Page 392 "...likening him to Gilles de Rais"

I had given him Lucian's obvious virtues, likening him to Gilles de Rais or to any other child-molesting, drunken, abusive, criminal mentality developed over six centuries within the Hope of Hell.

A recreation of the Bluebeard story which follows a French Army captain, executed in Brittany in 1440. The list of his crimes include witchcraft, heresy, sacrilege, sorcery, the evocations of demons and the practice of unnatural crime against children, ending with their murder for his delight. (Text courtesy of Amazon.com)

Impression of Gilles de Rais from a Romanian website.

Gilles de Rais:  Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, baron de Rais (1404–1440).  A Breton knight, a leader in the French army, a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known as a prolific serial killer of children. (Text courtesy of Wikipedia.) 



Page 376 "My name's Emmanuel."

Clockwise from top left: Devil's Island cells; inmates of Devil's Island; another view of the cells; Devil's Island from the air; the three Isles du Salut, off the coast of French Guiana [i.e., Devil's Island is one of the three Isles du Salut]; a book on Captain Dreyfus, one of the more "celebrated" Devil's Island inmates; the movie poster for "Papillon" from the book by Henri Charriere (1906-1973).  I read Charriere's book when I was 16, back in 1971, at the recommendation of our neighbor (a close friend of my father's youngest sister). It made a robust impression on me. It is not a book for the squeamish, or the faint of heart.  And because I liked it so much, he gave me "Portnoy's Complaint" to carry on. 

 From page 376 of the book:  “Who are you?” Revenant stood close to him, taking in the dark skin, the black tousled hair, unshaven face, and broken teeth. His clothes were made of a hearty fabric from a foreign mill. His bare feet revealed the infestation of sand fleas having burrowed into his toenails.
“My name’s Emmanuel.”
“And what are you doing here?”
“I’m from the Isles du Salut.”
“Yes, I thought I could smell the prison steps on you,” Revenant stared.
Emmanuel smiled. “You’ve found my dinner I see.”
“I found a young girl named Oyami. Did you kill her?”
The man from Devil’s Island looked up into Revenant’s eyes and nodded.



Page 375 "I honestly felt the presence of God with every whiff of nectar..."

Top: Astrocaryum palm; bottom: awarra and a detail drawing of one of the stingers from the Astrocaryum

From page 375 of the book:  “My limbs were shaking,” he explained, “since I was so stupid as to walk out into the darkness unassisted.  I had no gun.  Foolish man, I know but I honestly felt the presence of God with every whiff of nectar from the red blooms of the manil tree; I felt his presence in the poisonous spines of the Astrocaryum palm and the Bactris.  You rub up against them and you’re as good as a dead man because of their stingers.”



Page 374 "...along the Approuague River..."

Fishing on the Approuague River.

From page 374 of the book: In remote villages along the Approuague River, he shared the communal lands with an unbounded natural museum of rare and exotic birds, unusual plants, brilliant colored amphibians, and bizarre insect species, as well as with mountain lions, squirrel monkeys, giant otters, tapirs, and white-tail deer.

The Approuague River

[Photos Copyright by Robert Hardin]

Page 374 "Yes, I was there, in French Guiana, decades ago."

Table mountains of the northern part of South America; "they called them Tepuis"

Another view of the tepuis

The forest canopy of French Guiana

From page 374 of the book:  "Yes, I was there, in French Guiana, decades ago.”
“You must’ve pissed somebody off to get sent there.”
“No, no, I requested it, after Vietnam. But, Christ! The sun there was like a razor blade against my skin. I lived between the river forests and the table mountains, they called them the Tepuis, with my very simple people, the Javanese, the Creole French, and the Arawak Indians, and all kinds of strange creatures.”

"...with my very simple people, ...the Arawak Indians,..."

"...and all kinds of strange creatures.”

Top: two views of a tapir; bottom:  squirrel monkeys







Page 372 "...the freezing glimpse into the nameless Eternal."

Caravaggio's "Salome with the  Head of John the Baptist" (1607)

From page 372 of the book:  Owen was exhausted by the time he finished his confession, like the executioner who delivered the Baptist's head to Salomé.  Owen carried the broken tablets, the freezing glimpse into the nameless Eternal.

