V2nd - Chapter 14 basic time/space employment stuff (J.Y.B.D.R-T.)

[Michael Bailey]

just your basic demented run-thru

V. in love 437

- clock inside the Gare du Nord - pretty freaky time zones in those days

- ok, Melanie forgot her traveling clock and everything, who th' heck's Melanie?

- Algerian facteur (he is colonizing France <g>)
- "beseeching mob of English tourists" - so, going TO or coming FROM?
(I get that the venue is Paris...)(right?)

- duc d'Orleans, was the current Pretender - some jerk still
pretending at this late date, 1913, to be King of France (to see the
ladies' underpants)(so, like the Shah or Marcos or somebody, this duc
lived in exile with a buncha stolen money, studied military stuff at
Sandhurst, almost married Nellie Melba the opera singer, tried to join
the French, Belgian and Italian armies during WWI (but failed) and
carried on a rather impressive program of yachtsmanship even so far as
the Arctic Circle!)

- upper rooms of a new middle-class home in the 17th Arrondissment,
Black Mass was held every Sunday - does this Melanie go to it?  In
Neal Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ trilogy, much mention was made of
Satanism amongst the French court a couple centuries before 1913 - has
Satanism trickled down to the middle class?

- So this Melanie sitting (neurotically?) in the exact middle of the
taxicab seat

page 438

-- sees the 3 massive arcades and seven allegorical statues of the
Gare (du Nord) (which are???
(massively different from this version is the Wikipedia info -----
The sculptural program represents the cities served by the company.
The eight most majestic statues, which crown the building along the
cornice line, illustrate international destinations, with the ninth
figure of Paris in the center. Fourteen more modest statues of
northern French cities are arrayed lower on the facade. The sculptors
represented are:

    * London and Vienna by Jean-Louis-Nicolas Jaley
    * Brussels and Warsaw by François Jouffroy
    * Amsterdam by Charles Gumery
    * Frankfurt by Gabriel Thomas
    * Berlin by Jean-Joseph Perraud
    * Cologne by Mathurin Moreau
    * Paris, Boulogne and Compiegne by Pierre-Jules Cavelier
    * Arras and Laon by Théodore-Charles Gruyère
    * Lille and Beauvais by Charles-François Lebœuf
    * Valenciennes and Calais by Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire
    * Rouen and Amiens by Eugène-Louis Lequesne
    * Douai and Dunkirk by Gustave Crauck
    * Cambrai and Saint-Quentin by Auguste Ottin

In 1927 an American multi-millionairess named Alice de Janzé shot
herself and her British lover, Raymund de Trafford, on board a train
at the Gare du Nord. The two survived their injuries.[2]
 ------------------


- Her eyes were dead, her nose French...[she resembled] the classic
rendering of Liberty

-  parents got divorced and informed her by letter at her boarding
school.  Hey, there was also 1500 francs in the letter - what's she
want, egg in her beer?  But seriously, that is cold.  Mom takes off on
tour, Dad's possessions are "attached by the court" - why?

- where is Dad?  Who is Dad?  what kind of tour is Mom off on?

- Melanie's got a headache, "but she didn't care.  Or did, but not
where she was"  (what that means to me is, you know how you have a
headache but you have to go to work or meet somebody, so you don't
care about the headache till you can get someplace where you can
care)(rings true)

- driver's neck is soft (and white), hair is white, cap is blue --
what flag is blue & white?  Switzerland?

- Boulevard Haussmann?  what is zis Boche named street doing in Paree?
 (Proust lived on it btw)

- Now arriving at the opera (tiny Apollo with his golden lyre) and
here is Papa! (driver thinks she is screaming the title at him, and
demurs)(possible other disputed paternity issues on his mind,
"reflexively")

- but noooo, I guess she was just *thinking* of Papa when she saw the
Opera House!  Because they keep driving "up into the heights of
Montmartre, aimed for the most diseased part of the sky"

-- hair down to her butt!  15 years old!

-- transgressive passage ensues about father-daughter stuff.  Geeze,
in my sheltered life I've encountered 3 victims of this (and that's
just the ones I know about) -- really does NOT seem to do good things
for them afaict

page 439

- however, we learn they had an estate in Normandy ("once the
ancestral home of a family whose blood had long since turned to a pale
ichor and vaporized away into the frosty skies over Amiens" ( au
revoir? a rebours?)

