Atdtda38: In hell, the way people reappear these days, 1077-1083 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

As the section begins, Policarpe says Dally ‘looked about to get lost in
thought’ (1077); his aim is to prevent that, perhaps because it would mean
her ‘most languorous moment of maximum surrender’. On 1068 she ‘[is] able to
brood freely about her past’, so continuity is suggested here, even if ‘her
past’ has given way to Kit’s past in the form of Policarpe. At the end of
70.1 she might be seeking refuge from American tourists but anticipates
interruption ‘at just the right moment, before it [gets] too mopish’; on
1077 Policarpe aims to prevent introspection by inviting her to contemplate
hell (once she has provided him with cognac).

She is distanced from Kit insofar as his relationship with Policarpe
excludes her: she is aware (‘she gathered’) that they knew each other in
Belgium, following Kit’s earlier separation from Dally in Ch37. On 527
Policarpe is introduced as one of ‘a cell of Belgian nihilists’ and their
presence seems to give Kit an alternative history, one that might not
include Dally: he is preoccupied with ‘escap[ing] the Vibe curse and ...
starting life afresh’. He meets Umeki on 532 and is later ‘poleaxed by the
understanding that there was no use in women looking any other way than
this’ (539), Root’s earlier reference to ‘that redhead’ (535)
notwithstanding.
Policarpe speaks of a ‘true state of affairs’ (1077) and some kind of
enlightenment, at which point he sees Kit without believing the evidence of
his eyes: his theoretical certainty (‘When peace and plenty are once again
taken for granted ...’ etc) requires no such empirical confirmation. It is
significant that Policarpe but not Dally herself glimpses Kit here; the
latter’s return to Paris (‘unexpectedly’) is knowledge not shared with
Dally. Further, Policarpe’s ‘[h]allucination’ might put the reader in mind
of ‘the spit of Foley Walker’ on 619.

The narrative shifts to Kit’s progress following the end of the war,
travelling from Torino to Lwöw. Dally's replacement by Umeki has now become,
after a fashion, the ‘interlude with Dally's friend Fiametta’ (1077): cf
Stray’s ‘somebody rolls her eyes at the wrong husband’ (1076), in which case
discussion of a preferred state (‘our own little republic’) has now become
the question of whether or not ‘[w]e're in hell’ (1077).


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