Summary
At the beginning of Chapter 7, looking for further leads on the identity of “V.”, Herbert Stencil visits the dentist’s office of Dr. Dudley Eigenvalue, who is skeptical of Stencil’s evidence. Dr. Eigenvalue’s most precious possession is a set of dentures, constructed from rare metals; these dentures are significant, for they will appear elsewhere in the novel—one of many clues.
The remainder of the chapter is set in Florence, Italy, in 1899—a year after the Fashoda incident in Cairo, and the assassination of Porpentine. The events described therein, presumably, are a part of Stencil’s piecemeal narrative of V. Through a sequence of vignettes, the chapter weaves together multiple plot lines, incorporating a variety of overlapping conspiracies: the attempted theft of Botticelli's famous painting, The Birth of Venus; the reunion of Evan and Hugh Godolphin, father and son; an attempted riot by Venezuelan nationals in Florence; and an investigation by British and Venezuelan government officials into a fabled city, called “Vheissu.”
The section begins with a young Evan Godolphin—recently arrived in Florence—receiving a telegram from his father, Hugh Godolphin; Hugh asks his son to meet him at his flat, where he promises confidential information relating to Vheissu.
The scene changes to the al fresco seating of a wine shop, where Signor Mantissa meets with his accomplice, Cesare, and a hired Venezuelan strongman, referred to as the Gaucho. They discuss plans to steal The Birth of Venus; the Gaucho finds the plan dangerously convoluted.
The next section follows Victoria Wren—one of the potential V.’s—who has lived nomadically since the Fashoda incident, after her father caught her in an affair with Goodfellow. Repenting in an Italian church, she has a chance encounter with Hugh Godolphin. Hugh tells Victoria about his expeditions in Vheissu: he is tormented by the memory of Vheissu’s colors, describing iridescent spider monkeys, and mountains that change hue by the hour.
Thereafter, Evan Godolphin, per the instructions in the telegram, visits his father’s address. But the flat is empty. Evan scours the room for a message, finally finding a note written on the inside of a cigarette: his father’s location has been compromised and he says to meet instead at a beer hall named Scheissvogel’s. On his way out of the building, from the eighth floor, Evan falls through the wooden staircase, and just barely saves himself from certain death by grabbing hold of a banister on the next floor down. Outside the building, Evan is taken in for questioning by Italian police.
A message from Rome to the Venezuelan Consulate warns of an increase in revolutionary activity around Florence. Officials at the Consulate are especially suspicious of the Gaucho (Mantissa’s hired strongman) who has been regularly prowling the nearby streets. The Gaucho is arrested, and brought in for questioning: he is interrogated by an Englishman, later revealed to be Sidney Stencil. To the Gaucho's distress, Stencil asks him about Vheissu.
Hugh Godolphin awakes in Victoria Wren’s room, alone, the doors locked from the outside. She has left him a note, explaining that she has gone to the British Consulate to divulge his knowledge of Vheissu to the government. She asks him to stay in place. He doesn’t. Hugh picks the lock, and enters the street. He is spotted by police, but he escapes their pursuit, running across rooftops and crashing through windows. Hugh ends up in a florist’s shop, where he stumbles across an old friend: Signor Mantissi. They agree to flee Florence together, on a stolen barge, after Mantissa steals The Birth of Venus.
In the British Consulate, Sidney Stencil organizes a larger investigation into Vheissu—the details of which are left uncertain, but it is clear the British government has carefully orchestrated machinations. One of the officers, Demivolt, asks Sidney if he wants to see Victoria—the implications are sexual. Sidney declines, at least for the time being.
By the chapter’s conclusion, most of the subplots have resulted in failure: Mantissa, with Venus in his hands, decides he must leave the painting behind to flee the police; the Gaucho leads a Venezuelan rebellion, though secretly views the protest with cynicism, likening it to a “circus”; Sidney Stencil must suddenly abort his investigation into Vheissu, because of orders from his higher-ups in London. Success, in some form, arrives for the father and son Hugh and Evan Godolphin, who flee Florence on a stolen barge—although Evan and Victoria Wren must part ways, after the two make-believe as lovers.
