Who Luria is: the double-amanuensis between Tine and DuPlessis

pivotal · UNDATED (standing, Gentle Era into YDAU)

• When: UNDATED — a standing condition across the Gentle Era, narrated in the YDAU present as background to the desert dialogue
• What: The book's whole Luria dossier arrives in one parenthetical: she is "one Mlle. Luria Perec, of Lamartine, county L'Islet, Québec" — the only place the full surname prints — and she is the "double-amanuensis": stenographer to Rodney Tine, Sr., Chief of Unspecified Services, who "had long doubled as the stenographer-cum-jeune-fille-de-Vendredi" (Girl Friday) of M. DuPlessis, assistant coordinator of the pan-Canadian Resistance. Tine's "passionate, ill-disguised attachment" to her is what "gave rise to these questions of the high-level loyalties of Tine" — whether he "doubled" for Québec out of love for Luria, or "tripled," pretending to divulge while secretly keeping his U.S.A. fealty. The parenthetical's own closing hedge — "it was said" — is the register the whole book keeps: everything about her reaches the reader as report, rumor, or implication. n.156 independently corroborates the attachment's grip from the other side: Tine is "hopelessly smitten with the Québecer Luria P——." Nothing anywhere states her own feelings, her orders, or whom she ultimately serves.