Where We're At: Part 4.11: Against the Day

Cyprian; Yashmeen; Reef

• Cyprian arrives back in Venice after having looked for (and not found) Yashmeen in Trieste. Vlado's associates tell him that Vlado is captured by Theign and has gone mad and is dangerous to everyone now; they're vowing revenge on his behalf. Cyprian agrees to look for Vlado; he feels responsible for Vlado having been caught. His new landlady tells him that Vlado is being held in the Aresenale.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh (who's gotten married). Ratty tells him that Theign is always protected by bodyguards. Cyprian wants to put Bevis on him, but Bevis is off being in love with Jacintha. Ratty sends Cyprian to see the Principe Spongiatosta, who works for Ratty's organization.
  
• Theign had arranged an assignation between the Principe and Cyprian earlier but now the Principe, like Cyprian, wants to kill Theign ("who has since chosen a most dangerous path of vice and betrayal"). The Principe talks about power as an expression of collective will; the Americans are too young to understand. They discuss, theoretically, the idea that a foreign crown prince might hate Italy and when he comes to power would go to war to take back territory he believes to be his family's, and that this prince had people in Italy already; and that the problem for Italy is who could remain un-bought by the prince. Cyprian offers to ask around in Bosnia (the Usoks, Danilo's people) , where it's all about passion, not money.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen; she's with Reef and she looks rich.
• Cyprian finds himself back to prostitution to raise money to go after Theign properly. He speaks to Danilo's cousin Zlatko. If Cyprian can corner him, they'll torture and kill him.
• Cyprian finds that Theign had been "intimate" with Austrian crown prince Franz Ferdinand. Clearly in sending Cyprian to Serbia, Theign had intended that Cyprian be killed. Theign had been playing England off Russia. As Cyprian's field skills bettered, Theign's had deteriorated "from overindulgence in various luxuries."
• Cyprian begins to follow Theign, invisibly--and then Theign sees him. Cyprian disappears as Theign goes to hurt him.
• Cyprian's dreaming of Yashmeen.
• The day of Theign's assassination arrives; the Usoks will do it. Cyprian thanks the Principe for his efforts in the matter; the Principe invites Cyprian to their masked ball the next week.
• Theign is captured by the Usoks; they take out his eyes (and kill him, we assume).
• Yashmeen sends a message to Cyprian that she wants to see him; he's jealous and emotional; she gives him Vlado's copybook. She seduces him, dominates him. They're in love, or something.
• Cyprian attends the Principe's masked ball dressed as a woman; his wig is made from Yashmeen's hair that she'd had cut to disguise herself. Reef and Yashmeen attend as well. Cyprian tries to seduce Reef at the ball; Yashmeen takes them both to a room upstairs.
• Cyprian's in love with Yashmeen; Reef's an amusement for her (and she for him). They're a threesome.
• Reef tells Cyprian about having deserted Stray and Jesse; Cyprian thinks he should tell Yashmeen.
• Reef dreams about Webb. Webb talks about small victories--his (we presume), not Reef's.
• Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian take off to be with the Anarchists; despite themselves they become rich gambling They randomly run into Wolfe Tone O'Rooney in Monte Carlo. Wolfe's on his way to Barcelona, which is "about to explode, as it had been doing periodically, with Anarchist unruliness." Reef wants to come along; Wolfe tells him to wait for bigger game.
• Something's changed between Yashmeen, Reef, and Cyprian.
• Yashmeen discovers that she's pregnant with Reef's child.

(p. 891)

