Atdtda23: Quizzical looks, 664-667

[Paul Nightingale]

As Yashmeen rejoins the TWIT Kit has "tagged along": the same phrase was
used to describe his attachment to Umeki on 557. Here it has added weight
given the way the previous section unfolded, Kit very much a bystander.
Yashmeen's description of the podpol'niki emphasises their deracination.
Here, in the sanatorium, "[t]hey had to wander around for twenty minutes
..." etc (664). Reef's appearance indicates that he has gone back to doing
as Stray described to Frank on 645, "drift[ing] around the sanatoriums ..."
etc. His brotherly greeting ("... don't say my name", 664) indicates
circumspection, a denial of identity, a performer's sensitivity to being
observed.

The "folly" that Reef cannot avoid is initially described in terms that
recall the "farce" taking place in Kit's hotel in Ostend (561). The chain
reaction that Kit sets in motion upon seeing Piet Woevre is "the everyday
texture of people's lives". Here, Reef is once bitten twice shy, "tr[ying]
not to flinch" when Mouffette approaches him (667).  The section has opened
with Reef and Kit briefly updating each other: "Some night we'll stay up all
night ..." etc (665); and then the narrative shifts to Reef's relations with
Ruperta and Mouffette. This much is designed for the reader; implicitly, the
story is not part of anything Reef has said to Kit. The scene with Kit ends
with Reef's comment on the waiter's "quizzical over-the-shoulder second
look"; the section as a whole will then end with "funny looks from the
staff", just after the narrator has addressed the reader (bottom of 666).
Reef's appearance, indeed his presence, is based on the fact that he is
working the sanatorium and its guests; by the end of the section he has
retired into a private narrative, one he presumably finds embarrassing.