Atdtda35: Repairman, 988-990

[Paul Nightingale]

At the start of the previous section Frank and Günther meet ‘at a dark,
out-of-the-way restaurant’ (986); the new section begins with a description
of the lighting, ‘initially golden, steadily darken[ing]’ (988). Here, rain
‘dash[ing] at the skylight emphasises the positioning of the reader as
inside rather than out. At the top of 989 Frank, left alone, ‘notice[s] a
telescope on a tripod’ positioned at a window. If this leads to his
introduction (‘squint[ing] through the eyepiece’) to the Angel, it also
gives us a second perspective ‘[w]ith his other eye’. At the start of the
section Günther indicates that his harvest is threatened by politics (988);
as the section closes, ‘that year’s coffee crop [is] brought in without
incident ...’ etc (990). The final paragraph then begins: ‘Outside, the
political storm raged along, and occasionally blew in through a window.’ Cf
the opening paragraph’s rainfall, ‘dash[ing] at the skylight’ (988). This
opposition of natural and political provides a context for Frank’s struggle
with ‘this Machine-Age nightmare that Günther ke[eps] calling “the future of
coffee”’ (990).

>From the restaurant in the opening paragraph, they traverse ‘wet streets’
(988) to meet the repairman. This exterior scene is described in list form
and features a montage representing the traditional and the modern, eg
‘crazed motorists’ and ‘troops of cadets on horseback’, or ‘poulterers ...
driving flocks of turkeys ... in and out of the traffic’. When we meet
Ibargüengoitia he is ‘one of a population of newly-emerged entrepreneurs’,
ie in response to changing circumstances and claiming to be non-aligned,
‘working between the bullets, as they liked to put it, to solve problems
created by revolution and re-revolution’. Cf Frank at work, subsequently:
‘After a frustrating hour of disassembly and reassembly ...’ etc (bottom of
989). Anthropomorphism here (‘As if abruptly coming to its senses ...’ etc,
top of 990) follows the similar treatment of the Angel (a feat of
engineering, of course).

As Frank studies the Angel ‘he hear[s] it speak in urgent Spanish ...’ etc
(989); ‘máquina loca’ takes him, and the reader, back a few pages to the
train that very nearly kills him on 985, where he is transfixed by the
‘certainty that jumping or not jumping [is] no longer the point’. There,
Frank is brought back, so to speak by the bug flying up his nostril; here,
it is someone speaking, even though they are nowhere in sight. In these
pages Frank interacts with the inanimate and/or non-human: at the bottom of
989, his relationship with the ‘weirdly designed pulping machine’ is at
first shaped by the German operating manual, as though it is all a question
of communication. Up the page the Angel ‘speak[s] in urgent Spanish ... the
only words he could recognise ...’ etc. Winning his battle with the (German)
machine he speaks to it in Spanish. Previously, Frank wanted out of politics
but, on Günther’s plantation, he finds a continuation of the political.