Atdtda32: One artist for another, 893-895 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

As the current chapter opens on 892, the narrative emphasises Dally's take
on Ruperta, hence Hunter's apparent failure to understand Ruperta: "... the
most naively trusting person I know". That comment from Hunter attaches to
Dally's account of the breakfast scene above the section break, Ruperta
speaking to "a bowl of steaming porridge, addressing it in a low, vicious
snarl". For Hunter the scene is "[s]ome sort of breakfast-table game" (893),
drawing attention to Dally's status as outsider; as an intruder in Ruperta's
home, her presence is unexplained by anything other than "the status of
Minor Annoyance, which was as close to admiration as [Ruperta] ever got". 

Ruperta has become Dally's self-styled patron, perhaps her version of
noblesse oblige. In the current section's opening line "Ruperta one day
appear[s] out of nowhere as usual" (893), a phrase that might remind us
that, in the breakfast passage a few lines up, it was Dally who seemed to
'materialise' without warning-the bottom of 892: "Dally had recently walked
in on Ruperta ..." etc. Here, the narrative emphasises Dally's suspicions as
she finds herself in some kind of melodrama authored, it seems, by Ruperta.
She is "immediately on guard, as who wouldn't be" (893), then "witched ...
into a taximeter cab" to meet Arturo in "a sinister sort of tearoom in
Chelsea", all before "'Pert excuse[s] herself with the usual depraved
smirk".

The narrative has set up an opposition between Dally's pov and other
plausible readings. However, her (mis?)reading of both Ruperta and the
situation is accompanied by evidence of her learning curve as a cultural
outsider: "Dally had noticed that these English asked questions the way
others made statements ..." etc. The distinction is between her sensitivity
to any 'threat' posed by Ruperta and a rather more measured response to
cultural norms ("these English") she initially finds puzzling.

The reader might recall Replevin's description/dismissal of Naunt on 612,
"all too contemporary I fear", his work hardly "genuine". As read by a
suspicious Dally, his appearance is a performance of the artist, juxtaposing
"a Fedora and a velvet suit" to "the overgrown thumbnails of a sculptor"; as
they leave the tearoom she "expect[s] at any moment to have to deal with a
chloroformed handkerchief". Hunter has questioned Dally's suspicions of
Ruperta; and here we are again aware of her highly subjective take on the
action. The "sinister ... tearoom" and Ruperta's "usual depraved smile" are
followed by Arturo's "brightness of eye", the latter perhaps recalling the
"doubtful parasitic creeper[s] upon the tree of the Italian nobility" with
which the chapter opens on 892--all of which prepares the way for Dally's
feelings of vulnerability in the cab. As will be apparent later in the
section, "the overgrown thumbnails of a sculptor" have taken her back to New
York, even as Arturo's "brightness of eye" has taken her back to Venice.

If "immediately on guard, as who wouldn't be", at no point, of course, does
she object, or try to resist the course of action she has been introduced
to; if Dally does masquerade here as a heroine of melodrama, she exhibits
uncharacteristic resourcefulness. She goes along with the plot, so to speak,
but does so knowingly; she is hardly a conventional ingenue, which in turn
prepares us for the AOD sequence that follows.