V-2nd - Conclusion - questions

[Michael Bailey]

the floating head of the Sultan, giving instructions...
"Empty but for a dozen fatal words" (like a golem)

juxtaposed with the floating, headless, bodies of the Knights of Malta
"Imagine being on sunrise watch and seeing the dawn touch those
ex-comrades-in-arms, belly-up and crowding the water: death's
flotilla."

so this jongleur, Falconiere..."No renaissance had ever touched him;
he resided at the Auberge of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarre at the time
of the Siege."

Mehemet is chronology-challenged, we already know.  So perhaps it
should come as no surprise that there's a problem with that:  the
Siege of Malta was in 1565, but the Auberge was founded in 1571 -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auberge_d%27Aragon
"Auberge d'Aragon is a palace in Malta that was designed by Girolamo
Cassar in 1571, five years after the establishment of Valletta. The
residents of the palace were initially knights of Aragon, Navarre, and
Catalonia."

(today, the Maltese Ministry for Justice and Home Affairs
http://mjha.gov.mt/Page.aspx?pageid=4
is quartered in said Auberge [I always thought that meant eggplant...]
- make of that what you will!)

The parallel that one senses here is to the Hot Gates: like in the
movie 300, the small force of defenders with at least a glimmer of
democracy pitted against a vast totalitarian horde led by an absolute
monarch with all the trappings that populists love to loathe.

The Siege of Malta, then, was a Big Salient in history in the 16th
century, and again in WWII, with arguably similar characteristics on
each side.

What Stencil seems to be getting involved in in 1919 is trying to act
against those like Mizzi who want to align Malta with what will
(already inevitably?) become the foes in the next War.

In being sent out on such a mission while all over Europe people are
celebrating the new era of peace, is it any wonder that Stencil is
world-weary?

Mehemet's parable and fable:
the parable of the sinking Peri's ship-painter suggesting the futility
of attempting to change the world, which really aligns with old
Stencil's mood

and the fable of Mara's control over the Sultan's possessions, up to
and including his very head, laying out a scenario in which a somewhat
treacherous deity, for reasons of her own, supports anti-imperial
forces.

Now, since Stencil represents Empire, it could be argued that Mara's
powers will act against him.

Yet the showy antics of D'Annunzio and his pupil Mussolini much more
closely resemble the Sultan's style-of-government.

The other forces, if we think in demographic terms rather than "great
man theory" have been already mentioned in Mungo Sheaves's report:
groups rather than individuals - police, tradesmen, unionists,
shopkeepers - and issues such as taxation and sovereign status.  An
aboveboard remit for old Stencil would be to go to Malta and negotiate
with the groups and bargain on the issues.

But instead he is traveling secretly, bobbing along in the xebec not
terribly dissimilarly to the Sultan's head...

what to make of all this?

My favorite image is Falconiere, "braining four Janissaries with his lute."

At any rate, Mehemet's wise words and perhaps Mara's seductive charm
are cheering enough to get old Stencil singing in the bathtub!