Atdtda32: Like a refugee, 892-893 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Venice to London: Hunter and Dally, and also Ruperta--the latter
belonging here, at home. Previously she has been associated with the
itinerant population of a given location: a feature she shares with many
other characters, of course, although class relations give her character a
different function. Here, there is Hunter’s observation that Ruperta “knows
everyone”, that is to say, a certain social set. Go back to “Ruperta’s loose
salon of neurasthenics traveling hot spring to spring in search of eternal
youth” (368) or the “leisured balneomaniacs ... traveling spa to spa, all
over Europe and beyond” (656). Such movement, and her periodic intrusion
into the narratives of others, specifically Reef (her function to bring him
up against his betrayal of duty) has been a display of wealth that attempts
to render time and place/space irrelevant (whereas Reef’s duty, of course,
is confirmation of the continuing importance of time/space as represented by
family ties/history).

Cf. the previous chapter, where Yashmeen/Cyprian/Reef and Wolfe Tone, a
walk-on in the closing pages, were all passing through. There, the narrative
was decidedly coy about, and uninterested in, the activities of locals.
There were a few references to gambling, and even a glimpse of a casino, but
location seemed less important than the ménage-a-trois claustrophobia that
resulted from exile: by way of contrast, Ruperta could never, in current
circumstances, as we await revolution, be in exile. In the previous chapter
location became a backdrop to the personal narrative, place names appearing
at regular intervals to indicate some kind of progress: “... no farther up
the valley of the Serchio than Bagni di Lucca” (888), or “[o]ne day in Monte
Carlo” (890), or “[o]ne day in Biarritz” (891), the latter followed by “[i]t
was around this same time that Yashmeen discovered she was pregnant”. Such
writing, the use of place-name as a signifier of movement, does not attach
itself to Ruperta.