Atdtda29: Knowing one's place, 826-831

[Paul Nightingale]

[825.40-826.1-3] "You are perspiring, girl. What have you been up to?

Jacintha had her hands behind her back and her head bowed, a proper little
captive. Through her translucent dress the company could see every fine
movement of her limbs, and were duly entertained.


Entertainment effectively ending the world-be learned discussion that has
taken up most of 825.

A proper little Proustian reference? Perhaps. See subsequently the return of
a figure now identified, for the first time, as Max Klautsch. Perhaps this
identification/naming goes with the impression he now makes, naming with the
absence of a mask ...


[831.18-20] At closer range he noticed a fatal unevenness in the length of
Klautsch's mustache, fraying at coat and trouser cuffs, cigarette burns and
the depredations of moths as well as more earthbound pests.


And so to...


[831.29-32] The eyes remained purposeful as a serpent's, recalling
unavoidably chastisements Cyprian had undergone at the hands of this
droning, seedy pub bore, some of which he had actually found, at the time,
erotic.


That "at closer range", of course--cf. the "inevitability to arrival by
water" passage on 821.