Atdtda35: Payday, 1005-1006 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

On 332 Vibe says he is 'as impatient with religious talk as the next
sinner'; he cannot love the class enemy, insisting that 'our only salvation
is to deal with them as we ought'. On 333, pessimistic in the face of a
'future belong[ing] to the Asiatic masses, the pan-Slavic brutes, even', he
asks: 'Where is our Christ, our Lamb? the promise?' And then, following
Walker's 'In our prayers', he says: 'Foley, spare me that, what we need to
do is start killing them in significant numbers'. 

This passage begins with 'an oratorical throb creeping into Scarsdale's
voice' (332) as he speaks of the class war; one might pay attention to his
dismay at the scale of the enterprise he feels he must undertake, a
pessimism that his speech on 1000-1001 has had to overcome. A page later,
Walker introspective, the sponsorship of Kit is set against 'bringing to the
Christian faith the child of some murderous savage one had been obliged to
slay' (334). The faith in question here is capitalism, the savagery that of
Webb's anarchism. Then, on 335, another of Walker's voices asks: '... this
is what you were saved for? this mean, nervous, scheming servitude to an
enfeebled conscience?'

If we go back to the explanation of their relationship, and Walker's role as
a substitute, on 101 he claims to receive, as a result of the bullet he took
for Vibe, 'communications from far, far away'. When Vibe says he has 'all
the bodyguards I need' Walker says he isn't concerned with Vibe's 'physical
well-being'. At the bottom of that page: 'Foley Walker's advice that day
provided critical acceleration in the growth of the legendary Vibe fortune.'
On 102: '... thenceforward Scarsdale grew increasingly reluctant to make any
move of a business nature without him'. That Vibe depends on Walker is
always already there as back-story. On 332, as Vibe goes into his speech on
class war, he asks: 'What happened to us, Foley? We used to be such splendid
fellows.' Walker's reply at this time: 'Passage of Time, but what's a man to
do?'

On 1006, Vibe is 'unarmed' and makes no attempt to defend himself, insisting
that Walker '[t]ake care of it'. Cf his first appearance on 31: 'Calmly
Scarsdale Vibe nodded, raised his ebony air-cane, cocked it, and pressed the
trigger.'