- My theory: y'know how it's kind of creepy for a grownup to fantasize
kinkily about a kid?  the one exception might be remembering the
fantasies one might have had at 15 about a contemporary?  At least,
that's the inoffensive framework I construct to feature these
images...I mean they are pretty innocent, largely...innocent,
unformed...so far...obviously, though, she has been messed with...

-- Itague, so is she V.?

page 440

-- Satin, the choreographer (he's wearing tights)?
-- Porcepic (the composer) another porcupine...
- rape of the Chinese virgins (invading Mongol hordes, cognate of the
expected Hun invasion of France?)
-- frickin mechanical actors, even then darn inventors trying to make
life tougher for artists!

-- her calf hot inside her black stocking

page 441
-- she's just arrived and has to listen to this crap thru a deferred
headache!  "wish it would rain!"
- but she finally gets a room, and is smart enough to lock the door!
- for some reason she can't pray (like Hamlet?) - even for rain!
- naturally there's a mirror on the ceiling (naturellement!) and a
glimpse of stocking; well, more than a glimpse...

-- ah but she is stagestruck, throws off headache and clothing and
gets into costume
- fastens that hair with a comb, puts on the Su Feng costume (good Feng Shui?)
- something called a lay figure (headless mannequin?) that she wraps
her legs around (nice cool plaster)

(jump to one of those sidewalk cafes...)
 - oops, Itague is a dude.  absinthe makes him less horny.  so what is
he, the promoter?
-- hmm, dad's in jail for child abuse, mom off on a tour, maybe the
promoter had told little Melanie at some point, hey if you ever want
to be an actor... (hi diddly dee, an actor's life for me) -- something
like that???????????
(viz "You believed us after all", Itague, back on p 439)

-- a-and who's this Satin again?  could he be (church lady pause...) Satan?
(evoked by the Black Mass that Porcepic attended?)

page 443
- who's "the Russian" -- guess that must be Porcepic!  so it's 3 of
them, flaneuring it up on the boulevard at the sidewalk cafe with
absinthe:  I, P and S  composer, director and macquereau? or some such
division of labor...

-- the father "fled to the jungles" ??? so all the courts could do was
attach his property?? maybe his offense -- the one he was caught for
-- wasn't even the child abuse, but something (or somethings) else???

-- there follows some mumbo-jumbo from, umm, err, Itague, about how
what the dad did to Melanie was a great gift

-- "M Itague, your late readings may have convinced you" -- what kind
of readings? card readings? Madame Sosostris?

page 444
-- M Itague is an anti-Dreyfusard (so the heck with him!)

-- some woman standing at their table (Itague & Satin & Porcepic)
--- Hey, THIS is V., right??

- she got her dress shop! (in the Rue de 4 Sept, commemorating the
frustration of that duc - Confusion to the Pretender! - by the
foundation of the Third Republic, hey they just kept on makin'
republics till they got it right!)

-  a-and it looks like she's her own best customer!

(one might reflect upon consumerism, status symbols, conspicuous
consumption, fetishism, and/or visualize that V. in the sumptuous
ootfit (as they might say in Canada?))

-- so, like, V. is the, umm, "angel" of this production, and wants to
meet Melanie (droit de Madame?)
-- a-and ol' Satin (maybe he's the director?) is like cogitating upon
the fact of how he knows that lil' Melanie is damaged goods (but he's
still ready and willing)

page 445
-- looking at V.'s facial expressions, Itague thinks, "The German"
(what frickin German?) "could build another" (one of V.) "...and no
one could tell them apart"

-- a tango (South American dance, Squalidozzi may be at the next
table) is playing and he's thinkin' of it as like real mechanical and
non-sexy as compared to the waltz, which is kinda funny since isn't
the tango supposed to be all sexy and stuff?  maybe that's only if you
have a rose between your teeth

-- Itague has constructed a burly metaphor about how the night itself
is a curtain and he wants to see what is behind it, wonders if V. has
ever seen what's behind it, imagines "pulleys or linkage" that he can
pull
(man's search for truth!)

