Atdtda38: On passions and seductions, 1073-1074

[Paul Nightingale]

This final chapter opens with a key narrative question concerning the
Kit-Dally relationship and her presence in Paris, alone. Following 70.1
their relationship breakdown is shown/explained after the reader has been
made aware of it, with as much weight, if not more, given to Kit's
relationship with Renzo (1069-1072); the reappearance of
Reef/Yashmeen/Ljubica (1072-1073); and then the reappearance of Colfax
(1073). Only towards the end of the new section (70.5) does Dally leave for
Paris, Kit finding out after the event (1074). The opening section ends with
Dally's pov, 'able to brood freely about her past' (1068); if the reader
might infer that the narrative will now offer her account of the separation,
or one from her perspective, that is hardly what happens. Her departure from
Torino is marked when Kit discovers her absence: 'when he got back ... she
was gone' (1074), the note she has left, and the 'postcard from Paris' with
which the section ends echoing Kit's letters (1067).

Perhaps this helps explain the function of Clive Crouchmas in these pages:
if he never appears as an agent, he is always present as a signifier, on
1067, 1069 and 1074. Given the passion that drives Dally's relationship with
Kit from 913 onwards, Clive's reappearance is juxtaposed to the passion
shown by Kit for flying and solving mathematical problems. On 910 the
narrative promises Kit and Dally a future, one in which ('Years later they
would be unable to agree ...' etc) they rehearse/recycle stories about the
past; on 917 Kit fails to 'fly into a jealous frenzy' when Dally
'cannonball[s] straight down into her history with Clive Crouchmas', but she
then evades the question posed at the bottom of the page, opting to
speculate, over the page, on 'a small part in a new show' (918). In the
current chapter, the impression given when Clive is reintroduced is that he
is, indeed, somewhat less than 'dangerous': 'not the night's biggest loser
but far short of what he might once have believed was his entitlement'
(1067). Nonetheless, as Dally finally confronts Kit's decision-making
('allow[ing] himself to be seduced into the Futurist nosedive, with its
aesthetics of blood and explosion', 1073), his response is to '[drag] her
history with Clive Crouchmas into it again' (1074). Back on 1069 Dally
points out that '[t]he Austrians shoot people down'. Her reference to 'that
family tradition' (1073) indicates that she is not offering pacifism as an
alternative to warfare per se, merely pointing out that Kit has mistaken his
enemies: Austrian soldiers are his 'brothers-in-arms' (1074) and, invoking
Webb and Reef, '[t]hey're not the ones need bombing'.

That Dally brings up 'that family tradition' after the reintroduction, in
the previous section, of Colfax is significant. The current section opens
with Kit still clinging to 'his engineer's neutrality' (1073), his earlier
'velocity-given illumination' (1071) notwithstanding. Cf the opening to 70.2
on 1068: 'Kit felt right at home ...' etc. Here, it is left to Dally to
point out that 'Reef and your Pa put [bombs] where they'd do some good'
(1074).


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