Jean Benner's "Salome" (1899)

Pierre Bonnaud's "Salome" (1865)

Movie poster for Al Pacino's film "Wilde  Salome" (2011)

Caravaggio, "Salome with the Head of John the Baptist" (1609)

Page 357 "the fish and the symbol of Saint Peter blending together around his face."

From page 357 of the book: I felt in my blood the lance of betrayal that he imagined had piked him.  I saw the streamers flowing from the lance, characters of the fish and the symbol of Saint Peter blending together around his face.

Painting of St. Peter's crucifixion

A composite I made of a lance piercing the symbol of St. Peter, the Vatican

[In ecclesiastical heraldry, the Papal coat of arms contain the keys of the office of St. Peter. The Keys of Heaven were, according to Christian tradition, received by Saint Peter from Jesus, marking Peter's ability to take binding actions.[1] Thus, the Keys are seen as a symbol of Papal authority still to this day. "Behold he [Peter] received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the power of binding and loosing is committed to him, the care of the whole Church and its government is given to him [cura ei totius Ecclesiae et principatus committitur]

Page 346 "Shanzenbach suddenly began to sing 'The Marseillaise.'"

From page 346 of the book:  Shanzenbach suddenly began to sing "The Marseillaise," the French national anthem, with Owen providing accompaniment.
    "How I love that song," cried Revenant. "Tell the Good Walter about 'The Marseillaise.'"
    "I don't want to give a history lesson," said Ebert. "I'm half drunk."
    "You know, Walter," began Revenant, "it was composed in 1792, at the beginning of the Revolutionary Wars. That little man, Napoleon, he didn't like it. Screw him."

David's portrait of Napolean in 1792

http://www.alldownloadlinks.com/french-napoleonic-infantry-tactics-1792-1815-elite_225241.html

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, composer of The Marseillaise

Posters for Jean Renoir's 1938 film.

Page 343-344 "The fools.... I drank because it tasted good."

Mourvedre grapes

Vineyard of Mourvedre grapes.  The Mourvèdre grape produces tannic wines that can be high in alcohol, and is most successful in Rhone-style blends, with a particular affinity for Grenache, softening it and giving it structure. It often has a wild, gamey or earthy flavour, with soft red fruit flavours. (Text courtesy of Wikipedia)

Ambrose Dudley painting of Phocean Greeks defeating Cathaginians

Domaine Bandol

Greek plate depicting...yes, the serving of wine

From pages 343-344 of the book: "I walked into a café on the rue September Fourth," he continued. "I sat down and ordered a bottle of wine. Romassan. I drank the entire bottle and ordered another. When I'd begun my third bottle, I could hear voices at a table in the corner. Men were watching me. They felt sorry for me. They said, Look, there's Ebert, drowning his sorrows in wine because his boy is dead. They said, Look, Ebert will drink away his pain. Notre frère boirá les afflictions du monde.
  "But they were wrong," he said. "The fools. I was drinking because the wine was superb. The vintage was Mourvèdre. Its vines were carried over by the Phocean Greeks five centuries before Christ, you know. La balance! L'harmonie! La bouquet! All were...uplifting. I drank because it tasted good!"

Page 344 "They called him 'Our Man in Havana."

From page 344 of the book:  Regretfully, I listened as Owen joined them, dealing the cards, winning pot after pot of chips, relating episodes of his childhood and his adolescence, especially those incidents concerning the discovery of sex and the failure of love. They were full of disappointment and unrealized expectations. He talked of injured cousins, divorced aunts, infant deaths, business failures, heart attacks, teenage abortions, and friends' cancer. The old men hooted and howled and begged him for more. They called him 'General.' They called him 'Professor.' They called him 'Our Man in Havana.' Whistles by the old priest nearly shocked me to sobriety. Revenant grasped Owen's hands and said to him:
"Do your best, my friend. We ask only that you do your best. Don't be afraid."

Clockwise from top left: Cover for the novel "Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene; Graham Greene, 1904-1991, English author, playwright and literary critic; Book cover photo of Greene's "A Life in Letters"; Alec Guiness as James Wormold in the movie version; movie poster; scene from the movie with Alec Guiness and Ernie Kovacs (Captain Segura).

