"And the wife?" — Steeply's standing probe across the desert serial

texture · 30 April – 1 May YDAU

• When: 30 April – 1 May YDAU (the mountainside serial, per the standing ruling)
• What: In the desert dialogue "the wife" is Steeply's instrument. His very first words on gaining the outcropping include the probe — "'And the wife?' he said, gazing upward as yet. 'How's the wife doing?'" — and Marathe's answer is a closed door: "'Holding her own weight, thank you,' Marathe said. His tone of his voice betrayed nothing." The needle returns mid-serial ("How are your wife and kids doing, up there, by the way?") and again near dawn, sharpened to the point: "You've never been even slightly tempted?... Wife's condition be damned. Kids be damned. Just for a second... have a quick look?" — the wife invoked now as the thing Marathe would have to damn to view the Entertainment. She is also the serial's standing mirror-term: discussing Tine's love for Luria — "Those around Rod the God say the man would die twice for her." — Marathe is focalized weighing "Marathe's own betrayal of A.F.R.: for medical care for the conditions of his wife; for (Steeply might imagine to think) love of a person, a woman" — the comparison the narration itself completes in scene 103 (event 8) and that Steeply's Helen-of-Troy talk keeps circling. Every mention here is "the wife" / "your wife" / "his wife" — she is never named on the mountainside until the scene-103 narration. [Attribution note: Steeply's probes and Marathe's guarded replies are dialogue; the weighing is narrated through Marathe.]