Atdtda38: Selections from her life, 1065-1068 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

The new chapter opens with Dally's speech, apparent confirmation that Merle
did not imagine the ending of the previous chapter. The letters and
newspaper reports etc on 1046 have been replaced by an up-to-the-second
account, one that Dally herself offers, technology replacing technology.
However, in speaking of marriage, Dally invokes tradition: '... he would
have asked you for my hand ...' etc (1065), which locates her as much within
patriarchal discourse as within a conversation made possible by the
telephone. Perhaps this is, after all, at least at the outset, a
continuation of Merle’s fantasy. On 1061 the 'high-speed blur' presumably
includes everything (uncensored?) that she tells him, and 'all her time
since Telluride ...' etc becomes, on 1066, 'the whole story of her life
since she'd left him at Telluride'. If, however, the technology that allows
him to fast-forward events 'up to this very evening' (1061) and even into
the future ('her picture was speaking' on 1062 appears as a reference to
film soundtracks), she remains, nonetheless, his daughter. Moreover, as the
section goes on, the posited patriarchal arrangement between father and
husband breaks down when she is separated from Kit.

The reader might conclude that the opening lines on 1065 refer to Kit, but
he is not identified by name until the reference to 'the whole story of her
life' on 1066. At the section (and chapter opens) the narrative offers Rene
as witness, 'studying her' (1065): as an audience for Dally's speech, the
reader is positioned as much with him as with the absent Merle. Similarly,
the 'group of Americans' on 1066 are offered as an audience for the
performance by Dally and the 'pretty young woman' who used to be La
Jarretière, a performance inspired by the presence of an audience. The
attention of this group of tourists is on Dally's friend, whose performance
marginalises Dally until 'the tail end'. Here, Dally is not the well-known
celebrity she might have been elsewhere. It seems she 'drifted into' the
Parisian 'scene', information that precedes any mention of Kit or how she
came to be here: the account offered by the former La Jarretière is an
alternative to the account, by Dally, that the reader waits for.

That account takes the form of a 'sorry spectacle'. On 1061 she is
discovered 'just leaving her rooms'; here on 1066 she 'climb[s] to her
flat', the reversal operating as a rewind that releases her from the
preceding scenes at the café and in the street, finally allowing her to be
introspective. The reader now has some access to her thoughts. This shift is
signalled by the first reference to Kit 'on her mind'. A brief account of
their marriage and life in Torino is followed by the reappearance of Clive
Crouchmas on 1067. Marriage has been a phase they have gone through by the
time the war ends with Dally in Paris and Kit 'off on some grand search
after she didn’t know what': this is as far as her narrative here can
extend. If Merle has brought Dally within reach, Kit remains elusive.


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