Atdtda29: Not security but fear, 835-836

[Paul Nightingale]

Solitude for Cyprian and Danilo on foot: "... the autumnal withdrawal of
humans and livestock ... and no sign of unwelcome attention ..." etc. Then,
evidence of human interaction with commerce, the purchase of food juxtaposed
to gunfire before "they [are] swept back into the previous century". This
"previous century" is a state of mind, one consequent on the "progressively
wilder terrain". At the moment of ambush, "with death invisible and
everywhere", Danilo's fast-forward ("... it occurred to Danilo afterward"),
as so often, invokes the future, a later time when the narrative present has
become the past and might be turned into writing.

By the end of the section on 836 we are offered the precision of "[o]ne
evening, just before sunset" after "European time, as it usually passed,
[has] ceased to be any part of their day" (835). Here, the strange light is
accompanied by "a figure, cloaked, solitary, unmoving, not waiting ..." etc
(836). This individual (picked out from the mass described elsewhere in this
section) is alert to "something Cyprian and Danilo [cannot] see", making
them, and the reader, aware of their limited/inadequate perspective.