"" Esther showed up at Slab's looking like any traditional mill hand, seamstress or tods bag shop girl Done Wrong: dull hair, puffy face, looking heavier already in the breasts and abdomen Pig-pouches around the eyes"Beginning then Maijstral took up the study of Stencil more closely""Schlemihl Cesare has been at work all morning, hollowing out the trunk" Stencil shook his head Nor finer shades; nor words for intellectual states of mind "They're getting away," he saidShe rose, in a near-frenzy, removed blouse, skirt and undergarments and moved swiftly to the door, wearing only the black stockings and white buck tennis shoes Nobody noticed him He closed his eyes The cab drove away, she stood before Le Nerf in an empty street, the flowered bag without gaiety under the clouds"What now?" He wandered into a passageway lined with empty staterooms Irving was off Even what happened then had no clear lines drawn""My father -" curious he'd not caught that flickering edge of hysteria in her voice till now - "when I was only five also began to stay away from home "I was in Cape Town, trying to raise a crew for the Pole" It repeated itself automatically and Stencil improved on it each time, placing emphasis on different words - "events _seem_"; "seem to be _ordered_"; "_ominous_ logic" - pronouncing them differently, changing the "tone of voice" from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round Somehow we'd all thought of the Bad Priest as an older person Bombs were falling over by the Grand Harbour"LoveStencil gritted his teeth If the coincidences are real then Stencil has never encountered history at all, but something far more appalling I'd always had friends on the staffs at Cairo, Bombay, Singapore That's what you ought to do Paola would stay with him"Oh, man," Profane said to the night Then: "Your father was in a German church this afternoon They threw us bodily into the street O God How long did I pray? No way of knowing Her time with Stencil was entirely for him It kept the time moving right along Hole up in that fortress of his Telling Raf had been like comparing notes with a fellow sea dog on a liberty port both had visited The eyes, intact, showed nothing""Maybe that's it," the girl said, after a while I call it Firelily," she smiled at Mondaugen, "because of its sorrel skin She dug the point of her parasol into the ground beside one tiny foot and gazed down at it Field expedients had to be used when you couldn't put up a scaffold each time To herself" With dissecting scissors he undermined the septum along its sides and up over the bones as far as the glabella, at the top of the nose" The city was left to itself; except for stragglers like Fausto, who felt nothing more than an unvoiced affinity and were enough like the city not to change the truth of the "impressions" by the act of receiving them The reflection smiled dolefully Their employers, whoever they might be (Scheissvogel's was a German beer hall, tods bag sale which might be significant, especially so with Italy a member of the Dreibund), could not tolerate such simplicity The Englishman's hands had relaxed Framed for him there were Vera Meroving and her lieutenant in profile, she striking at his chest with what appeared to be a small riding crop, he twisting a gloved hand into her hair and talking to her all the while, so precisely that the voyeur Mondaugen could lip-read each obscenity Old Max was a peregrine and penniless at that The two bums, sensing unfamiliar territory, veered away toward the west and the Park"Stencil's father mentioned her in his journals: this was near the turn of the century""Nope All we do is puke, or break furnitureAfter some time had passed the train climbed to ground level She awaited a Third Kingdom"She laughed, too loud He had to find a way out of Florence A Bongo-Shaftsbury"Oh And where to go from here? He'd seen all he wanted to see of Fairing's Parish Though she would have denied it, she was one with Ferrante, with the Gaucho, with Signor Mantissa; like them she would act, when occasion arose, on the strength of a unique and private gloss on The Prince "Ah, good," he said" "No," screamed Ploy""Under the street," Profane repeated after a minute: "under the Street If surprise was communicated through her hair by any movement his hands may have tods mens made, Hedwig gave no signHe got as far as a decorative grotto, located in the very guts of the house (Maybe the hint of a smile?)Somehow Profane had difficulty getting back in the plot of Existentialist Sheriff Well the same queer mixture, at least, of girl-at-play, tods shoes men girl-in-heat