How It All Goes Down
The Persnicketiness of Memory, 1941
- Although the war won't come to Trachimbrod for another nine months, "Trachimbrod itself was overcome with a strange inertness" (32.4).
- Basically, everyone just sits around and reminisces. Again, this chapter is all more conceptual than it is about plot.
- It seems that Safran has been bedridden since his first orgasm. (Yes, that was his first. How'd he fake it for so long?)
- One night, he gets up enough strength to go to the Dial, which, as you remember, is the bronzed corpse of his great-great-great-grandfather.
- They have a long conversation (since apparently the statue talks to him), and the Dial tells him a story about how "people who live next to waterfalls don't hear the noise" (32.61). (But do they go chasing those waterfalls?)
- Then it seems that the sky pukes on everyone: "The universe poured down in a bombing onslaught of heavenly vomit" (32.72).
- We hope Yankee Candle doesn't make an After the Rain scent that smells like that.