The black & white film version of this book, which I actually just saw a couple days ago, is incredible.  Produced & Directed by the great Carol Reed (if you don't recall Reed, he did "The Third Man"), its comedy is brilliantly entwined with its suspense, all fixed against the shadows and strange sources of light of Reed's view of pre-Reveolutionary Cuba, although the movie was filmed just after Castro overthrew the government of the previous dictator.  I highly recommend this film.  It's available from Netflix.  And one more thing, Ernie Kovacs does a stupendous job, as does Noel Coward. 

Page 337 "My God, I thought, this man's blood was so toxic from medicine, how could he hope to live from the cure?"

From page 337 of the book:   Amid the disarray of glasses were drug vials, some empty, some still with pills in them. I read the labels and afterward identified them with Dr. Fanon's help. There were little bottles of demerol, to squelch his pain; diethylstilbestrol, an estrogen agent, to combat the production of testosterone; fluorouracil, an antimetabolite that directly fought the cancer; as well as vincristine, a mitotic inhibitor, which blocked the DNA assemblage within the cancerous cells. My God, I thought, this man's blood was so toxic from medicine, how could he hope to live from the cure? Another cytotoxic drug huddled in the background: medroxyprogesterone acetate. It was to act as an assassin of the cancer. A large bottle of vitamin C stood next to the vincristine.

The antimetabolite Flucytosine was originally developed in the 1950's as a potential antineoplastic agent. Although ineffective against tumors it was later found to have antifungal activity. This small molecule is transported into susceptible fungal cells by a specific enzyme cytosine permease and converted in the cytoplasm by cytosine deaminase to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)- a pyrimidine anti-metabolite used as chemotherapy for many types of colorectal cancer.

An antimetabolite drip (chemotherapy)

A dividing cancer cell

A comparison of cell division

Page 335 "Both have been cited in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal."

From page 335 of the book: "Your francs were transferred from Luxembourg to two banks in Hong Kong. One is a local branch of a New York City bank, the other is British. Both have been cited in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal."

"You, Monsieur Shanzenbach, and many others have lost great sums of money.  But everyone knew the risks.  There was no babies here, Monsieur Vann.  Everyone knew what kind of people those bankers were; everyone knew about the CIA deposits and about Abu Nidal.  C'est la même chose.  It's all the same to us.  They have the same faces, you know.  They have the same capacity to kill and be killed."

Abu Nidal

[Abu Nidal (1937-2002) was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council, a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization. At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of the struggle," was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders. He told Der Spiegel in a rare interview in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares."] (Text courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Page 329 "...the white rafters above the Stations of the Cross."

From page 329 of the book:  Revenant cocked his head to one side, facing a stained-glass window and, raising his chin, looked to the white rafters above the Stations of the Cross.

Here's a little reminiscence of my friends Joe Savino and Joe Centrone from the early 1960s:  They were in St. Sebastian's Church, in Woodside, Queens, and they're about seven or eight years old, give or take a year.  They come to Station #10, and the caption beneath the bas relief of Jesus having his clothes removed said: "Stripped of his clothes like a rose."  And Joe Savino explained that "We just thought it was hilariously funny.  We're kids, what do we know?  It was like watching Beavis and Butthead doing the stations of the cross.  We were so solemn, in the solemnity of the Church, and then all of a sudden, we're laughing hysterically.  There was something about the rhyme of 'stripped of his clothes like a rose' that cracked us up."

Page 328 "If they only knew what Mary had to put up with..."

Feast of the Assumption procession in Marseille, France

El Greco's "The Assumption of the Virgin" 1577

From page 328 of the book:  "Don't let that bother you, Father.  You're doing this for yourself anyway."
He halted and shot me a perturbed look.
"You told me so yourself."
"Perhaps I did," he said.  "Perhaps I did.  Feast of the Assumption.  If they only knew what Mary had to put up with, they would've nailed Him to the cross a whole lot sooner, I'll tell you that."

Page 327 "Revenant, sitting beneath their portraits, sullen, crabby, posed a bizarre contrast to their dialectical history."

From page 327 of the book:  Revenant, sitting beneath their portraits, sullen, crabby, posed a bizarre contrast to their dialectical history. A "How To" book on binoculars lay open in front of him on his desk. Piled next to the book on binoculars was a copy of Diseases of Canaries by Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. Beneath that was Mervin Roberts' All About Breeding Canaries. I refixed my attention onto the priest.

Above & below left: Robert Stroud, the Bird Man of Alcatraz