Where We're At: Part 4.10: Against the Day

Reef; Yashmeen

• Reef drifts around Nice and randomly runs into Flaco. Flaco ran into Frank in Mexico, where he's selling guns and ammo; Frank sends word that he "got one of them". Flaco tells Reef that Mexico is ready to explode and Reef should come with him back there. Reef's at loose ends in Venice; since he split from Ruperta, he's got no information on Scarsdale Vibe--and his heart hasn't been in it "since [his] chilly parting with Kit".
• Reef's defending his newfound like for nice cafes to Flaco when a bomb hits. They tend to the wounded until the police arrive; they're both injured.
• Reef takes Flaco to Professor Pivoine, "sort of a neighborhood couturier of flesh wounds." After being patched up Reef sees Kit--he tries to apologize and Kit says it's alright, nothing he himself wouldn't have done. "What the fuck are you talking about? he struggled to say, I did everything wrong. I ran away from my baby son and the woman I loved."
• Reef's kind of avenging Andrea Tacredi's death as well.
• Meanwhile, Vlado had given Yashmeen a "greens schoolboy's copybook" with field notes that she was to bring with her to Venice; they travel to Venice together.
• Reef returns to Venice, and runs into Pino and Rocco. Their manned torpedo has grown in size and been converted into a small submarine which they've named Il Squalaccio.
• At an underground (resistance?) bar, Reef, who's out with Pino and Rocco, randomly runs into Yashmeen. Austrians are following either Pino and Rocco or Vlado and Yashmeen. There's a shoot-out; Vlado is hit and captured. Pino and Rocco tow Yashmeen and Reef, in Yashmeen and Vlado's boat, to safety. Yashmeen explains that Theign is after her/them--even though in theory Austria and Britain are on different sides--it's not official. Pino and Rocco exit.
• Yashmeen and Vlado had been staying in Trieste; that's not safe now, so Reef shelters Yashmeen in a room in Venice. While Yashmeen cleans up, Reef heads out and hears gossip that the shootout was some outlaw hero down from a mountain stronghold; Vlado is being held in the Arsenale. He comes home to find her half-naked; she seduces him.
• Yashmeen has her hair cut and bleached to hide from the Austrians.
• When the Campanile collapsed, power in Venice migrated to the campanile of San Francisco dellaVigna, near the Arsenale. Vlado's being held in the Arsenale; Theign has an office there. Theign offers to trade Yashmeen for information.
• Yashmeen hears about a shootout at the Arsenale; she explains to Reef the Law of Deterministic Insufficiency. Yashmeen begins to read and figure out the copybook Vlado left with her. She still misses Vlado.

(p. 863)

Where We're At: Parts 4.8-4.9: Against the Day

Cyprian; Yashmeen

• When Austria announces that they're going to annex Bosnia, Theign sends Cyprian (from Vienna) there. He can bring Bevis along. He gives them a ridiculously tiny map; Bevis sees that as evidence that he knows they'll be killed before they'd need to use it.
• Yashmeen find the dress shop closed, and she's locked out of her apartment; she's being chased out of town. Cyprian thinks it's dangerous for her in Vienna and she needs to leave.
• Ratty meets Cyprian in Graz (Austria). Ratty's people think Theign is too close with the Austrians. Ratty warns Cyprian that where he's being sent is dangerous; he'd intervene if he could. He warns Cyprian that Theign is a danger to him (Cyprian). Cyprian asks Ratty to have someone watch out for Yashmeen and mentions that he's considering bringing her to Trieste; Ratty recommends Vlado Clissan (he's in Cyprian's organization and he hates Theign) there to watch over her.
• Theign tells Cyprian that his shop won't or can't help Yashmeen; the Okhrana are interested in her and they need to be friends with Russia. Cyprian reminds him that they had an agreement. In a lovers' quarrel, Theign offers to let him out of the agreement; Cyprian declines.
• Cyprian tells Yashmeen about Okhrana and Theign; Theign might know where she is. But Yashmeen, not Theign, is the love of his life. Cyprian tells her that Vlado will be in touch. They part.
• Vlado and Yashmeen meet; they become lovers; she falls in love with him; he cheats on her.
  

