Summary
Set against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis, the chapter begins by focalizing two US Navy sailors: Fat Clyde and Pappy Hod, Paola’s erstwhile husband. With their ship temporarily docked in Malta, awaiting repairs, Clyde and Pappy embark on a night of heavy drinking; Malta is a place of heartache for Pappy, since it is where he first met Paola. Clyde attempts to supervise and console Pappy, who drinks away his sorrow. At the end of the night—now morning—the two return to the dockyard, where they encounter Paola and Profane, recently arrived in Malta. Paola and Pappy share a bittersweet exchange; Paola tells her husband to pretend as though she never abandoned him, so they can have a loving reunion when he returns again to America.
Now in Malta, Herbert Stencil visits Fausto Maijstral: it is through Fausto that he expects to finally find V. Fausto, however, is not able to provide Stencil any further leads: he asserts that V. is dead, that he would be unable to identify the place of her death, and that he does not remember any of the children who witnessed V.’s death. Stencil visits pawnbrokers and shop owners until finding one who has heard of V.’s glass eye (or, at least, one that matches the description). But, again, this lead brings him to a dead end: the girl said to have owned the glass eye claims she threw it in the sea. Stencil visits Father Avalanche, who reveals the name of his predecessor: Father Fairing, the same priest who proselytized in the New York sewers. A single sentence repeats in Stencil’s head: “Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic” (p. 449). The next day, Stencil leaves Malta, claiming to have a lead that necessitates a trip to Stockholm. He leaves behind Paola and Profane. The goose chase continues.
Throughout the course of Stencil’s inquiries, Profane yo-yos between fever and drunkenness. At one point, his former ship docks in Malta: he considers leaving, which is deeply saddening to Paola, who, finally, decides to return to her husband. The chapter ends with Profane meeting Brenda Wigglesworth, a wealthy American college student, vacationing until she runs out of money. She started her trip with friends, and is now alone in Malta, with hardly any money left. Profane and Brenda wander Malta, aimlessly, indefinitely, together.
The final chapter, set in Malta, several months after the end of WWI, tracks Sidney Stencil’s final mission as a British secret agent, before he dies at sea. The chapter begins with Stencil Sr.’s arrival in Malta. His sailing master, Mehemet, who purports to be from the Middle Ages, shares several allegorical tales.
Maijstral Sr. (the soon-to-be father of Fausto Maijstral) visits Stencil’s lodgings to deliver an intelligence report; Maijstral is working undercover for the British Foreign Office. Stencil suspects Maijstral to be a double agent, and so tracks him through the “Disreputable Quarter” of Malta. Stencil realizes he’s also being tracked: his pursuer is Demivolt, a former co-worker, disguised as a priest. Stencil and Demivolt last worked together in Florence, in 1899 (i.e. during the events depicted in Chapter 7). Together, the two follow Maijstral, while reminiscing about Florence and wondering at the larger motivation behind their each being assigned fieldwork in Malta. Maijstral meets up with Veronica Manganese (V.), and the British agents follow the couple to a seaside villa. Outside the building, they are discovered by a man, with a greatly disfigured face, who instantly recognizes Stencil and Demivolt. He claims to be Veronica’s caretaker. Later, as implied by the facial scarring, the man is revealed to be Evan Godolphin. Stencil and Demivolt remark at the “tremendous nostalgia” of the occasion: it seems as though everyone from Florence, 1899, is back again in Malta, 20 years later.
Carla Maijstral, pregnant with Fausto, visits Stencil: she knows her husband works as a spy, and is worried for his safety, especially with a child on the way. She begs Stencil to discharge Maijstral Sr., though Stencil is hesitant: he only has two informants in Malta, the second being a priest, Father Fairing. Worse yet, Father Fairing is being transferred to the U.S., meaning Stencil and Demivolt are at risk of losing both of their informants. The two Britons sardonically consider starting a romantic affair with Veronica, in the absence of informants. Stencil, seemingly, was less kidding: he begins an affair with Veronica. The two, we learn, had been lovers in Florence, and it is hinted that V. could have been Herbert Stencil’s mother—though this is intentionally left ambiguous. Veronica—V.—has her own (secret) conspiracies in Malta; Stencil recognizes that she is using him, likely more than he is using her.
Stencil, ultimately, grants Carla’s request, forcing Maijstral to cease his work as an informant (even threatening violence if Maijstral does not obey). Political tensions mount in Malta, and Stencil’s time on the island comes to a close: it is a quiet departure, with no grand finale. Only after the ship has set sail does someone arrive to see Stencil off: Evan Godolphin, waving a tearful goodbye. Off the coast, in the Mediterranean, a waterspout wrecks the vessel, and Stencil dies at sea.
Analysis
Chapter 16 concludes the narrative arcs of both Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. Neither sees an emotional climax or heroic transformation: really, both remain one and the same, striving towards the same ends by the same means. But they are given the chance to change—a chance each rejects. Herbert Stencil comes to Malta expecting to (in fact, afraid to) find the final piece of his puzzle—to maybe find V. Instead, he reaches dead ends: Maijstral’s memory is lacking, and any other leads are fruitless. Still, he searches. A single phrase echoes in his mind, “Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic,” repeating with different stresses: stressing “seem,” then stressing “ordered” (p. 449). With these different stresses, Herbert Stencil faces the central tension of his investigation: whether conspiracy only seems to be so, or whether coincidences are actually ordered into a genuine conspiracy. This moment, perhaps, is Stencil's “To be, or not to be…” moment: whether he will accept coincidence, or pursue conspiracy, as he has always done. He chooses the latter. Quietly, and suddenly, he leaves Malta for Stockholm—a hitherto unmentioned city—where he will continue his search for V. Maijstral teases Stencil, saying with irony: “Yes. Yes. Thirteen of us rule the world in secret” (p. 451).
