Pages 105–109
The mountainside serial again, unbroken from p. 97's violet sky: Marathe and Steeply above Tucson, now in full dark, moonrise coming. Nobody moves; this installment is the argument itself — Steeply floats Rodney Tine's love for Luria as ballad material, and Marathe answers with a whole doctrine about love, worship, and nations. It's the longest sustained stretch of talk the two have had, and the book gives it four pages because it means every word.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Kierkegaard and Regina; Kafka and the postbox girl (p. 105) — real: the philosopher's broken engagement to Regine Olsen; Kafka's mostly-by-letter romance.
- Dardanelles (p. 105) — the real strait below Troy; controlling its tolls, Marathe insists, was the war's actual cause.
- sangfroid (p. 106) — French: cold blood; unshakable composure.
- technical interviews (pp. 106, 108) — Steeply's old specialty; endnote 44 says what the euphemism covers.
- gibbous (p. 108) — the moon more than half lit, not yet full.
- crepuscular (p. 108) — active at twilight.
- "Oh Say, Land of the Free" (p. 108) — Marathe's attempt at the U.S. anthem: two different lines spliced into one.
- Quonset (p. 109) — real prefab hut of corrugated steel, shaped like a half-buried pipe.
After you read: three things
1. The temple doctrine is the destination — read pp. 106–108 slowly. Fanatic, Marathe says, comes from the Latin for temple: "worshipper at the temple." From there: "Our attachments are our temple... Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care"; dying for one person is craziness, since "Persons change, leave, die... betray you"; and the thesis — "You are what you love... completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice." Then the question pointed straight out of the book: "Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple?"
2. The scene quietly tells you Marathe is arguing against himself. Mid-debate the narration drops it flat: "Marathe's own betrayal of A.F.R.: for medical care for the conditions of his wife" (p. 106) — he condemns dying-for-one-person as the man who did exactly that. Steeply needles it once, cruelly: "How are your wife and kids doing, up there, by the way?" And at p. 108 Marathe's own vocabulary leaks — the unchosen lover ends "tragically, unvoluntarily, lost," the very register he just banished with "Not tragic. No songs."
3. Steeply's Trojan riff is a case description. "The horse: the gift which was not a gift. The anonymous gift brought to the door. The sack of Troy from inside" (p. 105) — spoken by the operative investigating a lethal cartridge that arrived by anonymous mail (pp. 89–90). Neither man notes the fit. And remember what Steeply is professionally: "genius of interviewing," playing dumber than he is as bait, deploying silence as technique (endnote 44) — a good share of what reads as banter here is method.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.