losing his mind,
going crazy, moonstruck, stark, staring mad, as though still stag-
nating in his filthy marshland and simply conjuring this vision out
of a bout of paranoia - casino, yacht, Faustina and all.
All right - but, if so, why, as though caught up in a warp in
chronology, should Ishmail again catch sight of a party uncannily
similar in both word and act to that of his first visit: dancing by
moonlight, Louis Armstrong playing a foxtrot. . . ?
All right — but, if so, worst of all (for Ishmail's fiction now
actually starts to nourish his own hallucinations, it's now that a
comparison of his own situation with that of Bioy's book, a
comparison that's possibly illusory and anyway naggingly hard to
pin down, will occur to critics), why, occasionally, whilst walking
along a corridor, should Ishmail abruptly find a door ajar in front
of him and a footman coming out with a tray in his hand and
why should this footman look glassily past him?
As though by instinct, Ishmail jumps out of his way, watching
him put a book, say, on top of a trunk and approaching it in his
turn to find out what's in it. But why is it so inhumanly hard
and smooth to his touch? No Titan, no Goliath, could lift up
such a book.
It's as though a cunning troll or hobgoblin has sought to statufy
all that is solid within and around this casino, to spray it with
poison gas or coat it with varnish, incrusting surfacings and
suffusing grains, controlling atoms and ions, so that nothing
stays for long as it was.
2 1
Things may look normal-, if Ishmail looks at a thing or at an
individual, it logically follows that that thing or individual is
actually in front of him; a sound (a laugh, a cry, a jazzy riff) is
just as loud in this world as in any normal world, an odour (of
a blossom, of a woman's hair) just as fragrant to his nostrils. Now
Faustina is lounging on a sofa among an array of silk cushions as
soft: and light and airy as balloons. Now his darling stands up
and walks out, abandoning on a cushion (as a gift to him?) a
bulky gold ring with a multi-carat diamond stud. Ishmail jumps
up, taking this ring as a sign, a sign that Faustina is his, but is
too afraid of that odious individual with his morning suit and
his glass of whisky - a husband? a suitor? just a companion? -
to admit it (for nobody could claim immunity from a Law making
of Ishmail an outcast, a pariah: nobody could touch him or stop
him from strolling back and forth; but nor was any human con-
scious of him at all).
Making contact with Faustina's cushion or ring for only an
instant, though, a numb, downcast, haggard Ishmail withdraws
his hand. What, again, occurs is that this cushion, say - a thing
normally as soft and downy as a baby's bottom - is, to his touch,
now a hard, cold, compact block, as rock-hard as a diamond, as
though part of a shadowy twin world consubstantial with
Ishmail's own but caught through a glass darkly, a living mirror
of our own world and just as cold, shiny and insular as a mirror.
A world, too, in which all that is human, or inhuman, maintains
a capacity for motion and action: thus Faustina can unlock a door
or charmingly languish on a sofa; thus that boorish individual
(as Ishmail cannot stop thinking of him) has no difficulty at all
pouring out a whisky-and-soda; nor, thus, has a jazz band any
difficulty striking up a foxtrot, a yacht docking, a woman drop-
ping a gold ring, a footman sashaying along a corridor holding a
tray. For anybody, though, not part of it all (which was obviously
Ishmail's plight), that world was nothing but a smooth, cyclical
continuum, without a fold in it, without any form of articulation,
as compact as stucco or staff, as putty or portland; an imbrication
2 2
of nights without adjoining days, a total lapidification, a flat,
hard, constant, monotonous uniformity in which all things, big
or small, smooth or lumpish, living or not, form a solitary, global
unit.
Though
going crazy, moonstruck, stark, staring mad, as though still stag-
nating in his filthy marshland and simply conjuring this vision out
of a bout of paranoia - casino, yacht, Faustina and all.
All right - but, if so, why, as though caught up in a warp in
chronology, should Ishmail again catch sight of a party uncannily
similar in both word and act to that of his first visit: dancing by
moonlight, Louis Armstrong playing a foxtrot. . . ?
All right — but, if so, worst of all (for Ishmail's fiction now
actually starts to nourish his own hallucinations, it's now that a
comparison of his own situation with that of Bioy's book, a
comparison that's possibly illusory and anyway naggingly hard to
pin down, will occur to critics), why, occasionally, whilst walking
along a corridor, should Ishmail abruptly find a door ajar in front
of him and a footman coming out with a tray in his hand and
why should this footman look glassily past him?
As though by instinct, Ishmail jumps out of his way, watching
him put a book, say, on top of a trunk and approaching it in his
turn to find out what's in it. But why is it so inhumanly hard
and smooth to his touch? No Titan, no Goliath, could lift up
such a book.
It's as though a cunning troll or hobgoblin has sought to statufy
all that is solid within and around this casino, to spray it with
poison gas or coat it with varnish, incrusting surfacings and
suffusing grains, controlling atoms and ions, so that nothing
stays for long as it was.
2 1
Things may look normal-, if Ishmail looks at a thing or at an
individual, it logically follows that that thing or individual is
actually in front of him; a sound (a laugh, a cry, a jazzy riff) is
just as loud in this world as in any normal world, an odour (of
a blossom, of a woman's hair) just as fragrant to his nostrils. Now
Faustina is lounging on a sofa among an array of silk cushions as
soft: and light and airy as balloons. Now his darling stands up
and walks out, abandoning on a cushion (as a gift to him?) a
bulky gold ring with a multi-carat diamond stud. Ishmail jumps
up, taking this ring as a sign, a sign that Faustina is his, but is
too afraid of that odious individual with his morning suit and
his glass of whisky - a husband? a suitor? just a companion? -
to admit it (for nobody could claim immunity from a Law making
of Ishmail an outcast, a pariah: nobody could touch him or stop
him from strolling back and forth; but nor was any human con-
scious of him at all).
Making contact with Faustina's cushion or ring for only an
instant, though, a numb, downcast, haggard Ishmail withdraws
his hand. What, again, occurs is that this cushion, say - a thing
normally as soft and downy as a baby's bottom - is, to his touch,
now a hard, cold, compact block, as rock-hard as a diamond, as
though part of a shadowy twin world consubstantial with
Ishmail's own but caught through a glass darkly, a living mirror
of our own world and just as cold, shiny and insular as a mirror.
A world, too, in which all that is human, or inhuman, maintains
a capacity for motion and action: thus Faustina can unlock a door
or charmingly languish on a sofa; thus that boorish individual
(as Ishmail cannot stop thinking of him) has no difficulty at all
pouring out a whisky-and-soda; nor, thus, has a jazz band any
difficulty striking up a foxtrot, a yacht docking, a woman drop-
ping a gold ring, a footman sashaying along a corridor holding a
tray. For anybody, though, not part of it all (which was obviously
Ishmail's plight), that world was nothing but a smooth, cyclical
continuum, without a fold in it, without any form of articulation,
as compact as stucco or staff, as putty or portland; an imbrication
2 2
of nights without adjoining days, a total lapidification, a flat,
hard, constant, monotonous uniformity in which all things, big
or small, smooth or lumpish, living or not, form a solitary, global
unit.
Though
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