Atdtda32: Folks out here talked about fate, 909-911

[Paul Nightingale]

This section ends by explaining what has happened to Kit since his last
appearance at the end of Ch55: "It had taken him a while ..." etc (911).
Here, "fate" is juxtaposed to what Kit calls "stillness", perhaps a
downplaying of agency. We have seen, in the previous section, that Dally's
fate is inseparable from the agency of others; the moment when trains line
up and "[happen] to arrive at the same time" (909) might be called
coincidental (indeed, intervention by some kind of deus ex machina: cf the
role of the chef de brigade on the following page). The reader might
complain of determinism here.

More generally, in the telling, Kit's trajectory has hardly been autonomous:
"short hops in little steamers ..." etc (911) tie his progress to, for
example, timetables. On 910 Kit sees his train "disappearing down the line
in the general direction of Paris, France, so it seemed he would be here ...
for a while". And then, down the page, fate is tied to memory and the
rewriting of personal history, an oral account without the kind of formal
corroboration beloved by historians: "Years later ..." etc, suggesting that
Kit and Dally are fated to remain together. This fast-forward, as elsewhere
in the text, reminds the reader that they are 'looking back' and can be
brought 'up-to-date'.

The section has opened on 909 with the misunderstanding of Imi/Erno
juxtaposed to Kit's rather more accurate reading as he too is drawn by "her
hatless hair", "focus[ing] in till he was sure of who he was seeing".
Narrative is dictated by dialogue exchanges that dwell on misunderstanding
and misinterpretation on the part of Imi/Erno, and also of Dally herself:
"That can't be you out there". This latter statement is both addressed and
not addressed to Kit, who responds to the impossibility by inventing an
alternative scenario featuring "in fact my wife Euphorbia" (910). In doing
so he refers to Constantinople, where Clive might have been able to "[shop]
Dally into a harem" (908), invoking the authority of the British Empire.

On 910 the chef de brigade appears to offer a somewhat Brechtian take on the
scene: his "quizzical stare" repositions the reader, as will the
fast-forward down the page. The four-way interaction in the compartment has
been disrupted by the outside world, any threat neutralised by the
possibility of repercussions ("all weapons abruptly vanished").