Atdtda27: Usnthem, 758

[Paul Nightingale]

Finally Halfcourt and Prokladka together, the latter “brimming with
collegial tears” as they perform common cause. Bluff and counter-bluff, with
Prokladka’s stance quickly replaced by “a laughter pitched so high and so
uncertain in its dynamics as to bring into doubt his ability to control it”.
Having made an inappropriate move, Halfcourt then retires into an
“inscrutable British sense of humour sort of lapse”. As with the exchange
between Halfcourt and AM-F in the previous section, one performance follows
another. At the end of the previous section, as Prokladka appeared, “[a]
glance, controllable by neither, pulsed between him and [AM-F]”: this
suggests dealings of some kind, and one might infer that the glance has
indeed registered with Halfcourt, provoking his performance here. His
opening speech is a more succinct overview that we have come to expect, an
attempt to establish some kind of operative role-identity. By way of
response, Prokladka draws a distinction between Russian and English, even as
he argues that this is something they have in common.

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Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.9/1417 - Release Date: 06/05/2008
08:07