V-2 - chapter 9 - Not Dark Yet

[Robin Landseadel]

	Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
	It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
	Feel like my soul has turned into steel
	I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
	There’s not even room enough to be anywhere

	It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
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On Oct 16, 2010, at 2:16 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> with that detail in place, the sanguinary nature of the place comes
> home right quickly.
> In a well-ordered microcosm, the blood in the courtyard would itself
> be a major mojo and corrective action would follow.  Foppl would call
> in van Wijk to investigate. Or fisheye would pack up and go: "you ask
> why I don't live here, honey do you have to ask" (Bob Dylan, "On the
> Road Again")
>
> really never saw that before, and I've been thru V. a few times
> (though I tend to focus anywhere but this chapter)
>
> we don't ever find out whose blood, do we? (guess I gotta look for  
> that)

		. . . Soon he stumbled into a basement room where gardening
	implements were stored. As if the entire day had come into being
	only to prepare him for this, he discovered a Bondel male, face down
	and naked, the back and buttocks showing scar tissue from old
	sjambokings as well as more recent wounds, laid open across the
	flesh like so many toothless smiles. Hardening himself the weakling
	Mondaugen approached the man and stooped to listen for breathing
	or a heartbeat, trying not to see the white vertebra that winked at him
	from one long opening.
		"Don't touch him." Foppl stood holding a sjambok or cattle whip
	of giraffe hide, tapping the handle against his leg in a steady,
	syncopated figure. "He doesn't want you to help. Even to sympathize.
	He doesn't want anything but the sjambok." Raising his voice till it
	found the hysterical-bitch level Foppl always affected with Bondels:
	"You like the sjambok, don't you, Andreas."
		Andreas moved his head feebly and whispered; "Baas ... "
		"Your people have defied the Government," Foppl continued,
	"they've rebelled, they have sinned. General von Trotha will have to
	come back to punish you all. He'll have to bring his soldiers with the
	beards and the bright eyes, and his artillery that speaks with a loud
	voice. How you will enjoy it, Andreas. Like Jesus returning to earth,
	von Trotha is coming to deliver you. Be joyful; sing hymns of thanks.
	And until then love me as your parent, because I am von Trotha's
	arm, and the agent of his will."
		As van Wijk had bade him do, Mondaugen remembered to ask
	Foppl about 1904 and the "days of von Trotha." . . .

In my copy, that's page 254. We see the blood on 249. Kurt meets Vera,  
right after seeing the blood, and then by virtue of not speaking of  
it, knows that he's already entered into a conspiracy with "V." Then  
he sees her Cyborg eye, just before catches a glimpse of Weissmann.  
During this Vera tells him that "it could be 1904 again, " Vera  
knowing what 1904 was and the readers most likely not.  Later on,  
Mondaugen captures another prurient glimpse of Vera and Weissmann,  
". . . as if he had dreamed them." Then he's seduced by a sweet  
[albeit perverse] young thing named Hedwig Vogelsang who claims her  
"purpose on earth is to tantalize and send raving the race of man."  
Eventually -- many pages further down the road --  we find the two in  
congress, and Mondaugen is, in fact, raving. But right now Moondoggie  
and the Angry Inch are all a-twirl on the dance floor. Un-twirling,  
Kurt spins into dark corridors -- we finally get to that black velvet  
room that Poe mentioned a story or two back. This leads us to a  
miniature planetarium, where the young engineer pounds away at it  
treadmill planets, till he finally exhausts himself.

		. . . Having long fled all vestiges of music Mondaugen released her  
here,
	skipped to the treadmill and began a jog-trot that set the solar  
system in motion,
	creaking and whining in a way that raised a prickling in the teeth.  
Rattling,
	shuddering, the wooden planets began to rotate and spin, Saturn's  
rings to whirl,
	moons their precessions, our own Earth its rotational wobble, all  
picking up speed;
	as the girl continued to dance, having chosen the planet Venus for  
her partner; as
	Mondaugen dashed along his own geodesic, following in the footsteps  
of a
	generation of slaves. *

		When at length he tired, slowed and stopped she'd gone, vanished  
into the
	wooden reaches of what remained after all a parody of space. Mondaugen,
	breathing heavily, staggered off the treadmill to carry on his  
descent and search for
	the generator. . .

This is the moment he finds the dying Bondel:

	 " . . . As if the entire day had come into being only to prepare him  
for this . . ."

This is the source of the blood we saw earlier in the day. Mondaugen's  
conspiracy is that of continuing the genocide, or at least of allowing  
it to continue.

Foppl's partying like it's 1904. As the chapter progresses we are  
offered up -- via Mondaugen's fever dreams -- glimpses of what "1904"  
was really like, a portrait of the sort of person who might be good at  
this line of work, what their interests and hobbies might be.

*see how this echos and chimes with Mason & Dixon and the Transit of  
Venus?
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	Well, I say that you will be on the road to
	new horizons, for we who live in a society
	where sex is a commodity and a politician
	can become a TV personality, it’s not
	easy to conform if you have any morality…
	I said that myself many years ago…