Supper at the E.T.A. dining hall (pp. 632–633)
And two black girls on the breakfast crew reportedly found a set of squeegees on the dining hall’s north wall, several meters up and hung crossed in a kind of saltire, placed there by parties unknown. […] Unmentioned is the fact that Schacht and Tall Paul Shaw at lunch went over the whole part of the north wall the black girls said they found the squeegees on and could find neither nails nor holes from nails, as in no visible means of attachment. The whole thing’s been studiously not talked about, adding to everybody’s discomfort at Troeltsch’s hoarse complaints about tuition, which vary in specifics but are otherwise routine.
Context
The one displacement with forensic follow-up: court-dryer squeegees hung crossed high on the wall — a saltire, a heraldic X — with no nails, no holes, no visible means of attachment. Physics quietly refuses to explain, and the community's response is the book's signature move around the uncanny: studiously not talking about it.