BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): Jessica wakes

[Monte Davis]

53.38: "This house, town, crossed arcs of Roger and Jessica are so
vulnerable..."

"Crossed arcs" probably alludes to direction-finding technology. Signal
strength decreases at a known rate with distance from the transmitter, so
if you broadcast equal signals from two sources, a receiver (for a V-2
before brennschluss or an Allied bomber squadron) can compare them and
follow a course -- that keeps them equal. Graphically, that course is made
up of the points where corresponding circles (or arcs) cross.

Alternately, it might allude to how J&R chose this trysting place: X miles
from the White Visitation, Y miles from Jessica's anti-aircraft battery.

NB the equivalence -- for their purpose, which is being out of the way of
the war -- of "German weapons and British bylaws." Control is control.

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This section (early December 20, the longest night of the year) begins and
> ends with V-2 explosions: one that brings Jessica awake, "up to watch
> herself watching the night" as Roger sleeps in their evacuation-zone
> hideaway, and one remembered from some earlier time together in the same
> place. There are interpolated scenes of Roger at The White Visitation,
> talking with Pointsman and with Rev. Paul de la Nuit ("of the Night," heh).
> These cannot be known to Jessica, but mesh with her own memories of
> conversation(s) with Roger about the statistics of V-2 strikes.
>
> Page 53: The opening paragraphs echo the beginning of GR: an urban
> nightmare (see London among others in
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Smoke), waking, a cigarette and a
> survey of the scene outside. This time, instead of the impersonal fated
> Evacuation, the nightmare is an implied King-Kongish monster (J's "Fay Wray
> look" coming up on p. 57) gathering up girls who are also dolls, their
> open-and-shut counterweighted eyes becoming Jessica's own as the blast
> jolts her awake. Pointsman's midnight stalking and predatory tenderness
> toward children are in the nightmare mix too, of course -- again, not known
> to daylight Jessica but sensed through the creepiness she glimpses in
> person and hears about via Roger.
>
> <http://goog_1386453923>
> http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03167/kingkong_3167370b.jpg
>
> The dolls, Jessica's "blind little hand," her stuffed panda, cast her as
> childlike -- but very soon she is mother too, smoking as she tidies up
> Roger's strewn clothes. This switching of relational ages runs through
> everything we see of them together (e.g. how she she sees him in the
> passage beginning "Roger really wants other people to know what he's
> talking about" at 56.37).
>
> "...blackout was lifted weeks and weeks ago... being frisked for cameras
> and binoculars" The last significant German bombing effort in the UK had
> been the "Baby Blitz" (Operation Steinbock) of Jan-May 1944, but as the
> name suggests, that -- and most Luftwaffe bombing since summer 1941 -- had
> been small and ineffectual compared to the original Blitz. Still, blackout
> orders remained in effect for some months, not that the V-weapons cared
> about telltale lights from the ground. And even with Allied armies in
> France since early June 1944, precautions against spies continued on
> transport routes between London and the crucial Channel ports.
>
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