Atdtda28: Paralyzed for days, 783

[Paul Nightingale]

Action commences, finally, with drumming; although this activity is
accompanied by Kit's near paralysis. Given that the drummer(s) cannot be
identified, this passage offers "the taiga inscrutable and vast" as author,
or perhaps collective author. For the first time Kit is associated with "the
Event", the drumming a form of representation: "... he thought he heard
something familiar in it", this sense-making a way out of
paralysis/inactivity. He thinks of Agdy; and the Event has already passed
into folklore. This corroborates the view offered by Pavel Sergeivitch on
780, and Kit/Prance are associated with "the people who live down there".

If science cannot confine the Event with explanation, or the kind of
explanation that science/scientists will permit, it would appear that
shamanism can. Cf. Prance's rant in the previous section (782-783) and his
dismissal of shamanism on 776.