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From out at sea, the Casino at this hour is a blazing bijou at the horizon: its foil of palms already shadows in the dwindling light. Deepening go the yellowbrowns of these small serrated mountains, sea colored the soft inside of a black olive, white villas, perched châteaux whole and ruined, autumn greens of copses and solitary pines, all deepening to the nightscape latent across them all day. Fires are lit on the beach. A faint babble of English voices, and even occasional songs, reaches across the water to where Dr. Porkyevitch stands on deck. Below, Octopus Grigori, having stuffed himself with crab meat, frisks happily in his special enclosure. The reaching radius of the lighthouse on the headland sweeps by, as tiny fishing craft head out to sea. Grischa, little friend, you have performed your last trick for a while… . Is there any hope for further support from Pointsman, now that Porkyevitch and His Fabulous Octopus have done their part?

He gave up questioning orders long ago—even questioning his exile. The evidence linking him to the Bukharin conspiracy, whose particulars he has never heard, might somehow be true—the Trotskyite Bloc might have known of him, by reputation, used him in ways forever secret… forever secret: there are forms of innocence, he knows, that cannot conceive of what that means, much less accept it as he has. For it might, after all, be only another episode in some huge pathological dream of Stalin’s. At least he had physiology, something outside the party… those who had nothing but the party, who had built their whole lives upon it, only to be purged, must go through something very like death… and never to know anything for certain, never to have the precision of the laboratory… it’s been his own sanity, God knows, for twenty years. At least they can never—

No, no they wouldn’t, there’s never been a case… unless it’s been hushed up, you’d never read it in the journals of course—

Would Pointsman—

He might. Yes.

Grischa, Grischa! It’s come true. On us so quickly: foreign cities, comedians in broken hats, cancan girls, fountains of fire, a noisy pit band… Grischa, with the flags of all the nations curled in your arms… fresh shellfish, a warm pirozhok, hot glasses of tea in the evenings, between performances… learn to forget Russia, to take comfort from what mean, falsified bits of her we wander across… .

Now, the sky stretches to admit a single first star. But Porkyevitch makes no wish. Policy. Signs of arrival do not interest him, nor even signs of departure… . As the boat’s engine goes full ahead, their own wake goes lifting, pink with sunset, to obscure the white Casino on shore.

Electricity is on tonight, the Casino back in France’s power grid. Chandeliers shaggy with crystal needles flare overhead, and softer lamps shine among the gardens outside. Going in to dinner with Tantivy and the dancers, Slothrop is brought to a round-eyed halt by the sight of Katje Borgesius, hair in one of those emerald tiaras, the rest of her rigged out in a long Medici gown of sea-green velvet. Her escort’s a two-star general and a brigadier.