Atdtda30: Everybody in Mexico will be seeing everybody again, 849-852

[Paul Nightingale]

Reef gambling in Nice, and a new routine, “drift[ing]”; nonetheless, “he
[can’t] see himself pursuing the life of a flaneur forever”, not least if it
means he avoids the pursuit of Scarsdale Vibe, “whom [he] ought to be
shadowing right now in fact” (850). So, like Cyprian, at the end of the
previous chapter, he stands outside himself as an observer. He has to
rediscover his authentic self as a bomber. Cue (“[n]o sooner had this
thought occurred to him”, 849) the reappearance of Flaco, also compared to
his earlier self: “... even more anarchistic and dynamite-crazy than before”
(that “even more” heightening the contrast to Reef himself). As Reef has
called Flaco into being, so will Flaco ‘produce’ an explosion, moments after
describing the café as “[j]ust the kind of bourgeois target anarchists love
to bomb” (850).

Since they last saw each other Flaco has been to Mexico and back, allowing
him to reintroduce Frank and update Reef (not to mention the reader) on the
family quest. By the end of this section Reef will also ‘see’ Kit in “one of
those twilight states” (851). Even if he denies he has been “infected with
bourgeois values” (850) he has nonetheless been masquerading as a bourgeois
loafer, a pose undermined by a narrative that offers coincidence in the form
of Flaco and fantasy in the form of Kit. For Reef, and others, anomie (“all
this to-and-fro of the city life”) is a casualty of the explosion: people
“[are] able to look into one another’s eyes” (851) and, for Reef, dealing
with the “so abruptly wounded bourgeoisie” is a gesture of sorts. As the
chapter begins there is a sharp contrast between “no-name wine” and the
greater detail of “pineapple Marquises with trios-six chasers” (849), pretty
much the only description allowed by Reef’s introspection. His isolation,
moreover, will be emphasised by Flaco’s “everybody in Mexico will be seein
everybody again”. The conversation between Reef and Flaco precludes any
descriptive writing until, half-way down 850, the explosion (“so
unexpected”) heralds a passage of detailed description.

Cf. Cyprian on Gabrovo Slim: “The important thing for him ... is to be home
again, among his people” (847). Reef admits he has been seduced by “the
to-and-fro of the city life” (850), sidelined as an observer as Cyprian was,
“sitting across the table from the cooing couple” (847). Cyprian is “visited
by a Cosmic Revelation, dropping from the sky like pigeon shit” (848). Here,
amid a “great blossoming of disintegration” (850), Reef “almost” gets to ask
why (851), before finally admitting “I did everything wrong” (852).