Atdtda31: Anything you commanded, 874-876

[Paul Nightingale]

Following the death/execution of Theign, a return to Cyprian: "One day ..."
signals a change of track from the outset while also echoing the opening
line of 60.2 (869). The text ("... he wouldn't remember") indicates
Cyprian's response to this latest overture from Yashmeen, the personal
replacing the political of the previous section. Nonetheless, Vlado links
the two, Yashmeen's proclaimed debt, top of 875, succeeding the reference to
his death above the section break on 874. Vlado also featured when Cyprian
met Yashmeen with Reef (869-870) and here joins "the American" (874) as an
invisible presence.

On 875 Yashmeen replaces Vlado with, from Cyprian's pov, "some sort of
school copybook": "the green schoolboy's copybook ... with Zeugnisbuchlein
printed on its front cover" was introduced on 853. Here, we are given
Vlado's translation: "which he called The Book of the Masked". On 875
Vlado's title, not the printed title, is given, privileged knowledge that
distances the reader from Cyprian. On 853 Yashmeen accepts this "fake" or
"quaint native artefact", "[t]elling herself she was attracted to its
humility, its ease of concealment"; on 875 she is ready to pass it on to
Cyprian.

The relationship between Cyprian and Yashmeen here is uneasy. The bed
invokes, or stands in for, Reef as the book does Vlado: "we are lovers ...
in all the ways you were never permitted", perhaps a reminder of Cyprian's
"bewilderment" and "first time with a woman, if I'm not mistaken" on 721.
Over the page, elaboration follows the exchange regarding Reef: here, "the
eloquent bedsheets" (876) provide a text that can be read, where Vlado's
book ("specifically, "some sort of school copybook") cannot be so
interpreted.

Indeed, Cyprian's responses to Yashmeen here, "rectally possessed by fear,
desire, least resistibly hope" (875), show his failed efforts to avoid her
reading him. Eye-contact ("He was silent, met her eyes, looked away ...";
"He risked another quick glance ...") followed by physical contact (she
"struck him in the face ... repeatedly, the scent of glove-leather flooding
him") that might recall: "Cyprian, I can smell what happened" (722). On
physical contact cf their parting on the Molo San Carlo: "It wasn't till
Yashmeen nodded and released him that Cyprian realised they had been holding
each other" (815).

Are they, then, "the same people" or "two entirely different people" (876)?
Reef's presence/absence evidently alters the equation.