In Chapter 8, we return to Benny Profane. Jobless, he has spent the past week drifting about New York, visiting offices and job agencies, seeking employment. Daydreaming of having his own place, where he can “screw in private,” Profane gives himself an erection. He covers his crotch with the classified section of a newspaper, before deciding—like throwing darts at a map—to use his erection as a compass, and visit the job agency at which it points. By these directions, Profane finds himself at Space/Time Employment, where, as it so happens, Rachel Owlglass works the front desk. With Rachel’s help, Profane is finally hired: as a night watchman at Anthroresearch Associates. Rachel commits to taking care of Profane. She feeds him at her place, and gives him a room at Winsome’s apartment.
Roony Winsome comes home to his apartment, finding his wife, Mafia, sitting on the floor with Pig Bodine. Winsome wonders if the two are having an affair. He thinks about Pig Bodine’s notoriety in the Navy: among other antics, Pig Bodine was known for having transmitted erotica via radio signal to every teletype machine in his task force. At this point, Pig has fallen asleep and Mafia undresses in the bedroom. Winsome fantasizes about having an affair with Paola—many men, he concedes, want to have sex with her. Soon after, he takes Mafia to bed, where they have aggressive sex. Later, Winsome will visit Rachel, in hopes that she might help him in seducing Paola.
The chapter ends with a description of Stencil’s search for V. He has remained in New York City, gathering clues, without much urgency or method; he mainly theorizes with Dr. Eigenvalue and waits for further discoveries—he searches mostly by instinct. It is admitted that Stencil cannot confidently state V.’s sex, “nor even what genus or species.” Dr. Eigenvalue introduces Stencil to the president of a manufacturing company, specializing in the production of gyroscopes, initially used for toys, later for military arsenals. Within the company, Stencil encounters an engineer named Kurt Mondaugen, who previously constructed V-weapons for the German military. Stencil is allured by that “magic initial,” and seeks out Mondaugen’s life story. The following chapter, Chapter 9, is a re-telling of Mondaugen’s experiences in South Africa, twisted by Stencil’s obsession with V.—it has been “Stencilized.”
Chapter 9 begins in 1922, when Kurt Mondaugen, a young German engineering student, is sent to South Africa, to the former colony of Deustch-Südwestafrika. He is to study atmospheric radio disturbances (“sferics”), disturbances with no known cause. At the start of the chapter, Mondaugen visits a Dutch colonial official, Willem van Wijk, who warns of a coming conflict between the native Bondelswaartz population and the colonial regime. Van Wijk urges Mondaugen to flee, or to take siege at a nearby fortification owned by an aristocratic expatriate and former German soldier named Foppl. Mondaugen goes to Foppl’s.
For two and a half months, Mondaugen "sieges" (sardonically: it's a “siege party”) at Foppl’s villa, along with a cast of expats: among them, there is Vera Meroving, a forty-something woman with a glass eye of intricate clockwork (and, likely, one of the titular V.'s); there is Vera’s husband, Lieutenant Weissman; and there is Hugh Godolphin, the aged adventurer of previous chapters. During his stay at Foppl’s, Kurt Mondaugen continues his engineering research on sferics, while slipping further and further into a feverish delirium—later revealed to be caused by scurvy. He encounters Foppl whipping a Bondel. He finds bloodstains throughout the fortress. He meets Hedwig Vogelslang, a young woman who claims her purpose is to “tantalize and send raving the race of man.” Together, in a surreal scene, they waltz through the mansion, through mirrored hallways, ending in a planetarium, where a treadmill (formerly operated by Bondel slaves) powers a mechanical model of the solar system. Mondaugen overhears a conversation between Vera Meroving and Hugh Godolphin, in which the two reminisce over an unnamed, shared experience in Vheissu. At this point, the frame narrative is broken—the chapter is, in fact, a retelling by Stencil—and Dr. Eigenvalue expresses his skepticism that Mondaugen would remember a conversation “meaning nothing to Mondaugen but everything to Stencil.” Stencil deflects, and the frame narrative continues.
