Atdtda30: The demands of some predator, 840-841

[Paul Nightingale]

On 835, "... all question of alloyed steel, geometric purity of gauge,
railways and timetables and the greater network, not to mention European
time as it usually passed, ceased to be any part of their day". With the new
section on 840, there is a return to "steel and parallel tracks"
facilitating troop movements. Previously, "... the cold hitting [Cyprian]
like a street-brute indifferent to anything he might have appealed with"
(837); here, "Austrian regular army swarming at the frontiers, stopping
everyone, with no indulgence shown English tourists" (840).

In these pages, Cyprian's search for a role, or even identity, resembles
Kit's progression having left America (510, passim). This search has been a
feature of his relationship with Danilo throughout; here, disguise includes
"play[ing] the part of a civil-service wife ..." etc (840). He becomes the
part, and will subsequently--a fast-forward locating him now somewhere in
the future, looking back--generalise on "the nature of prey", embedding his
particular experience within an all-encompassing theory of resistance,
"insist[ing] upon being difficult".  On 839 there are "emerging in his
character previously unsuspected gifts"; here, "there was little this time
out he had not done before" (840). However, on 839, one such gift is caring
for Danilo, to the extent that "Cyprian had become Danilo's mother". As "a
civil-service wife" (840) Cyprian is ostensibly seeking an absent husband
for whom he "suggest[s] less than complete adoration"; the text does not
elaborate on Danilo's role here.

However: on 841 "Danilo's injury ha[s] reasserted itself", disrupting the
facade. On 840, above the section break, Danilo's new-found mobility = both
progress and the passage of time. Here, progress through enemy lines is
associated with Danilo's injury/despair, not to mention another
insertion/assertion, Cyprian's likely desire for "handsome and muscular
[irregulars]" (841). On 839: "No questions of desire, either between
themselves or for third parties, had ever arisen ..." etc, and so to, on
that occasion, "[t]his first encounter with release from desire".