Narratorial disclosure: Marathe loves Gertraude more than Québec — his true final loyalty

pivotal · 1 May YDAU, pre-dawn

• When: pre-dawn, 1 May YDAU (interior narration during the interface)
• What: The narration states plainly what Fortier does not know: that 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." If Fortier knew, "he would understandably drive a railroad spike through Gertraud's boneless right eye, killing her and Marathe both." This is the closest the text comes to fixing his loyalty — and it fixes it on the wife, not the cause; the operational meaning (does he ultimately serve the A.F.R. or O.N.A.N.?) is still left open. The disclosure comes amid the scene's frame-closing exchange of cross-cultural myths of fatal beauty — Steeply's blond-furred woman of the East, Marathe's own Québecois "L'Odalisque de Sainte Thérèse," whose beauty turns beholders to opal, "A Medusa in reverse" (a beat two independent readings both surface; folded here, same scene). NOTE: he must fight nausea over the work he does — he vomited in the alley after torturing Antitoi with a broomstick handle (foreshadowing event 17).