In his scurvy-induced delirium, Mondaugen undergoes a deterioration of identity. Vera Meroving convinces Hugh Godolphin that Moundaugen is his own son, Evan Godolphin; at points, Mondaugen falls into the role, treating Hugh as his own father. Moreover, Mondaugen begins to take on the dreams of others: he dreams, in explicit detail, of Foppl’s deployment during the German genocide of the Herero people in 1904—memories wherein Foppl rapes, tortures, and kills—as though they were Mondaugen’s own memories.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Weissman, convinced that Mondaugen’s research is a front for espionage, attempts to find a hidden code in Mondaugen’s sferics: he claims to have succeeded, finding within them the secret message, “The world is all that the case is.” (This is a real-world quote from Wittgenstein, famous philosopher, and there is no likelihood that this message was actually found within the radio disturbances; Mondaugen suspects “finagling”).
The chapter ends with Foppl and his guests having drinks on the fortresses’ balconies and roofs, so they can watch as bombs are dropped on the rebelling Bondels to the East. Mondaugen leaves the fortress, and finds a Bondel riding a donkey; the Bondel lets him ride, in tow, towards a destination unknown to Mondaugen.
Analysis
Chapter 7 contains some of the novel’s most direct discussions of V., hinting at its meaning and significance. But with an excess of clues, some of them contradictory, the identity of V. remains obscured; many readers will leave the chapter with more uncertainty than when they started. The chapter is structured around three conspiracies, three dreams: Signor Mantissa’s theft of The Birth of Venus, Hugh Godolphin’s anguish over Vheissu, and the Gaucho’s fight for liberty in Venezuela. Here are three V.’s: Venus, Vheissu, and Venezuela.
Importantly, Pynchon creates links between all three: among government intelligence circles, Pynchon writes, “Everyone had assumed that the code word [Vheissu] referred to Venezuela, a routine matter, until the English informed them that Vheissu actually existed” (p. 197); and when a spy is pressed to reveal the meaning of Vheissu, he says, “It could stand for Venus, for all I know” (p. 198). Pynchon deliberately creates confusion—making Vheissu signal Venezuela and Venus and Vheissu, itself. Some links, if not all, are red herrings. This deliberate blurring seems to suggest V. is larger than any single identity: instead, it is a plurality, a symbol of collected parts.
Looking for the shared characteristics between these three V.’s, then, might provide us with a deeper understanding of their combined significance. Each V. is, in some shape, associated with desire: there is sexual desire in Mantissa’s relationship to Botticelli's Venus (he likens the painting to a lover); there is a desire for knowledge in Hugh Godolphin’s expedition to Vheissu; and there is a desire for freedom and/or power in the Gaucho’s Venezuelan revolutionary antics.
Godolphin, having once before visited Vheissu, might offer the clearest look into V.’s significance: in a crucial passage, while reflecting on his journey to the South Pole, Godolphin says:
“Staring up at me through the ice, perfectly preserved, its fur still rainbow-colored, was the corpse of one of their spider monkeys […] A mockery, you see: a mockery of life, planted where everything but Hugh Godolphin was inanimate. With of course the implication . . . It did tell me the truth about them […] Vheissu itself, a gaudy dream. Of what the Antarctic in this world is closest to: a dream of annihilation” (p. 206).
Godolphin’s sentiments are later mirrored—with the repetition of exact phrases—by both Mantissa and the Gaucho. While in the museum, deciding whether or not to steal The Birth of Venus, Mantissa says of Venus’s portrait: “She had no voice he could ever hear. And she herself […] was only . . . / A gaudy dream, a dream of annihilation. Was that what Godolphin had meant?” (p. 210). And when the Gaucho joins the Venezuelan expatriates in their revolutionary demonstrations, he comments on the fighters, saying:
“‘But don't they look like apes, now, fighting over a female? Even if the female is named Liberty […] There are nights,’ he mused, ‘nights, alone, when I think we are apes in a circus, mocking the ways of men. Perhaps it is all a mockery, and the only condition we can ever bring to men a mockery of liberty, of dignity. But that cannot be. Or else I have lived…” (p. 211).
These quotes repeat the idea of a “dream of annihilation” and a “mockery” of life. Equally significant is the relative failure of each character’s dream: Mantissa does not succeed in stealing Birth of Venus, Godolphin does not get to Vheissu again, and the Gaucho’s revolution—based in Florence, an ocean apart from Venezuela—is likely to have little political consequence. Though a clear answer is never provided as to the exact meaning of V., through these passages, several associations are implied: largely, an existential fear involving a lack of agency, juxtaposed with boundless human desire.
