The narratorial disclosure: loved more than the nation — and the railroad-spike stakes

pivotal · 1 May YDAU, pre-dawn

• When: 1 May YDAU (late in the desert serial; the meeting is "their sixth or seventh")
• What: The one place the text fixes anything about Marathe's motive, it fixes on her — and names her. The narration states what Fortier does not know: "M. Fortier did not know Marathe had reached the internal choice that he loved his skull-deprived and heart-defective wife Gertraud Marathe more than he loved the Separatist and anti-O.N.A.N. cause of the nation Québec, making Marathe no better than M. Rodney 'the God' Tine" — the comparison to Tine's Luria attachment made explicit and mutual (the Rodney Tine timeline carries the same sentence from the other side). And the stakes are given in her body: "If Fortier knew of this, he would understandably drive a railroad spike through Gertraud's boneless right eye, killing her and Marathe both." This is her first naming in the novel — spelled "Gertraud," against "Gertraude" everywhere later (Dating notes). The same paragraph restates the A.F.R.'s official picture with her as its currency: "The A.F.R. believed Marathe functioned as a triple agent, pretending to betray his nation for his wife". NOTE on scope: the disclosure fixes the internal choice as narrated; it does not settle Marathe's operational endgame (whom he finally serves), which stays open — as does the sincerity of the bar-story version of the same love (event 10). [Attribution note: narrated, Marathe-focalized third person — the closest to an authorial statement her story gets.]