-- good ol' Porcepic comes up to the table singing a tune in Latin
that he's composed for a Black Mass
-- Itague (whatever the heck his function is and even tho' he's a
deluded anti-Semite) must have a shred of decency left, not to mention
being attentive and perceptive, because not only does he intuit that
V. wants to go t' that Black Mass ("I want to go to there!") but he's
also somewhat disconcerted and "forlorn" at the thought of it

page 446
so they leave that Satin (a-and what the heck is his function again?
"shuffling empty wineglasses" - bartender? nah, he's just sittin at
the table looking murderous (what's he so pissed aboot?)

so I guess that means that Porcepic, Itague and V. all trot, or rather
sashay, off to the Black Mass?

Meanwhile, back in the kid's room...
Melanie's dreaming about the lay figure (okay, here there might be a
bit of a "hyeugh, hyeugh")
a-and "the German" shows up in the dream (which German was that
again?) but he's also her Dad.

her eyes (in the dream) are "slanted Oriental" which is reasonable,
after all the talk about the Chinese virgins, and after all, Edward
Said has not yet begun to write as of V.'s publication date.

a-and he winds her up, and he has no face, and she wakes up "not
screaming, but moaning as if sexually aroused"
(and the confusion of sex and fear is something that maybe wouldn't
happen if the Papa hadn't....)

page 447
so Itague did go to the Black Mass
and he has to listen to some fat guy named Gerfaut talk about erotic
fiction about young chicks

V.'s got some nifty black cigs with gold crests on them, and is
creating a pile of butts.  not to mention ruining her young gal pal's
dress.  but it would be a pretty good souvenir, perhaps...

Page 448
still no rain
V. shows up at rehearsal

Page 449
- Satin is the choreographer
- what is a tango doing in a French ballet about chinese virgins?
- V. is all chuffed about how awesome 15-year-old Melanie will be in her costume
- Porcepic's mother had been a milliner (like V.)
- thunder (datta, damyata, dayadhvam!) but no rain!  ("waited on the
thunder...waited on the thunder..."(Bob Seger)

Page 450
- Porcepic hangs with Russian emigres (well, one guesses he would)
including a homicidal tailor
- the intersection of art and politics: they can't just enjoy the
music (some people)
- but comparing History to sex, now that might get one somewhere
- at least, Kholsky the homicidal tailor seems to think it's worth some mirth

page 451
- back to the sidewalk cafe, L'Ouganda (pre-Idi Amin, probably one
ought to think of Pere Ubu?)
- V. apparently hijacks young Melanie, the latter still in costume,
and takes her down into the Metro
- once at V.'s digs, little Mel lies down on a "large pouf in the
center of the room" (betcha V.'s her own decorator)

Page 452
- and shows them gams again
- gets a haircut, after a number of sessions with V. which only
tolerant friends know about
- a-and V.'s got her dressing as a boy

Page 453
- Satin works the haircut into the staging (wig in Act I, shorn in Act II)
- wants to shock the bourgeoisie
- friends speculate about what V. and M. do at home.  Porcepic
produces a chart of 64 possibilities

Page 454
- a-and what is it exactly anyway?
- let us remember that V. has heretofore been a happy inhabitant of
Baedeker-land, at one very comfortable remove from the Vheissu-like
realities and nittyness and grittiness of love
- (somewhat controversially, imho, the narrator equates Baedeker-land
with "the Street" - basically I guess the diffident withdrawal of
Benny's schlemihlhood is in some way the equivalent, mutatis mutandis,
to the Baedeker denizen's smooth transit, through, in but not of, "the
World"?)

Page 455
- V leaves the comfort of her tortoise shell to partake fully of passion
- what we find ourselves reading of this change, though, on page 455,
is not the actual passion, but the feeling of "excommunication" V.
gets -- ie starts missing what she left right away?  a-and starts
philosophizing
-- which is like, kinda dry (well, what do you expect, it still hasn't rained)
-- so somewhere (when exactly? eh, doesn't matter, we know Stencil
gets around) Porcepic falls prey to Stencil's sodium-pentothal-like
presence and has told him all this stuff
- so actually what MIGHT have been a real juicy and lovey-dovey kind
of romance (I mean, how great is that - all you have to do is LOOK at
the other one to get your freak on? Both of you?  I wouldn't sneeze at
it, 's all I'm sayin') becomes in the hands of Stencil a beautifully
detailed but decidedly un-sexy rumination
-- which is great in its own way and does point to some important
moral issues - I won't deny that
-- but the hot girl-on-girl action, unless yer a heckuva sublimator
(or would making this description of V&M into something lubricious be
more of a "desublimation"? ), as I say the luscious lesbo Tantric sex
is not really the focus here
- good thing, cuz really that would be kinda pervy...
- the girl's a minor: too soon marred are those so early made!
-- if it weren't for that, I'd definitely put in the time (it wouldn't
take very long) and de-sublimate the scene (strictly for fantasy
purposes during hetero activities, of course)!
-- one could pretend she was 18...

