Page 719
One paragraph, no date, no bodies on stage: a flat, dossier-style statement of policy from inside Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, the wheelchair cell that has held the Antitoi brothers' Inman Square shop since the events of pp. 480–489. It interrupts the 14 November street scenes around it to state, in the cell's translated-French house voice, the two ways they are prepared to go after the Entertainment. That's the whole scene; it is short enough to reread, and worth it.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (p. 719) — Marathe's wheelchair-assassin cell, introduced with endnote 39 back at p. 89.
- the Entertainment (p. 719) — the lethal cartridge, so named since the desert conversation of pp. 87–93.
- auteur (p. 719) — French: a film's author-director; the hunt's word for the filmmaker since "the widow of the auteur" at p. 91.
- technical interview (p. 719) — the cell's euphemism; the sentence around it ("if necessary, taking them") supplies the translation.
- abeyant (p. 719) — held in suspension, in reserve.
- Master copy (p. 719) — a duplicable original, as against the Read-Only copies whose implications got chewed over at pp. 489–491.
After you read: three things
1. This paragraph is a table-setting device: two routes, ranked. The indirect route — "surveillance and infiltrating the surviving associates of the Entertainment's auteur, its actress and rumored performer, relatives," with abduction and "technical interview" if necessary — is explicitly the less-preferred one, "held abeyant." The direct route comes first: find a Master copy themselves. Which is why they are still in the shop, "turning all the stones."
2. You can do the placing the paragraph declines to do. "Its actress and rumored performer" and "relatives" go unnamed — but you know who orbited this auteur: the veiled woman who acted in his late films, and a family in Enfield. The paragraph reduces them all to vectors toward a cartridge. That's noticing on your part; the text keeps its dossier flatness.
3. The splice is the menace. By internal evidence this is standing policy from days before the street scenes it's dropped among — and its placement recolors them. The shop being searched here is the same "one last place" a certain red-coated figure announced he was walking toward at p. 690, eight blocks and a purse-snatch ago. The book has quietly made these Cambridge blocks the hunting ground, and told you so in a single paragraph of someone else's grammar ("Less better...," "the directer route," "comme on dit").
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.