Cyprian, Danilo

• Cyprian is on the John of Asia, heading for Bosnia. Bevis will come onboard at Pola, Austria. Among the other travelers is Jacintha Drulov, who's probably a spy (and traveling with an older woman, Lady Quethlock, who she's claiming is her aunt). Bevis falls in lust with Jacintha. Bevis flirts with Jacintha by explaining the AppliedIdiotics school of spying; he's actually pretty clueless aside from the decryption stuff and may not understand that Jacintha's a spy.
• Cyprian and Bevis arrive in Sarajevo. It's lovely, but there is the occasional explosion.
• Danilo Ashkil is a Turkish Sephardic Jew. ("[I]n Bosnia the fez was like the veil, an emblem of submission, and wearing it one of the costs of doing business"). He speaks tons of languages and he trains spies who'll be working in the Balkans. Cyprian and Bevis are instructed to see him to safety--they'll bring him to Trieste.
• Danilo finds that Cyprian lacks a proper sense of time ("I know it is difficult for an Englishman, but try for a moment to imagine that, except in the most limited and trivial ways, history does not take place north of the forty-fifth parallel. What North Europe thinks of as its history is actually quite provincial and of limited interest." ) and posits that looking at things from a Constantinople-centered world, the war between Turkey and Russia (and the Treaty of Berlin which ended it) is the pivotal event of the 19th century.
• Danilo says he'll need a weapon for the escape; Bevis says they should see the Black Hand--which makes Cyprian wonder whether Bevis has been sent by Theign to spy on him, Cyprian, for Theign.
• Cyprian runs into Misha and Grisha. He thinks they still want to kill him for the Khautsch thing; they don't because no one would pay them for it. They tell them that Khautsch is somewhere in the area. (He'd been expected to commit suicide in Vienna and instead had shot his way out.) Blackmail, even for sexual preferences, is dead. Khautsch randomly walks into the cafe he's looking shabby. Cyprian wants to follow him (or maybe just talk to him) but Khautsch ditches Cyprian.
• Danilo tells Cyprian that the posting in Serbia is a set-up; his English employers have shopped him to the Austrians as a supposed Serbian agent; the Austrians will kill him. Cyprian should regard himself as owing England nothing anymore and should flee for his life.
• Cyprian, Bevis, and Danilo (he's feeling in danger as well) flee.
• Bevis disappears off a train within their first two weeks running and still in Bosnia. Cyprian forces Danilo to get off the train with him to search for Bevis. They pose as Serbian agents and meet Black Hand agents Batko and Senta, who tell them to stay off trains because the Austrians are looking for them.
• As autumn progresses, Cyprian and Danilo travel on foot, then, heading for the coast (?) to catch a boat out. They get shot at, and run; they're in the mountains. One night they see odd lights everywhere and a solitary figure in the distance.
• Danilo falls and breaks his leg; Cyprian uses a rifle as a splint and they make their way to a small village where Danilo can heal. Cyprian mothers Danilo; it's a different kind of desire. They make their way through Serbia and wait for the mountains to melt.
• They travel through Macedonia to Danilo's home town, Salonica. It's in Macedonia, which Greece, Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria all want to control. (Salonica is the Greek city Thessaloniki.) The city's caught between the Austrians and the Turks. Cyprian meets Danilo's cousin, Vesna.
• Russia annexes Bosnia, with German approval.
• Danilo shows up one day with Gabrovo Slim, a Bulgarian. (The Greeks want to exterminate the Bulgarians.) He's in danger because the Greeks think he's a Macedonian revolutionary, which he is. Gabrovo and Cyprian trade clothes, and Danilo and Cyprian send Gabrovo on to Constantinople; he's to find Khalil at the spice bazaar when he gets there.
• Cyprian leaves for Trieste; Danilo, whose home is Salonica, stays.
• As Cyprian travels on ships toward Trieste, he randomly gets a train to Cetinje, Montenegro. There he meets Bevis, who had run off with Jacintha and been there all winter.

(page 848)

Where We're At: Part 4.7: Against the Day

The Event

• The Chums are ... somewhere. Before the Event the town looks muddy and deserted; after the Event ("ripping apart the firmament over western China"), it looks cleansed and new and they know it's Shambhala. But the burst of light that un-hid Shambhala un-hid the Inconvenience at the moment (only that moment) the Event occurred, as well ("tor[e] the veil separating their own space from that of the everyday world").
• The Chums arrive at the site of the Event shortly after the Bol'shaia Igra does; Lindsay says it was the Trespassers.
• Vanderjuice, in Tierra del Fuego, messages the Inconvenience that everything there went chaotic--"gravity itself for a moment simply vanished." Vanderjuice relays the rumor that the Event was caused by an error in some kind of something Tesla was attempting to beam to Peary, in the Arctic. Tesla has abandoned his laboratory since Morgan abandoned him.
• The Chums meet with the Bol'shaia Igra. Padzitnoff wants to know why they didn't tell him/them sooner about the Trespassers; he's known since Venice and might have helped despite official (national) issues. The Russians want to believe the event was caused by the Japanese, or at least the Chinese. The Chums don't know what the American government thinks, because they no longer work for them; they've gone out on their own. Chick is bothered that Padznitnoff is communicating on the wireless without encryption.
• The event has changed the world as the Chums see it. Siberia is crossed by a network of rails , birds have vanished, huge modern cities have appeared. The sky is crowded with cargo balloons of all shapes and sizes, each tethered to its own piece of rolling-stock moving on its own track.
• News of the event radiates out. ("Was it Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation?... Was it... the general war which Europe this summer and autumn would stand at the threshold of, collapsed into a single event?")

• Dally is in Venice and is getting over Kit and working as a prostitute? Someone threatens her that he'll come for her that night, but that night never happens--it's light all night.

• In Trieste, Cyprian ("no longer entirely welcome in Venice") meets with newly-arrived cryptographer Bevis Moistleigh who's trying to decrypt messages about.. .something. All he's gotten so far is the Albanian word for disaster. They're both working for Theign; Bevis wonders why Theign has him decoding stuff from Italy, who's supposed to be an ally, and in German, because Germany isn't. Bevis wonders if the code is (or is related to) some kind of Crusade. They come out of the office into a weird light.

