V.

As Profane searches for a job and a woman, he thinks about the nature of history. His rambling thoughts land somewhere between Marxism and psychoanalysis, concluding that “all political events: wars, governments and uprisings, have the desire to get laid as their roots” (97). Throwing himself at the mercy of fate, he finds himself at the Space/Time Employment Agency, where Rachel works as a receptionist. Rachel arranges an interview for Profane with the Anthroresearch Associates, an organization led by Oley Bergomask.

Roony reflects on his strange marriage. He fears that his wife Mafia is having an affair with Pig, who is known as “a byword of decadence” (99). Rumor has it that Pig tells tall tales about his sexual conquests over the ship’s radio while at sea. Roony grew up amidst the racist violence commonplace in Durham, North Carolina. After getting a girl pregnant and joining the Army, he spent the war in a French chateau, avoiding any action, and then returned to New York. He met Mafia and has been working for the record company ever since. However, he still thinks often about Paola, envying Pig’s connection with her. His thoughts become increasingly sadistic, violent fantasies about his wife.

The Space/Time Agency hires Profane. Rachel arranges for him to stay with Roony and eat meals in Rachel’s apartment. Reunited, Profane and Pig party, remembering “sea stories at each other” (101). Roony tries to convince Rachel to set him up on a date with Paola, who is mostly away from the apartment but whose occasional appearances ignite Roony’s passion. When he returns home, he finds his wife talking to Profane and drinking heavily. The conversation turns into a party. Profane falls asleep in “an unoccupied corner of the room” (102).

Amid tumultuous geopolitical events, people make their own version of history by connecting newspaper headlines. Some of these constructed narratives are so powerful that they almost become true, but this isn’t the case for the patterns and narratives Stencil pieces together. He hopes that the identity of V. will reveal his own identity. Thus far, however, he cannot clarify who or what V. might be—a woman, a ship, or a nation. Stencil thinks about Yoyodyne Inc., a former yo-yo company owned and run by a man named Bloody Chiclitz. The toys made by the company may seem like normal yo-yos, but they have since been used in military and communications situations. The company has vastly expanded and is now completely entangled in the military-industrial complex. Stencil tours a Yoyodyne factory and meets engineer Kurt Mondaugen, who worked on rockets during World War II. Mondaugen tells Stencil his stories about his “youthful days in South-West Africa” (104).

Stencil greatly embellishes the 30-minute conversation he had with Mondaugen when he tells it to Eigenvalue.

In May 1922, Mondaugen, a young German university graduate, is sent to a colonial outpost in South West Africa (near present-day Namibia) “as part of a program having to do with atmospheric radio disturbances” (104) discovered during World War I. The region is no longer under German colonial rule, so Mondaugen is nervous about a potential “rebellion” (105) of the local Bondel people against the left over Germans ex-pats, who have wild nightly parties on the farm belonging to a man named Foppl.

Mondaugen rides a cart to Foppl’s farm. When he arrives, “Foppl’s siege party” (106) is already in full swing. Mondaugen stays for more than two and a half months, sealed off from the outside world with the rich Europeans. In a turret room, he sets up his antennas and continues his research. He sees a half-dressed woman in a distant room. She invites him to the roof garden and introduces herself as Vera Meroving, the traveling “companion” (107) of Lieutenant Weissman. She has a false eye which contains the mechanism of a watch, wound by a key she wears on a chain around her neck. Over the coming days, Mondaugen spots Vera and Weissman arguing. He also meets Hedwig Vogelsang, a teenage girl whose “purpose on earth is to tantalize and send raving the race of man” (108). Mondaugen and Hedwig dance through the building, all the way to the planetarium. As he works a treadmill, she dances with a model of Venus and then disappears.

Mondaugen searches for a generator and instead finds Foppl, the owner of the farm. Foppl is savagely beating Andreas, a Bondel man whose “people have defied the Government” (109). Mondaugen tries to help Andreas, but Foppl tells him to stop. Foppl mocks the wounded man and launches into a long discussion of the German colonial presence in the region. In particular, he focuses on the genocide of the Herero people in 1904. At the next night’s party, Mondaugen meets an elderly Hugh, who has recently been to Cape Town to recruit people for an expedition to Antarctica. After being invited to Foppl’s for a weekend, however, he now finds himself stuck. Mondaugen keeps running into Vera and fears that a romantic entanglement is brewing. Her companion Weissman confronts Mondaugen about fascism, but Mondaugen insists that “politics isn’t [his] line” (110). Weissman claims that engineers like Mondaugen will play a key role in a fascist state. Mondaugen experiences strange dreams and wakes up to find Vera in his room. She tells him that a Bondel man has been hanged in Foppl’s courtyard.