Page 456
- I mean, old Stencil gets all psychoanalytical but I bet he's a bit
stirred anyway
- but, darnit, the deplorable and bad and sad truth of the decadence
and violence really is important
- and this is not, by far, a bad way to conceptualize it
- I mean, something is rotten in Denmark.  What kind of century has 2
World Wars?  That's messed up!
- and I can sympathize with Stencil, after devoting himself to one of
those war efforts, being a little bit anhedonic and apt to wind every
thought back into like, "damn this is messed up"
-- the woman I might have loved might have been killed in this conflict
- or might have been made dead in the eyes like poor tender Melanie
-- and perhaps if older guys weren't always trying to accost tender
young things they might utilize their accumulated power and wealth,
and even wisdom, to run the world better!
-- if they really cared
- which they ought to
- wouldn't kill them to behave: quite the contrary
- and on page 456, the (wonderful, wonderful) storyteller, ie the guy
in the real world choosing the words, brings the Whole Sick Crew back
into play: they (like the flaneurs and boulevardiers of L'Ouganda
tried, back in 1913, to picture what V. and M. actually are up to
behind closed doors) are trying to picture what all this might mean to
Stencil
- I mean, it's a thing
- what Stencil's looking for.  They really wonder.  They offer
theories.  Stencil isn't that much help (is he?)
-- but apparently there is something apparent to the WSC ("if it were
not here apparent that Benny Profane is heir apparent") that is not
apparently to V.
-- something that "would have meant, ultimately, V.'s death"
== that's a direct quote from the bottom of page 456 (Harper Perennial)

so I know I really hafta go back - (I'm pretty sure that there's a lot
of other places where I *should* go back and figure out what the heck,
but here I must: "Dig we must") and reread the page

what is that thing, ignorance of which is apparently keeping V. from
an untimely death
(one wonders how exactly she could have had a worse death than that
one we saw a while back...)

page 456 again
"If V. suspected"
- what (boiled down)?
- if she suspected that, like, time would pass, this fun on the pouf
would like fade, and it wasn't really so different, this "love", from
her old loveless state, and even at this very moment destructive
forces are gathering which will (please excuse my French) Fuck Her Up
- that, that thought, why, that would kill her
-- it's her Kryptonite (Superman I: Otis: "but *this* stuff will KILL him!")
0-: 0-: 0-:
-- to which I (is there something like a poetic license, only for
readers?) reply:
Well, yeah!
-- "It's the something you were born for,
it's like, good ole V. you mourn for"

(to coin a phrase)

page 457
- (again, please pardon my French, I'll desist henceforth) despite all
his protestations and philosophizing, and even in a weird way, by
virtue of them, fuckin' Stencil's still hot for her, he wants ta be
lovin' on her

- ok, we know why Porcepic tells Stencil all.  If I met him, I'd
explain about EJT back in '75, and VW, and MYHP and even  Nancy Wilson
back in the 4th grade and so forth.  People just can't help it.  He's
got tell-me pheromones.
- but why did V. bare her soul to Porcepic?
- to make it last a bit longer
- "a song for men to come" (hyeugh hyeugh)
- plus, he's a sensitive Russian composer: of course you would tell
him stuff.  Hoping he might write a symphony about it.

page 458
- Theatre Vincent Castor
- the names Vincent and Castor appear, but not together, in this
Wikipedia article about a British antiquarian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_Vincent
- probably not relevant

page 459
- nasty business with the sharpened pole
- however, we now know it "was all theater"

- "Damn the German" oh ok, I guess he is the maker of the automatons...

page 460
- so like, V. is watching this happen?
- - that's messed up
--- (or is she in on it?)(nah)
--  coroners are presumably not immune to bribery in 1913
-- raspberry jam
-- it's probably something V. cooked up with a lover other than V.
-- she wouldn't have told Porcepic 'cos he was buds with V., right?
- the sweet cheat gone




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