V-2nd - 7: mistaken identities

[Michael Bailey]

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 6:17 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>This chapter has a caper with a silly premise:  stealing The Birth of >Venus and hiding it in a tree.  Victoria Wren (assuming there's only one of her) is the >constant here.  SO Stencil's seeking V. not just through historical settings, but >through narrative styles.
>

yes, doesn't it seem like in his 8 quick-changes back in 3, Stencil
was kind of zeroing in on an idea of V?

The ruminations of Aieul, which of course are Stencil's, as to the
identities and activities of the English travelers, touch on
possibilities.
Aieul, of course, doesn't know which, if any, of these possibilities
(love affair, anarchists, vaudeville location-scouting) is true.  In a
way, they all are, like Schrodinger's cat.

But by Chapter 7, Stencil has created a singular V. from the glimpses:
Victoria Wren

--- Let me ask this, please: does Stencil have any but the slenderest,
nay, does he even have ANY evidence at all of this V's existence?

The details of what Eigenvalue, or young Bongo-Shaftsbury, or later
Mondaugen tell him are completely elided in favor of Stencil's
embroidery, aren't they?


Meanwhile, good old Mantissa the schlemihl has figured out a plot
involving the Judas tree - (what is a Judas tree anyway, didn't
Katherine Anne Porter write a story called that?  yes:
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Flowering.html  - dealing
in revolutionary activities in Mexico -  but there does exist, among
the Plant Kingdom, such a tree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Tree_%28Cercis_siliquastrum%29 )

they will steal the painting and roll it up into a neat parcel,
stowing in inside the hollow trunk of a Judas tree, and walk out of
the museum with it (as if it were a delivery or a landscaping/foliage
job),

-- but won't all the fine tempera or oil get all messed up when they roll it up?

And as the Gaucho points out, somebody is bound to notice.

Rather than make a new plan, Mantissa adds an epicycle to his existing
plan: a 2nd Judas tree that they will leave for the police to find!

--- now, the noise of the fighting in and around the Uffizi interrupts
the theft ---

I picture (with textual support) the knife beginning the cut, and
Mantissa daydreaming and arriving at a similitude between what he's
about to unlawfully possess and the horror described by Godolphin in
the moment he grasped the dream he'd pursued

isn't this moment just a little like the scuffle interrupting Benny on
the pool table in the social club?  The progress of Cesare's knife
down the canvas similar to the unzipping of Benny's fly?

If so, what could that imply?