Atdtda30: Not in hope but in terror, 863

[Paul Nightingale]

Yashmeen returns to "the schoolbook Vlado had given her". Here, "she
remembered ..."; previously, at the end of 59.3, she "[told] herself she was
attracted to its humility, its ease of concealment" (853). Subsequently, she
will replicate the book's ability to hide the truth when she allows Fabrizio
to transform her (860). The book, then, both recalls Vlado and also
Yashmeen's own transformation. In 59.7 she invokes mathematics to reason
that Vlado is safe (862); here, she resorts to an irrational alternative,
"like a devout person with a religious text" (863). If the Law of
Deterministic Insufficiency provides the required solution, ie Vlado's
safety, the book here replaces "certitude" with "a terrible broken anxiety
over Vlado's fate".