• Reef meets back up with Ruperta in Marienbad, but neither one much cares and she leaves. Reef moves on to touring the spas; he's claiming to have Railway Brain. The spa doctors know he's not sick but because he's a paying customer, they don't say anything. The Event happens and he understands "from the overhead voice--'Really Traverse you know you must abandon this farcical existence, rededicate yourself to real-world issues such as family vendetta, which though frowned upon by the truly virtuous represents even so a more productive use of your own precious time on Earth than the aimless quest to get one's ashes hauled...'"

• Yashmeen is in Vienna, working in a dress shop; Noellyn walks in. They're out to dinner (after sex) and it's not getting dark.

• "It went on for a month.... As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded... most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day."

(p. 805)

Where We're At: Part 4.3: Against the Day

Venice.

• Foley Walker returns to Venice from Gottingen and tells Scarsdale Vibe that Kit has taken off. Why? Foley thinks it's because Kit knows Scarsdale paid for Webb to be killed. Scarsdale wants to know when Kit knew.
• Foley's feeling like Scarsdale's increased the humiliating tasks he's asking of Foley and is beginning to get irritated.
• Reef and Kit watch Scarsdale diving (and Foley supervising) in the lagoon. They've been tracking him, waiting for a clear shot. Reef wonders whether Kit will follow through--he thinks Kit's had something else on his mind since the seance. Kit thinks Reef's talking like an anarchist--Reef doesn't deny.
• Dally randomly runs into Kit and Reef (Kit introduces her to Reef); later she and Hunter Penhallow run into Reef with Ruperta and Algernon(?). Hunter and Pert are old acquaintances. Hunter arranges to have dinner with Pert at a cafe where he and Dally scrounge after rich people (not their place, at all).
• The Principessa Spongiatosta, who Dally's staying with, has been meeting with Derrick Theign and other random people. Hunter tells Dally that the Princess is at risk but Dally will be fine if she's careful.
• Kit feels that Venice is unreal and wonders whether Inner Asia will feel any realer. (Real numbers, unreal/irrational numbers.)
• Dally offers to help Kit and Reef with whatever they're doing; they're conspicuous, she's not. If she doesn't know who they should be dealing with, she knows someone who does. Finally Kit tells her that Scarsdale Vibe killed Webb, and they're in Venice to kill Scarsdale Vibe. Dally pretty much knew this when she offered to help. Kit explains that moreover, something must have gone wrong in the States, because now Vibe's people are after him--that's why he left Germany. Kit's plan is to do the deed, then head for Inner Asia. Dally's kind of in love with him and feels like he's going to abandon her again--he says he'll come back but can't promise when. It also feels to Dally like Merle's craziness.
• Ruperta leaves for Marienbad; Hunter goes along for part of the ride.
• With Hunter gone, Dally joins forces with Kit and Reef. Vibe needs to be shot at close range so no one else gets hurt; Reef thinks Kit should do it, Kit thinks he'd be at risk from Scarsdale. Dally's getting impatient with the discussion and says that they're not the only ones looking to get to Vibe: "You're in Anarchist country, buckaroo. Sooner or later over here, they're bound to run out of royalty to shoot at and start lookin for more of the riffraff--politicians, captions of industry, so forth. And that's a list Scarsdale Vibe has been on for some time." Reef asks if there's really something already being planned.
• Dally takes them to meet Andrea Tacredi, the artist and anarchist. He's upset because Vibe is buying up Venetian art, turning passion into commerce. He's been talking anarchism and assassination.
• The Principessa takes Dally, who's mooning over Kit, to a big party where Scarsdale Vibe is also a guest. Reef and Kit are outside doing reconnaissance. Reef sees that Dally is in love with Kit; Kit doesn't. There's a huge storm and the city is flooded. A gunshot is heard as Vibe and Foley arrive. Tancredi is in the street looking out of place; he's carrying what he'd described as an infernal machine that would bring down Vibe; police or bodyguards hired by Vibe shoot and kill Tancredi. Vibe eggs on the police as they kick at the corpse. He sees Kit.
• Dally says that someone sold out Tancredi; she's mourning him. Kit has to leave (Venice and Dahlia because Vibe saw him). He promises to come back.
• The moment that Vibe saw Kit was the moment Kit realized he had no "future" (in the material success sense). He's running now not for anything or anyone (God, Yashmeen, Vectorism) but to save his own life.
• Reef blames Kit for not killing Vibe at the party. He walks away "soon absorbed into a mobility of hundreds of separate futures, whose destiny could not be told in any but a statistical way. And that was that."
• Kit leaves on a steamer for Trieste.

p. 747.

