Atdtda38: In hell, the way people reappear these days, 1077-1083 #3

[Paul Nightingale]

In Lwöw Kit’s ‘discover[y of] the Scottish Café’ (1078) echoes his arrival
in Ostend when the Quaternion World Convention is taking place (526): on
each occasion, as was the case in Torino, mathematics takes him away from,
becomes a substitute for his relationship with, Dally. As before he is
preoccupied with mathematical problem
solving, previously dive-bombing, now
‘a startling implication of Zermelo’s Axiom of Choice’ (1078). Moreover,
‘escap[ing] the Vibe curse’ (527) now becomes the phrase used by Professor
Vanderjuice, ‘out of the Vibe pocket’ (1078). Post-war is post-Vibe, even if
Renzo (1071-1072) and Scarsdale Vibe himself (1000-1001) suggest that it
might be business as usual: on 1077, Policarpe (‘out licking a few
vitrines’) is alienated from the consumerism that is in full flow at the end
of the section. 

Kit and the professor were each compromised by their association with Vibe
and the professor is, from Kit’s pov, ‘now strangely youthful’: a kind of
rebirth that might apply to Kit himself. The professor's lengthy description
of his rescue by the Chums (1079) is suggestive, given his subsequent sudden
disappearance, after which Kit finds himself ‘getting on and off trains
bound for destinations he was less and less sure of’ (1080): cf his meeting
with Dally and changing trains on 908-910. On 1080 agency involves the
decision to change trains with no regard for destination: if Kit is thinking
of Dally, ‘aware that they’d separated, but unable to remember why’, it
perhaps recalls the serendipitous moment when ‘his train and Dally’s
happened to arrive at the same time’ (909). Moreover, using a mathematical
analogy (‘like the convergence of a complex function’, 1080) suggests an
extension of the problem-solving activity in earlier sections.

Such repetitive behaviour assumes the solution awaits discovery. Eventually
Kit does something else (‘At last one day, still hesitant, he decided to
approach [the transparent doorway] ...’ etc) and so finds himself in Paris
(1081). A page later he is made aware of Dally’s (absent) husband as another
person (1082), as though the Kit now in Paris is not, or does not have the
history of, the Kit who last saw Dally in Torino. On 1078 the presence of
Professor Vanderjuice is announced by his speech, his identity revealed only
when Kit has seen him. This speech suggests the existence of alternative
realities but also emphasises the importance of interpretation:
‘dissect[ion] and reassembl[y]’ are in perception and telling. Hence the way
in which this particular section offers, first, Policarpe’s take on hell,
and then the Professor’s account of some kind of ascension (1079).
Similarly, on 1077, Dally is paired with Policarpe; while, on 1081, Kit is
paired with Lord Overlunch, he of the ‘weekend party at Bananas’ (900), now
claiming Dally as ‘my delightful American friend’ (1081).


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