Atdtda31: Noplace American, 887-888

[Paul Nightingale]

The previous section ends with Cyprian reminiscent; the new section begins
with the narrative shifting to Reef’s pov and a dream that encourages him to
reminisce. The previous section sees Yashmeen insisting they are all “free
to leave anytime” (886); this has “always [been] the point”, she insists.
The dream briefly liberates Reef from ‘reality’: “... no longer in the
ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in a city, not Venice but noplace American
either ...” (887). However, the dream returns Reef to a place where he isn’t
“free to leave anytime”: not physical incarceration, of course, but a
mindset, the dream inspired by talk of his son and, beyond that,
recollection of his personal narrative career.

On 649 Frank is “plagued at night by variations on one recurring dream about
Webb”; he thinks (“is certain”, 650) that Webb is present in the dream, or
would be if only the door would open, just as “Reef and Kit are usually
around someplace, too”. On that occasion, whenever Frank “tries to, or even
looks like he’s about to ask, his brothers turn away”. Cf Reef’s ‘vision’ of
Kit on 851-852, Reef thinking of wife and son as on 885-886 with Cyprian.

A while later, following the séance on 672-673, Kit dreams of Webb and, as a
child, “stands awhile in Webb’s one-arm embrace” (674); nonetheless, Webb
disappears (ie Kit wakens, is forced awake) “just as Kit’s about to ask ...”
etc. Down the page he differentiates himself from his brothers: “Kit had
always thought he would be there for his father no matter what ...” etc.
Each reading exposes the reader.

And so to the current scene, and Webb’s cryptic message: “Reef saw just for
one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get
him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago” (888). Cf his
comment to Cyprian on 883: “I’m just here on the extended tour, you might
call it.”

On 673 Reef can’t remember what has happened: “I don’t even know who I
fuckin am anymore.” There, Webb has ‘refused’ to give his sons the message
they’re waiting for, to go kill Scarsdale Vibe; and the scene rests on
Reef’s replacement of Madame Eskimoff’s ‘unlikely-Webb’. When Kit--as the
ideal reader of a certain kind of fiction--confirms that Reef’s performance
was realistic (“His voice, hell you even looked like him”) Reef becomes
“oddly unsure of himself”.

Here, Reef confirms that his role has been to replace Webb: “He had thought
once that being the Kieselguhr Kid ...” etc (887). Yet the dream-Webb,
speaking of “small victories” that Reef cannot recognise, is critical of his
son’s limited, overly-subjective, vision. Reef perhaps refers to
relationships with his family, with Cyprian and Yashmeen, perhaps the
failure to kill Vibe on 743, all of which makes it his narrative. Following
the attempt on Vibe’s life Reef is a passive agent: “the sad old routine”
(801) and “Reef drifted around Nice for a while ...” etc (849). Here, the
dream arrives “after years of avoidance” (887), the apologetic tone of his
attempted speech recalling the end of 60.12 on 886: “Done some shitty things
...” etc. We might observe that he doesn’t speak here, put into words what
he is thinking: “Reef tried to say” (887). Webb anticipates what his son is
going, or trying, to say; and Reef-as-reader concludes that “the precise
intelligence” (888) is to elevate the personal to the political.