Atdtda34: Overthinking, as usual, 949-950

[Paul Nightingale]

And so to the birth of Yashmeen's child "during the rose harvest", the event
marked by the calendar of nature. The previous section begins with the voice
of "the indigenous" (948) acknowledged, as Reef/Cyprian/Yashmeen are
described: their presence "this late in history" is juxtaposed to the
imminent arrival of Yashmeen's child. Not least, Yashmeen is the one who
appears to interact with locals, "the women in the neighbourhood [drawing]
closer" (949); here, the child's birth takes place in the presence of "women
already back from the fields", one nature running parallel to another.

Cyprian's pov is still prominent across the section break; he features as an
insertion alongside a silent Reef as "muttering women" see them as
interlopers. When the women disappear and Yashmeen is reunited with the two
men, the child reminds Reef of Jesse (950). Cf earlier references to Omaha
and US currency on 945.

If Reef's pov provides some kind of continuity from the past, earlier
experiences of a new-born child, Cyprian has ventured into new territory:
"What Cyprian had imagined as terrifying, at best disgusting, proved instead
to be irresistible ..." etc (949). And then: "... the familiarity, as if
this had already happened countless times before" (950). Reef compares his
situation now with one earlier; Cyprian puts himself into history, to
identify with experience he could not have known, "as if to fill a space he
could not have defined before this".

At the end of the previous section: "He wasn't looking for erotic company
any longer. Something else, perhaps ..." etc (949). Here, "he [finds]
himself almost desperate with an unexpected flow of feeling ..." etc (950),
invoking "that other life". He tries to claim a relationship somehow
comparable to the knowledge that Reef has. Reef "move[s] carefully around
the little room" and then gives the child to Cyprian, who has, one imagines,
observed the other man carefully. Then comes "the familiarity".