Against the Day, Chapter Fourteen: Frank Traverse's Further Mexican Adventures!

Frank's still tangled up in the Mexican Revolution. He's been injured, having been shot and falling off a horse, so he's laid up but recovering in a church. El Espinero, the Indian shaman he'd met way back when, makes an appearance: is Frank dreaming? No, but he's actually there. Who ELSE is there? The other Estrella, Stray, Reef's former partner, somewhat deflatingly "on the arm of some impossibly good-looking Mexican dude" (920) named Rodrigo. She's apparently gotten much tougher, trading hostages with Madero and his people (one of whom this guy she's with is). They smoke a little and he goes back to sleep. This is nice:

Frank drifted off and when he drifted back, everybody had left including El Espinero. Stray had put the cigarettes under the rolled-up shirt he was using for a pillow to keep them safe, which seemed such a tender thought he wished he'd been awake for it. (921).

Aw. Pynchon can be, uh, not subtle about romance, but then, sometimes...there are things like this!

Who else is around? All your favorites! Next up is "'at there Ewball Outst," who was traded for Rodrigo. I admit I'm a bit hazy on some of these details here. There's a conversation about anarchism; Ewball opines that

There's plenty of folks who deserve being blown up, to be sure...but they've got to be gone after in a professional way, anything else is being just like them, slaughterin the innocent, when what we need is more slaughterin of the guilty. Who gave the orders, who carried 'em out, exact names and whereabouts--and then go get 'em That'd be just honest soldiering."

Stray protests: "don't they call that nihilism?" Do they call it that? Am I missing some context here? I'm sure "they" don't like it, but I'm hard-pressed to see how you'd call it...nihilism. Well, maybe they do, and in any event, Ewball's response seems, ah...relevant to current events:

"'Cute, ain't it? when all the real nihilists are working for the owners, 'cause it's them that don't believe in shit, our dead to them are nothin but dead, just one more Bloody Shirt to wave at us, keep us doin what they want, but our dead never stopped belongin to us, they haunt us every day, don't you see, and we got to stay true, they wouldn't forgive us if we wandered off of the trail. (922)

This whole conversation is really a bit confusing to me, however. I mean, you can certainly think of cops (acab) in those terms, but nihilists? I wouldn't say that. Just because you believe in horrible things doesn't mean you believe in nothing. But maybe I'm going overboard with the modern-day parallels. Deuce Kindred might be a nihilist, I suppose.

WHO ELSE? It's Wren Provenance, Frank's former...friend with benefits? I'm not sure what to call her. They fall back into their former ways, though just for the time being (Stray and Ewball seem to briefly be a thing also).

You will recall that Wren was investigating a tribe that had, for mysterious reasons disappeared--there seemed to be some mysterious something that was after them. El Espinero gives Frank some of the potent hallucinogen that he'd taken earlier, leading to a vision of--seemingly; this is not super-clear, as so many things aren't. A dream for a future:

finding out this is a city not yet come fully into being, but right now really just a pausing point of monochrome adobe, for this gaudy, bright city they hope to find someday, Frank sees, is being collectively dreamed by the community in their flight...the trespassers, content with what they had seized and occupied of Aztlán, would give up the pursuit and continue with their own metamorphosis into winged extraterrestrials or evil demigods or gringos, while the fugitive people would be spared the dark necessity of buying safety by tearing out the hearts of sacrificial virgins on top of pyramids and so forth (926)

Of course, "trespassers" should set off frantic alarm bells in your head. Are the "trespassers" really any force seeking to oppose its malign will on the people? That could go in politically unsavory directions. Disregarding that, it's super-interesting to think about, though.

There's a brief paragraph about a biplane appearing on the scene, to everyone's alarm, never having seen such a thing before. It flies over and leaves, apparently; is this supposed to represent the beginning of World War I? Might could be.

Wren is looking at the pictograms on old ruins in the area, which it seems are different from the other ones she's seen:

Pottery, stone tools, corn grinders, no sign of the creatures they drew on the rock walls up north--so absent in fact that it's suspicious. As if it's deliberate. As if they're almost desperate to deny what's pursuing them by not making any images of it at all. So it ends up being everywhere, but invisible. (928)

I don't know, Wren--are you sure you're not reading a whole lot into this? Not that it's not interesting and suggestive on a metaphorical level but "there's no sign they're being chased by unnamed hellbeasts! That must mean they're being chased by unnamed hellbeasts!" would...not necessarily go over well with your doctoral committee.

Anyway, Wren and Frank end again, as does this chapter. The next one is a biggie, so PREPARE YOURSELF!