Atdtda24: Good job your ticket's to Kashgar, 673-677

[Paul Nightingale]

The section opens with a dream, so the reader’s expectations are of a
narrative that perhaps defies realism. Hence: “... the cards ... somehow are
numbers ...” etc. A social gathering that both includes and excludes Webb.
>From Kit’s pov, roles are reversed, of course, given his own ambiguous
standing in the Traverse clan. The adult mathematician Kit imposes meaning,
but is instantaneously transformed into a child, evidently to confirm his
own presence there.

As he wakens the dream-cards are transformed (the text’s own “coalesced”,
perhaps, 674) into “guests” who are “shelved, numbered, irrelevant”. Kit
“think[s] he [is] somehow in jail”, another jump-cut of sorts, although he
doesn’t consider his post-Mickifest collision with Willi Dingkopf (43.4,
623ff). On that occasion, mid-Ch43, he had just been told by Yashmeen that
he might meet Mme E (617); currently, he is emerging from the séance that
transformed Reef into Webb (672-673).

Another scene revisited is his departure from home, seen off by Mayva on
106. Here, he recalls that moment, “Mayva, the dwindling, resolute figure at
the depot ...” etc (675). His “rich-kid life” (674) has invoked the
alternative provenance, one that suppresses the family ties highlighted at
the outset, hence the possibility that he might be “one of Yashmeen’s holy
wanderers” (675). However, Gottingen is “still all on the Vibe ticket” and
“no longer a refuge”. Cf. Yashmeen’s decision to leave Cambridge on 498,
“[having taken] refuge more and more in the Zeta-function problem ...” etc.
Here, similarly, “Kit ha[s] sold himself a bill of goods” regarding
Gottingen as some kind of salvation (675). Subsequently, Yashmeen will claim
to be envious of his “recourse” (676).

Webb’s ‘appearance’ at the séance, then, has provoked a revisionist outburst
that takes him back to the moment the train took him away from his family,
before the chapter ends with “tearless [adieu]” (677). Finally becoming “the
one son Webb could believe in” (674), “dream[ing] of a bullet en route to
the heart of an enemy ...” etc (675), Kit has come to reconsider his role as
son number three. The dream returned him to childhood; here, he can assert
himself after Yashmeen tells him he is, for the TWIT, hardly indispensible
(676). Earlier, Reef had mocked him (669), as Frank had been incredulous at
Gunther’s description of the almost-duel (637). Here, he repositions himself
as Reef’s necessary assistant (676); mathematics has failed him (675).