Atdtda31: Bickering, 888-890

[Paul Nightingale]

Yashmeen on 879: "We can do whatever we can imagine. Are we not the world to
come? Rules of proper conduct are for the dying, not for us." And then again
on 886: "We all are [free to leave anytime]. That was always the point." And
so to the new section, offering an overview of progress and routine: "Their
plan had been ..." etc (888), the opening line signalling a failure of
sorts, already. A few lines down the page: "and all at once everybody was
reverting to type". By the end of the first paragraph: "... seldom venturing
into questions of whatever should become of them".

This paragraph provides a bridge between the preceding claustrophobia and
that which follows. 60.10 ended with a description of the Lagoon (880); from
the moment Reef ("up in one of the loggie", 881) surrenders his overview at
the start of 60.11, the writing is fixed on the interactions between
Reef/Cyprian/Yashmeen, the latter's presence/absence signalled by speech. At
the bottom of 881 they are taken to "an upper room, full of gilt furniture
and dark heavy velvet hangings", where they discover the "red velvet divan"
(882); subsequently the location changes but matters little until the new
section takes them out-of-doors-and then the weather changes and they are
back indoors, the writing returning to personal relationships and "small
annoyances" (888). At the outset they aim to "live among their kind"; by the
end of the paragraph they are "pretending to lose just enough to stay
plausible", ie to maintain a fiction that allows them to engage with the
money economy.

And so to a new phase of claustrophobia, the first extended description of
the relationship between all three. Following sex in the palazzo, 60.12
begins with Reef and Cyprian "ma[king] firm the third connection in their
triad" (883); from here, Yashmeen can feature only as an intruder until the
end of 60.13 when Cyprian is allowed to watch her fucking Reef. In the
current section, then, she is important, "in her accustomed role of soother
and mediatrix" (889--and cf her "face, poised between anger and amusement",
top of 887), as the means by which the relationship between Reef and Cyprian
might be regulated; her presence allows them to argue freely,
inconsequentially (eg the final line, top of 890: "Missed one right by your
ear there"), all part of the evasiveness indicated at the end of the first
paragraph on 888.