IJ study archive

Scene 007: attache receives cartridge

Scene
7
Pages
33–37
When
Wednesday 1 April, YDAU (2009), ~1800-1927h
Where
the medical attaché's sublet apartments, Boston (far from the legation's Back Bay digs)in: metro Boston (unspecified)
POV
the medical attaché (3rd person, present tense)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 9)

Summary

The Entertainment claims its first on-page victim. The medical attaché — a Canadian-born, half-Arab E.N.T. virtuoso attached to the Saudi Minister of Home Entertainment's legation, whose nightly ritual is total passive ministration (wife, bib, tray, teleputer) — is dismissed early from the Töblerone-ravaged Prince Q———'s bedside on Wednesday 1 April YDAU. Home alone on his wife's tennis night, with nothing viewable, he opens the day's mail and finds a plain brown unlabelled cartridge in a padded mailer postmarked suburban Phoenix, return address only "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!" with a crude smiley face — though his anniversary is in October. Irritated and underappreciated, he decides to preview "just enough of its contents to determine whether it is irritating or of an irrelevant nature," and plans a quiet early evening he will never have. The scene closes with the clinical time-stamp that starts the countdown: he settles in with tray and cartridge at 1927h.

What to notice

The narration is a coroner's report in present tense: exact clock times, and a legal hedge dropped mid-sentence — the fatal Q-Tip lapse happens "(it is alleged)" — as though the evening were already being reconstructed after the fact, which is exactly what the prose is doing; the closing time-stamp only makes the method explicit. Notice how small the hinges are: the first on-page victim of the deadliest object in the book is home alone because of a prince's candy habit, and he opens the mailer himself only because his wife normally pre-scans his mail "for relevant interest to himself" — he is killed by doing her task once. The word that tolls through the last page is "irritating": he is "prepared in advance to be irritated", resolves to scan only enough to class the thing as "irritating or of an irrelevant nature" — annoyance as the exact wrong category, a man misfiling the apocalypse while the reader watches. The physician's kindly send-off, "make a well-deserved early Wednesday evening of it", returns verbatim in the attaché's own plans a page later — prescription become intention — and those plans run as a full future-tense itinerary (lamb, news summary, the surf-and-rain loop) whose every "then" the reader already knows will never arrive; his last recorded worry is that his wife might wake him by removing the dinner tray in "a clumsy or undeft fashion".

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 33: Subsidized-Time satire from outside: the legation finds the calendar's "promotional subsidy" hilariously vulgar — the Libertine Statue in an enormous adult diaper.
  • pp. 33-34: The attaché's résumé: "the DeBakey of maxillofacial yeast"; Prince Q———'s Candida albicans from an all-Töblerone diet; obscene Saudi fee scales.
  • p. 34: The unwinding ritual: wife loosening clothing, molded dinner tray over the head, cartridges pre-docked, recliner-to-bed conversion with "surf and rain" loop — spectation as total infantile care.
  • pp. 34-35: Wednesday exception: wife's Arab Women's Advanced League tennis night; fresh Töblerone day; the attaché blamed for a Q-Tip lapse and sent home at 1840h to an empty apartment.
  • pp. 35-36: No entertainment anywhere: the Pulse-Matrix too complex; sports brutish, opera all-uvula, "Mr. Bouncety-Bounce" mistaken for a bipolar-disorder documentary; Tawni Kondo's aerobics a threat of impure thoughts.
  • p. 36: The mail under "a triptych of high-quality Byzantine erotica": the padded mailer, Phoenix postmark, "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!" smiley, no return address; wrong month for his actual anniversary.
  • pp. 36-37: The cartridge itself: black, unlabelled, a second embossed smiley where registration codes should be; he resolves to scan "just enough"; plans for lamb, news summary, early night.
  • p. 37: Closing line: "When he settles in with the tray and cartridge, the TP's viewer's digital display reads 1927h."

Themes in this scene

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • The Byzantine-erotica triptych (p. 36) links the attaché to the Hal/JOI conversation topic (scene 005, p. 29) and Hal's Justinian-erotica essay (scene 001, p. 7).

Forward

  • The mailer is postmarked suburban Phoenix (p. 36) — where Orin lives (scene 012). The attaché is argued — never confirmed — to be a former lover of Avril's (JOI's rant speaks only of "over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés," scene 005 p. 30; the targeting-motive reading is one strand of the mailer question) — on that reading "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!" would be targeted malice, and Orin's possible role as the samizdat's mailer (under Luria's manipulation; cf. the book's closing A.F.R. moves on Orin) starts here.
  • Continuations: settles in 1927h (p. 37, this scene's close) → scene 011 (2010h, still watching) → scene 014 (0015h, soiled and looping) → the cascade of secondary victims — wife (scene 025), the room filling (scene 028), pp. 78-87 — establishing the Entertainment's mechanics.
  • "Mr. Bouncety-Bounce" (p. 35, mistaken for a bipolar-disorder documentary): the host also wears an adult diaper (p. 648; Carlisle catch) — show, Libertine Statue, and the Year's name all in the same garment; the program recurs as Gately's beloved kiddy-show (p. 922) and as the insertion vehicle the anti-Entertainment PSA meeting picks for its ad ("82 Share," scene 168, p. 878).
  • Tawni Kondo (pp. 35-36): first appearance of the O.N.A.N. exercise broadcaster who recurs at p. 620, scene 121.
  • 1 April: same calendar date as JOI's "professional conversationalist" gambit (scene 005) and JOI's eventual suicide — the film made to make Hal speak becomes, on the father's death-date, a weapon that unmakes speech in everyone.
  • The Wednesday wife-tennis detail returns in scene 014 (Mount Auburn club, Narjees, n.11), where her lateness seals his fate.

Notable passages (5)
  • p. 33: "the colossal Libertine Statue, wearing some type of enormous adult-design diaper" — YDAU's name made monumental image.
  • p. 34: the full recliner-ritual sentence ("he wants his bib ironed and laid out...") — pre-Entertainment spectation already indistinguishable from infancy; key entertainment-self evidence.
  • p. 36: "the return-address box has only the term 'HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!,' with a small drawn crude face, smiling" — the samizdat's delivery signature.
  • p. 37: "scan just enough of its contents to determine whether it is irritating or of an irrelevant nature" — last recorded intention before annihilation by pleasure.
  • p. 37: "When he settles in with the tray and cartridge, the TP's viewer's digital display reads 1927h." — the autopsy-timeline clock starts; quotable with the scene-011/014 pulses as a set.

What links here Manuscript differences (2) · Timeline events here (5) · Echoes (5) · Connected from (31) · Passages quoted here (24) · Motifs (3)

Manuscript differences

Timeline events here

Echoes

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs