face to face, and nothing crosses; the vow to try anyway — "for a second the blank white…" · S5
for a second the blank white veil levelled at him seems a screen on which might well be projected a casual and impressive black and yellow smily-face, grinning, and he feels all the muscles in his own face loosen and descend kneeward
Context
The theme at its most naked: a man directly facing another person, wanting to answer, and finding the whole cavern of his head empty of anything that will cross the gap — the veil in front of him going blank as a screen onto which his own dread projects a grinning mask. And the scene's answer to it is not a technique but a vow: Gately settles back in "asking silently for help to be determined to try to really hear or die trying." Really hearing is set out as the one thing worth staking a life on, precisely because it so reliably fails.