BtZ42: on the road to Greenwich

[Monte Davis]

After the banana breakfast, Pirate sets out for the V-2 impact site on p.
11, but won't get there and collect his mail until p. 20. In between, we
get mostly -- but not entirely -- flashbacks:

(11) Rumanian royalist's fantasy: Wartime London was home to Eastern
European governments-in-exile from the Baltic states south to the Balkans,
and it was not clear in late 1944 which might be re-installed after the
war, or at least used as bargaining chips with the Soviets who were
overrunning that territory. This seems to be more or less "real time"

(13) memory (date indeterminate) of the tramp, Girl Guides, and "sizzling
night"

(13-14) memory from 1935 of Loaf's fantasy, the Moslem Messiah -- which
alerted the Firm to Pirate's talent

(14-16) "At last, one proper Sherlock Holmes London evening" -- date after
1935, but indeterminate -- the Adenoid, an outgrowth of Foreign Office
Balkan specialist Blatherard Osmo. This sequence ends with Osmo's
mysterious death in 1939, so the "2 1/2 years" Pirate spent in daily visits
to the Adenoid were within the 1935-1939 span... IF, that is, this
recollection is of "real time" rather than of Pirate taking part in an
ongoing Osmotic fantasy, which strikes me as more likely in context.

I doubt it's coincidence that this sequence goes from the Rumanian hint at
"what will happen after WWII" to the senior diplomats' fears of "Balkan
Armageddon," i.e. a replay of WWI's origin in Serbia (cf. also Against the
Day).

So... why an adenoid (i.e. a tonsil), rather than an appendix or spleen or
hypothalamus? Why human tissue at all, rather than some other stand-in for
Osmo's fears? Its slimy protoplasmic aspect led me on first reading to
think of SF movies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Master_X-7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_II

And its _sshhlop_ing of the troops is parodically close to a scene of the
Martian death ray in Wells' The War of the Worlds.

All I got -- not much -- is a vague association of the "adenoidal" voice
with a nasal drawl allegedly common among the UK twits and toffs who might
have populated the Foreign Office in those days. Still around under new
management:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/that-adenoidal-nasally-geek-voice

And Gogol's Nose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(Gogol_short_story)
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