Against the Day, Chapter Ten: The Return of the Manned Torpedo!

Take that however you want. Whatevz. After having failed to murder Scarsdale Vibe, Reef is in Nice, up to his usual tricks, though "what he really needed was to go out and blow something up" (849). He meets his old anarchist pal Flaco, who had been in Mexico, but now is back. It seems he met Frank in the States. Do we see that? I don't think so, but it's easy to forget, with so dang much going on.

Anyway, they're sitting and chatting and thinking, boy, it sure would be bad if a bomb went off in this here cafe, when wouldn't you know it? They survive, but are badly rattled, as one would expect. Reef has a dream, or vision, where Kit tells him it's all right, to which his psyche responds, "What the fuck are you talking about? I did everything wrong. I ran away from my baby son and the woman I loved" (852). Well, he'll get over it. Sort of.

Flaco suggests that going after people like Vibe may be a waste of time. "But that don't mean Vibe and them don't deserve it," Reef objects. "Course," Flaco counters, "But that's retribution. Not a tactic in the bigger fight" (852). I feel like there are moving targets here: sure, killing individual industrialists won't solve the problem, but no more will killing individual flunkies like Sloat. The System is the issue. How do you "kill" that? There's the rub.

Yashmeen, whom Vlado has given a book called The Book of the Masked, which consists of various occult science and secret codes. In a Pynchon novel? Checks out. Reef return to Venice, where he meets her, as well as our ol' pals Pino and Rocco, who are still at it with their torpedo: "NOw, all at once, rearing out of the water in a great smoking splash of Italian profanity, came a species of Adriatic sea-monster from which two creatures in rubber suits dismounted and came trudging up the sand" (854). That description amuses me.

Alas, unknown assailants attack them, and Vlado is taken. Good, fuck that guy. Seriously. I know I'm reading the book counter to itself, refusing to accept the premise, but he's a goddamn rapist and I don't like him. Rocco and Pino give Reef and Yashmeen a lift, and they crash at Reef's place. She bathes while he goes out to try to figure things out; when he comes back...well, we get an extremely porny scenario. Looking at her sleeping form arouses him and he's beating off when she turns out to have been awake, and "are you committed to this disgusting activity, or might the vagina hold some interest for you, beyond the merely notional?" Uh huh. I mean, granted, that's a sort of clever line, and it would be delightful it it ended up being coöpted for an actual porn script, but I do have to roll my eyes. Shouldn't she still be at least a little shaken by having been violently attacked and seen her lover dragged away to who knows what fate? Is this normal human behavior? Should I even be asking? Well, the inevitable happens, anyway.

Vlado imprisoned by the villainous Derrick Theign. At what point exactly did he become villainous, and why? I am not at all clear about any of this. But anyway, now he's some sort of slobbering sadist, so things are not looking too good for ol' Vlado. Good.

Yashmeen tries to explain numbers and probability to Reef, though with predictable lack of success. Except now apparently he's better at roulette, so you tell me.

The section ends with her looking at the book Vlado had given her and finding something suggestive:

It appeared to be a mathematical argument of the classic sort, one even Riemann might have made, except that everywhere terms containing time stood like infiltrators at a masked ball, prepared at some unannounced pulse of the clock to throw back their capes and reveal their identities and mission. (863)

It's all about time, innit?

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