of agency and a broken leg. Cyprian finds purpose in
supporting Danilo. The "nameless black mountain" is as much a threat,
according to Danilo, as gunfire: "the terrain open[s] everywhere into
ravines whose walls [drop] straight down". Having arrived here, then, they
have no obvious exit: "Neither [knows] the way down ..." etc. Cyprian's fall
"into an embrace that [does] not desire him as he [becomes] only another
part of the mechanical realm" (837) indicates a loss of status; and Danilo
is nowhere to be found. Down the page, Danilo has become "a drenched and
broken animal presence".

We might recall the earlier exchange on 833, Danilo telling Cyprian to
forget Bevis, while Cyprian insists on the script: "We're both supposed to
bring you out". Earlier still, before Bevis' disappearance: "We're supposed
to bring you out" (828). Here, Danilo says: "You must bring me out" (837).
On 829 Bevis had insisted they are veterans of the rescue game, Cyprian
finding it difficult on that occasion to maintain the pretence. On 837 he
"consider[s] praying", at which point Danilo identifies himself, or his
nearby presence, by identifying Cyprian: the latter "move[s] towards the
voice", one that continues to signify the "drenched and broken animal
presence he [cannot] see". By the end of the section, "[i]f they ever
stopped moving, they would freeze" etc (838). Danilo ("unaccountably")
disappears, or seems to; calling to him, Cyprian "wishe[s], terribly, for no
answer", so Danilo must continue, repetitively, to identify both himself and
Cyprian, resisting "the absolute inertia of a corpse".

On 837, confronting Danilo's broken leg, something of an obstacle, Cyprian
resorts to reminiscence: "Long ago, in rented rooms ..." etc. Down the page
this reminiscence continues: "Hands tuned to the musculature of limbs ..."
etc. Cf. Cyprian and Ratty, the latter "in full gaze now" on 810. Here, the
"ancient Mauser", identified for the first time, is given a purpose. On 835
Danilo says he has "only two clips for" the "little Portuguese army .32
Savage", thereby declaring it useless; the Mauser now appears from nowhere,
the scene in "an empty house back down the mountainside" (837) having been
edited out. So history of a kind, in the form of separate flashbacks,
asserts itself here. On 835, modernity in the form of "railways and
timetables ... not to mention European time as it usually passed, ceased to
be any part of their day". The disappearance of time is accompanied by
darkness, the absence of light: the current section begins "on a nameless
black mountainside" (836) and concludes with an ironic reference to
"domestic pleasantries" (838).