Where We're At: Parts 4.1-4.2: Against the Day

Cyprian Latewood

• Cyprian, who we last saw mooning after Yashmeen at Cambridge, is posted to Trieste to monitor the docks and emigrant traffic to America. (Trieste and Fiume have become destinations for Austro-Hungarians who want to head west.) He's tracking who goes out, who comes back, and so forth.
• He'd previously been in Vienna, where Russians Misha and Grisha recruited him for a secret (must tell no one) something for someone they don't identify.They leave messages for him scheduling appointments at various locations; they're watching him. Finally he's summoned to an address in the Jewish quarter, where he's blindfolded, handcuffed, and caned by the Colonel. (who?) These assignations continue.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh, his old school chum. He assumes that Ratty is working for some part of the British foreign service ("which Desk") and asks him to get him out of Vienna. Ratty needs to know exactly what kind of trouble Cyprian is in; he's in contact with people who might be able to help. ("[I]t isn't's if one starts off intending to live this way... 'Oh yes planning, you know, to seek a career in sodomy.'")
• Ratty arranges an appointment with Derrick Theign. Someone from Misha and Grisha is watching Ratty; Derrick plays it as a seduction.
• Derrick ditches the tails and sends him to Trieste. (Ratty wanted to return to England--but that's not safe, and actually he might be better off even further east than Trieste.) Then he (Derrick) sets up Grisha--he'll be arrested for having led Cyprian, as his ward, into an immoral life. Cyprian is told that the Colonel (an expert in south Slavic politics) knows where he's being sent (or where he is before he goes?). Derrick's shop has the Colonel arrested and Cyprian is free to go, owing (and now working for) Derrick.
• Derrick and Cyprian are moved to Venice--"It was occupied a fateful geopolitical cusp ever since it lay at the ancient intersection of Western and Eastern empires--as it still does in our day, though the empires have mutated around it".
• Derrick's a senior lieutenant in the navy, in the Naval Intelligence Department. He's nominally in Venice to look into stolen engineering documents. He explains that the Russians, meanwhile, have an aerial surveillance program going, in ships that are invisible.
• Derrick and Cyprian become lovers?
• Derrick's people lose track of Misha and Grisha.
• Derrick's actually in Venice to set up RUSH (rapid unit for shadowing and harassment), a crew of motorcyclists who will be able to maintain communication when war closes off telegraphs and trains, etc. Cyprian's to be one of the motorcyclists.
• Derrick sends Cyprian back to Vienna. Cyprian's of interest to British, Russian, (and Italian?) operatives all of whom want him dead.

• Cyprian returns to Vienna
• The Colonel was Max Khautsch.
• Cyprian meets Miskolci (a vampire who had worked for Theign; the vampires have their own telephone exchange in Buda-Pesth, which is of use to Theign); Dvindler, who Theign recruited in the baths (spas), Yzhitza, a whore. They all work or worked for Theign.
• There are many Socialist demonstrations going on.
• Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen. She's working at a dressmakers, apparently through some workings of TWIT. She complains that she's being watched, by someone local and also by Russians. She's scared. Cyprian says the Okhrana can be bought but the Austrians (Kundschaftsstelle) might be more of a problem.
• Cyprian takes Yashmeen's problem to Ratty McHugh.
• Ratty sees Yashmeen's problems relate to the "Shambhala Question" and thinks that Auberon should have been pulled back years ago.
• Ratty and Cyprian and Yashmeen meet. She tells them that she'd been contacted by Germans at Gottingen, and had been sent to Buda-Pesth where TWIT(?) was investigating the 'parapsychical.' (The Russians who've been following her are either part of the Anglo-Russian alliance or socialists.) Some of these Buda-Pesth people believe that they can predict the future. Ratty wants to know why they all left Vienna when Yashmeen did--did someone foresee something? Yashmeen explains that they were scared and no, it had nothing to do with Yevno/Monsieru Azeff, "notorious for blowing up Romanoffs whilst shopping his comrades". Yashmeen doesn't know why they left; apparently whatever they brought her to Buda-Pesth (where Mme. Eskimoff, Swome, agent Lajos Halasz, the Cohen, and others had been bickering) to do, it became clear that she couldn't.
• Cyprian returns to Venice and asks Theign to help Yashmeen.

page 723.