One of the major themes recurring in Chapter 8 is Pynchon’s portrayal of sexuality as a prime mover in human life. Benny Profane, for example, is quite literally directed by his sex drive: he uses his erection as a compass to guide his job search (both ironically and sentimentally, it brings him to Rachel’s workplace). Throughout the chapter, Rooney Winsome is consumed by sexual jealousy and sexual desire: he wants to have an affair with Paola, and is suspicious of his wife’s relations with Pig Bodine. Winsome associates his sexual desires with cultural decadence: in a song’s refrain he calls himself the “king of the decky-dance” (p. 220). Here, “decky-dance” is a homonym, and likely a euphemism, for “decadence.” Later, reflecting on Pig’s desire for Paola, Winsome thinks, “It was natural, he supposed; the girl had the passive look of an object of sadism, something to be attired in various inanimate costumes and fetishes, tortured, subjected to the weird indignities of Pig's catalogue, have her smooth and of course virginal-looking limbs twisted into attitudes to inflame a decadent taste. Rachel was right, Pig—and even perhaps Paola—could only be products of a decky-dance” (p. 221). This passage slips from pontification to sexual fetish: wherein Winsome’s diction grows increasingly sensuous, landing on the sexual imagery of Paola’s “smooth and course virginal-looking limbs.” Perhaps, here is a tension between the rational and the emotional, the mind and the body: as Winsome attempts to philosophize, he succumbs instead to sexual objectification. At the end of this scene, Winsome leaves to screw his wife—yet another indication of the primacy of sex (and, by extension, the primacy of emotions, desires, and dreams) in V.
(Sexuality is even introduced into Stencil’s investigation: Pynchon writes that the investigation has “an interesting note of sexual ambiguity” (p. 226) when considering V. most regularly appears as a woman).
Towards the end of the ninth chapter, Weissman purports to have cracked the code of Mondaugen’s research on sferics. He finds encoded in the radio disturbances the lone message: “DIEWELTISTALLESWASDERFALLIST” or “The world is all that the case is” (p. 278). This is a direct quotation—in fact, the very first axiom—from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (published in 1921, a year before the chapter is set). Wittgenstein’s philosophy is associated with logical positivism, and the idea that facts form the basis of our existence in the world (the next axiom in Tractatus is: “What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs”). So, there is a certain irony in Wittgenstein’s language being derived from non-factual means in Pynchon’s writing—as a “finagl[ed]” decoded message.
One might, therefore, see Pynchon’s novel as a partial critique of Wittgenstein’s emphasis on facts: what is our existence if facts can be manipulated and even fabricated? Consider Pynchon’s sardonic treatment of statistics in the chapter, when he compares the Herero Genocide and the Holocaust: “Allowing for natural causes during those unnatural years, von Trotha, who stayed for only one of them, is reckoned to have done away with about 60,000 people. This is only 1 percent of six million, but still pretty good” (p. 245). In this passage, Pynchon points to a certain inability for numbers—facts alone—to convey true horror. Is our mental image of six million all that different from 60,000? Perhaps this is why Pynchon fills Chapter 9 with surreal and supernatural images: as an antithesis to positivism. Reality and facts are undermined throughout the chapter: Mondaugen loses his identity and dreams of memories that aren’t his own; Hedwig appears and disappears, almost as though she were a ghost or succubus; throughout Foppl’s mansions is inexplicable gore, soundtracked by distant laughter; and so on. Pynchon even shows how falsehoods can transform into (near) realities: Vera Meroving lies to Godolphin, convincing him that Mondaugen is actually Godolpgin’s son, Evan; Godolphin begins to treat Mondaugen as his son, and over time, Mondaugen begins to feel as though he is, in fact, Evan. It is because of these uncanny and unnatural moments—not in spite of them—that Chapter 9 is one of Pynchon’s most ominous. Maybe, it is by straying from naturalism that Pynchon better approximates the unspeakable horrors of real-world violence.
Another concept heavily embedded into Chapter 9 is the idea of “common dreams”—which might be understood as an allusion to ideology and human belief systems. Godolphin claims the world wars led to a loss of the “privacy of dream” (p. 248); Mondaugen literally takes on another person’s dreams—the sadistic memories of Foppl—and there is an entire song devoted to the “safety” of dreams, which Mondaugen sings as a lullaby to Godolphin.
