Pages 724–728
Antitoi Entertainment, mid-November, dossier voice again: Fortier returns from his Southwest errand to be told the search of pp. 721–723 has ended — a third smiley-embossed cartridge, fished from the kitchen-waste dregs, "secured and verified" as the samizdat, at a price the cell accounts for the way armies do. The scene then follows Fortier's orders outward: a surveillance map, a captured radio engineer, a field experiment, and a bus ride through north Cambridge on the night of 14 November. Plain heads-up: the experiment involves coerced self-mutilation, reported in the same flat procedural prose as everything else.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Bôf (p. 725) — French verbal shrug; Fortier's complete eulogy for two men.
- Read-Only (p. 725) — the found copy can't be duplicated; endnote 303 explains why this was expected. The hunt's new target: the auteur's own Master.
- Rue de Brainerd (p. 725) — the cell Frenchifies Allston's Brainerd Road; their rivals the F.L.Q. keep a sloppy house there.
- Mlle. Luria P—— (p. 725) — the dash is the old novelistic discretion-device; Luria's name has floated through the Marathe material since the pp. 87–93 endnotes.
- "Weee" (p. 726) — WYYY pronounced as a word: the M.I.T. student radio station of Madame Psychosis's show, pp. 181–193.
- demi-maisons (p. 726) — French: halfway houses; note the canvassing radius of 25 km.
- Phoenix House (pp. 727–728) — real rehab-network name; the Somerville facility that politely turns Fortier away.
- sybaritically (p. 728) — from Sybaris, the ancient city proverbial for luxury: pleasure-sunk.
After you read: three things
1. The find is verified by its casualties. Desjardins and Joubet, caught by the cartridge, are "made comfortable since their loss" — locked in with it, declining food, water, and insulin, silent "except... cries of impatience at the player's rewinder" (pp. 724–725). The thing you've known by its Boston-apartment aftermath since p. 33 is now concretely in a room, behind a door, and the dossier voice's litotes ("regretful losses") is at its coldest here.
2. Broullîme's matrix is addiction rendered as econometrics. The first test Subject — Madame Psychosis's own studio engineer, acquired the day of Fortier's return; her radio life quietly erased — gets two viewings free, then each replay costs one self-sawed digit, so the cell can confirm there is "no index of diminishing satisfaction": "the ninth digit... had to come off as quickly and willingly as the second" (p. 727). You have watched this curve all book in human form; here it is as an experimental design.
3. A noose, then a vision. One paragraph maps the indirect route: an E.T.A. employee recruited to join "the Canadian instructor and student already inside" (no names — the placing is left to you); Luria P—— "winning necessary confidences" in the Desert, where the athlete relative lives and where pp. 565ff put a new, persuasive companion at his side; and door-to-door canvassing of every demi-maison in radius, checking rooms for a veiled woman — you know which halfway house holds one. Then Fortier's bus window: two-thirds of Boston "sybaritically entranced... fouling their divans," Tine guiding Gentle's pen through a declaration of war (p. 728) — the apocalypse as one man's contented commute.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.