Atdtda24: I sure don't know what to believe, 667-673

[Paul Nightingale]

Yashmeen’s take on Reef: Kit’s “somehow aged or gravely assaulted double”
invokes family resemblance and physical decline, perhaps a mark of the
brothers’ differing lifestyles. Ruperta’s take on Yashmeen: Kit’s “little
wog” again invokes family background, but here the insult is designed to
place Yashmeen as inferior to Ruperta herself. Jealous, she “can’t believe
they even let persons like that in the door here”; and then echoes/reframes
Yashmeen’s judgement, referring to Kit as “rather a fresh face”. The reader
of course is aware that Reef has so recently ‘betrayed’ Ruperta with
Mouffette, as indeed Ruperta initially betrayed Rodolfo with Reef (657).
Having noted that Yashmeen is “exceptionally radiant” (668), Kit then has
his own moment of jealousy, recalling Gunther.

Subsequently, alone with Reef, Kit hears news of his “ol’ benefactor
Scarsdale Vibe” (669). This adds to the number of patriarchal figures in
play, with Reef concluding: “Fate is handing this one right to us ...”.
Hence Kit is returned firmly to the Traverse family and its history: his
resemblance to Reef turned into duty, he has an opportunity to turn thought
to action. Here, he notes Reef is “all passion and no plan”: the man of
action comes to his brother as a man of words alone. Hence: “Reef, we, um,
better think this one through?” (670) Subsequently, for Reef, Kit seems to
have lost his “hardcased man of science” image.

Characters are thereby misrepresented, and at the séance there is again a
mismatch between signifier (“[t]he voice emerging from the darkly painted
lips of Madame Eskimoff”, 671) and signified, Webb himself: “They listened
for the stogie-smoker’s hoarseness ...” etc. The ‘father’ that Mme E offers
them is unrecognisable, an image that refuses to return them to what they
think they already know, just as their actions have rendered each brother
unrecognisable to the other.

Representing the sceptical reader, Reef (“it’s just a con game,” 671) is the
means by which the text confounds such rationalist tendencies: here, Kit
becomes a reliable source, one the reader—if not his brother—can depend on
(eg, “Kit knew for a fact that Reef was tone-deaf ...” etc, 672). And then,
towards the end of the section: “It was him, Reef ...” etc (673).