When Profane’s old Navy vessel docks in Malta, he briefly considers leaving with his former crew: it would be his first major move, made of his own accord, since the novel’s start. Instead, he remains in Malta: aimless and drunken. In other words, he continues to yo-yo, trusting the hand of Fortune. By the chapter’s end, he meets another wandering American, Brenda Wigglesworth. In a poem she shares with Profane, Brenda makes herself a symbol—“I am the twentieth century,” the poem begins (p. 454)—widening the scope of Profane and Brenda’s coupling, as though together they form an allegorical relationship. On a late-night walk, Profane and Brenda arbitrarily agree on a destination, and “both agreed this was nowhere” (p. 453). Pynchon, writing of this moment, says, “But some of us do go nowhere and can con ourselves into believing it to be somewhere: it is a kind of talent and objections to it are rare but even at that captious” (p. 453). Here, perhaps, Pynchon delivers his thesis on Stencil and Profane’s journey throughout V.: going nowhere, as though it were somewhere.
Throughout the novel, Pynchon has incorporated details to undermine the credibility of certain characters—including even the omniscient narrator, who, at times, is revealed to be the unreliable Herbert Stencil (he does, in fact, speak in the third person…). For example, in Chapter 9, the fourth wall is broken, and the chapter is revealed to be part of a conversation between Dr. Eigenvalue and Herbert Stencil; Eigenvalue doubts that the protagonist, Mondaugen, would remember trivial details—details that aren’t so trivial to Stencil.
The epilogue may seem to provide a final, sober look into the life of Sidney Stencil and the unknown V.—for, often, that is the narrative function of an epilogue: to clarify, and wrap up. And, in many ways, Pynchon’s epilogue does clarify. For example, this is the first chapter to focalize Sidney Stencil, the primary source of Herbert’s investigation. In moving closer to the “source material,” there is an assumed degree of validity. With Sidney Stencil’s perspective, the reader is introduced to new, revelatory details—the most significant, perhaps, being the suggestion that V. is Herbert’s mother, implied in the following passage:
He [Sidney Stencil] found himself hoping that there was indeed adultery between his old "love" [Veronica] and the shipfitter; if only to complete a circle begun in England eighteen years ago, a beginning kept forcibly from his thoughts for the same period of time.
Herbert would be eighteen. And probably helling it all about the dear old isles. What would he think of his father . . .
His father, ha (p. 487).
Notably, Sidney Stencil refers to Veronica (i.e. V.) as his old “love,” and hints at an important event shared between the two “eighteen years ago.” Then he thinks of his son, Herbert, who is— also—“eighteen” years old. Was the “circle begun in England” Herbert’s conception? When Sidney calls himself Herbert’s “father,” he repeats the phrase again, with an ironic “ha” added to the end—suggesting a degree of doubt as to whether or not Sidney is actually Herbert’s father.
With details like this, the epilogue becomes a source of discovery—as though, like the prototypical mystery novel, the puzzle has been “solved.” Maybe. Can we trust Pynchon’s narrator? At the epilogue’s end, while discussing the political aspirations of the Maltese, the narrator says: “Nothing was settled. The primary question, that of self-rule, was as of 1956 still unresolved” (p 491). The narrator has omniscience of 1956: the year in which Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil’s narratives are set. Is this yet another “Stencilized” chapter, distorted through Herbert’s conspiracy-minded brain?
Sidney Stencil, in the epilogue, dreams that he is walking through a brain: “He indeed was visited by dreams in which he had shrunk to submicroscopic size and entered a brain, strolling in through some forehead's pore and into the cul-de-sac of a sweat gland […] “A stranger in this landscape, it never occurred to him to ask whose brain he was in. Perhaps his own” (p. 483). Sidney’s dream sequence, on its own, is relatively cryptic; but its significance is deepened when related to a parallel passage, towards the beginning of the novel, spoken by Herbert Stencil: “Shall he tell you: he works for no Whitehall, none conceivable unless, ha ha, the network of white halls in is own brain: these featureless corridors he keeps swept and correct for occasional visiting agents” (p. 53). Is Sidney Stencil, a British secret agent, quite literally the “visiting agent” of which Herbert speaks? Herbert’s quote continues: “But in whose employ? Not his own: it would be lunacy, the lunacy of any self-appointed prophet…” (p. 53). If Sidney in the epilogue wanders through a brain—and the brain belongs to Herbert, as Pynchon’s parallelism implies—then, in Herbert’s own words, the epilogue “would be the lunacy, the lunacy of any self-appointed prophet…”
Perhaps it is fitting to end with this rumination, spoken by Sidney Stencil in the epilogue:
“Short of examining the entire history of each individual participating […] short of anatomizing each soul, what hope has anyone of understanding a Situation? It may be that the civil servants of the future will not be accredited unless they first receive a degree in brain surgery” (p. 483).
This quote speaks to the thematic crux of Pynchon’s novel: an exploration into the creation of meaning, the finding of truth, the writing of history—and whether these aims can, ever, be fully (and objectively) achieved.
