Dear Don,
It is impossible to advance in ADA without turning back again and again,
now because of the return of two words: Pastrouil and varicolored,
plus a bespattered milk-maid.
While reading about
Van´s adventures in Villa Veen and still thinking about
Fartingben or Fartukoff´s warning about a dangerous contamination ( a venereal
disease, I assumed ), I came across the word "milkman", soon after a
description of a catamite´s distressing dysentery, "defaced by
varicolored imprints of bestial claws...".
"Their joint efforts failed, however, to arouse the
pretty catamite, who had been exhausted by too many recent engagements.
His girlish crupper proved sadly defaced by the varicolored imprints of
bestial clawings and flesh-twistings; but worst of all, the little
fellow could not disguise a state of acute indigestion, marked
by unappetizing dysenteric symptoms that coated his lover’s shaft with mustard
and blood, the result, no doubt, of eating too many green apples. Eventually, he
had to be destroyed or given away (...) In 1905 a glancing blow was dealt Villa Venus from
another quarter. The personage we have called Ritcov or Vrotic had been induced
by the ailings of age to withdraw his patronage. However, one night he suddenly
arrived, looking again as ruddy as the proverbial fiddle; but after the entire
staff of his favorite floramor near Bath had worked in vain on him till an
ironic Hesperus rose in a milkman’s humdrum sky, the wretched
sovereign of one-half of the globe called for the Shell Pink Book..."
"Milkman": a "cowboy", perhaps. But then I remembered the
"accidental milkmaid" who was as bespattered by blood as both
seconds, "Mr. de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin".
"had
bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps
leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan
arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the
shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel
St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting
combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored)
but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly
self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory
trouble..."
In
B.Boyd´s Ada Online I found: charming Monsieur de Pastrouil: Signficance unknown.
Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel: a play on the name
of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), whose name does not usually
suggest saintliness. Whether or not Stalin exists on Antiterra is a moot point:
see 582.19-20.
Milkmaids brought to my mind two names: Louis Pasteur
(1822-1895), the first scientist to admit that small-pox was caused by
microorganisms and the British doctor Edward Jenner ( 1796) who discovered a
"vaccination" ( a new word that refers to "cow" - in French,
"vache", in Portuguese, " vaca" ) by observing a milkmaid´s
immunity to small-pox after contagion with "cow-pox".
Pastrouil could be the scientist Louis
Pasteur? And small-pox, or "varíola", could it be
also have been indicated by a word such
as "varicolored" ( multicolored), plus all the
symptoms of fever, pain and intestinal problems that come before the
rash and the pustules?
But then, why not Pastrouil and Nerjen, for
example, as the seconds, instead of St. Alin? Is there another kind
of contamination ( such as the spread of "varicolored lands") that
arises not by an organic, tesselated or biological kind, but
in reference to Antiterra´s political affairs? What was
Fartukoff´s real warning?
Jansy