Atdtda32: Like a refugee, 892-893 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

And now the narrative juxtaposes the two women to insist that Dally
"misse[s] Venice like a refugee": not there and rewriting the past. It is
worth recalling Dally in Venice: "... she was certain for the first time in
a life on the roll that, whatever 'home' had meant, this was older than
memory, than the story she thought she knew" (568). This passage is followed
by her disdainful response to tourism, coming just before "[s]he ... had
just decided to live here forever". The refugee is the convert: Dally can
remember a time before Venice, is aware, then, of the possibility that
Venice will fade away. Insofar as Venice has become part of her identity,
she must know that identity is anything but fixed. On 575 we find "not quite
the Venice older folks remembered" down the page from a description of Dally
"brown from the sun, lean and agile ..." etc, "dress[ing] these days as a
boy".

In London Dally is on the receiving end of Ruperta's patronage: the latter
designated, ironically, as "kind" in conjunction to "a pleasant small bedsit
in Bloomsbury". Hunter belongs in more elevated surroundings, "someplace
west of Regents Park". Here, location is significant in class terms,
invoking stability, and Dally's status is thus established. The writing was
similar when, as Dally first meets Ruperta in Venice, the women are
separated by mention of Florian's, "a place Hunter had ordinarily little
patience with" (730). In Venice, Dally "watched the American girls ... and
... wondered if she had ever stood a chance of becoming one of them" (575).
The "American girls" in question are, of course, affluent tourists dressed
for the male gaze, scrutiny that Dally ("dressed ... as a boy") will avoid,
although the current chapter does open with a reference to "the Principessa
Spongiatosta ... eager to pimp Dally to some doubtful parasitic creeper upon
the tree of the Italian nobility" (892). And affluent American tourists are
Ruperta's counterparts, the scene in question replayed when Ruperta again
crosses Reef's path on 656: from "... the tunnel-in-progress here had been a
regular stop ..." etc to "[a] couple of the other drillers stood gaping,
unable to shut their mouths, stroking themselves without shame".