Atdtda33: A city not yet come into being, 924-927 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

As the chapter opens Frank is discovered dreaming, then waking, "back on the
floor of the cold, broken church, immobilized and hungry" (919). We are
reminded of his confinement when, a page later, Rodrigo is "looking down at
Frank" (920); and then, still in some pain, "he figure[s] he better not
laugh too much" (923). As the new section, 63.4, unfolds, Wren "[gets] to
see him stand on his feet and take his first steps ..." etc (926);
eventually they are "enthusiastically fucking", evidence of Frank's recovery
and new-found mobility.

Before that happens, a lengthy hallucination sees Frank transformed
(liberated?) into another of the same name. On 919 he "[wakes] from a dream
of running" to find El Espinero, identified as the man "who had once showed
him how to fly" (920). El Espinero now reappears, "sitting there in the dark
for some time" (924), and Frank is again thinking of flying. El Espinero
insists "the hikuli is not for everyone" but hands it over anyway; and Frank
"[finds] himself in a strange yet familiar City", one that is different but
not different. The "dream of running" on 919 includes "a concentration of
light, something like a city after dark"--where the manipulation of light
erodes the distinction between night and day--but Frank never gets there,
his progress interrupted when he awakens. Subsequently, as he hallucinates,
we're told "it['s] impossible to know if it's even night or day, the City
itself being entirely indoors ..." etc (925).

We have already seen Frank distinguish between his own family vendetta and
Ewball's projected "honest soldiering" (922), all of which includes a
distinction between nihilism as Stray appears to understand it and "real"
nihilism as explained by Ewball, narratives that are inseparable from
discourses of power. Starting on 924, Frank constructs another alternative
narrative, ie 'a dream' or 'vision', one that can be set against the
diegetical 'reality' of the church that is no longer a church, a 'reality'
in which Frank remains confined. 

One can speculate that the dream on 919 has been inspired by medication,
treatment for Franks' injuries. His list of must-haves on 922 includes "pain
medicine, any kind, laudanum, paregoric, hell, anythin's got opium in it"
(and note, down the page, his response to Wren's appearance: "should've went
easy on the laudanum"). The hallucination on 924-926 is inspired by hikuli,
a return to an earlier time: Frank's opening question ("remember those
little cactuses?", 924) takes him, El Espinero and the reader back to
392-394.