The narrative describes the Herero rebellion of 1904-07, when German colonial forces tried to “systematically” (111) exterminate every Herero man, woman, and child, a genocide that killed 80% of the population. Foppl was a young soldier who took part in the genocide.

As the parties continue, Mondaugen begins to notice a pattern in his data. The more he works on the data, the more paranoid he becomes. One day, Mondaugen overhears Vera talking to Hugh Godolphin about Vheissu, which he insists is “gone and impossible to bring back” (112). She mentions their time in Florence, hinting that she may actually be Victoria Wren. Later, Mondaugen finds Hedwig’s room and finds her dressing up in the fashion of 1904, a time when she was not even alive. She refuses his sexual advances, and he runs back to his scientific equipment. On the way, he is stopped by Weissman. When he is accused of being a spy and a traitor, Mondaugen offers to show Weissman his “little broadcasts” (114). As Mondaugen works, however, Weissman falls asleep. Mondaugen finds Foppl kissing a portrait of his old genocidal military leader.

Hugh approaches Mondaugen; Vera has convinced him that Mondaugen is his son Evan in disguise. Hugh collapses due to exhaustion, so Mondaugen carries him to the turret where Weissman is still asleep.

Foppl and Hugh begin to blur together in Mondaugen’s mind. He comes to suspect that Vera is indoctrinating Hugh for some unknown reason. While the other guests continue to party, Mondaugen feels detached. He considers himself to be an observer, nothing more. Hugh is completely convinced that Mondaugen is his “strayed son” (117) Evan. Mondaugen feels a duty to his adoptive father, who rambles horrific, incoherent stories about the violent details of the Herero genocide.

Mondaugen continues to work on his data but struggles to make sense of the numbers. Hugh recovers his senses long enough to point out that Mondaugen is suffering from scurvy. Mondaugen becomes delirious, seeing disturbing imagery that blurs the parties and the genocide—some of which may be other people’s memories. Events blur together in a confusing stream, culminating in Foppl’s memory of chaining up a Herero woman named Sarah and sexually exploiting her until she dies by suicide.

When Mondaugen’s fever breaks, he looks out his window to see a “battle” (125) in the distance. While the partygoers watch the violence as though it were “a new phase of the siege party” (126), German soldiers kill Bondel men, women, and children. By this time, almost a third of the partygoers are bedridden with some form of illness. Weissman studies Mondaugen’s data and insists that he has “broken” (127) the code, but Mondaugen dismisses his claims. When Mondaugen sees Hugh and Vera whipping a bound Bondel man, he snaps and leaves. A Bondel man on a donkey offers Mondaugen a ride. The man has lost his arm and his family. He sings “in a small voice” (128) words that Mondaugen cannot understand.

The jazz musician McClintic Sphere returns to New York after playing a series of concerts for pretentious “white Ivy League” (128) students. Elsewhere, Esther and Slab discuss Slab’s paintings of cheese Danishes, which apparently symbolize his “revolt against Catatonic Expressionism” (129). He rejects her sexual advances.

The following night, Profane begins a new job. He is a nightwatchman at the Anthroresearch Associates, a subsidiary of Yoyodyne that performs experiments on space flight and automobile accidents. Profane feels a special affinity to the “lifelike” (130) test dummies used in the auto accident research. On his rounds, he talks to a dummy used for radiation tests. The dummy’s words haunt him.

In Roony’s apartment, Mafia and Profane discuss her antisemitism. He declines her sexual advances but wants to hear her theory of “Heroic Love” (131). Charisma crawls into the room, still under a blanket. He sings, and Mafia crawls under the blanket with him. Profane is left alone with his beer, thinking about different types of “mass deaths” (133).

In the brothel, McClintic and Ruby talk about her father. Meanwhile, Esther visits Schoenmaker, who tries to sell her another round of cosmetic surgery to bring out “the idea of Esther” (135). She leaves in tears. Profane and the radiation test dummy talk about the crimes of Adolf Hitler.

Across the city, young people drink, talk about sex, and evaluate their relationship with the Whole Sick Crew and their decadent ways.

McClintic leaves Ruby and travels to a party in Cape Cod. When he meets a girl, however, his thoughts are too preoccupied with Paola. He returns to New York City just in time to see Paola as she is about to leave. Charisma and Fu drunkenly take a “drooling and sick” (138) Saint Bernard dog to Mafia’s apartment, where Profane is talking to Rachel on the telephone. Amid their drunken decadence, Charisma gives beer to the dog. Stencil takes a dim view of the “nonsense” (139) of the Whole Sick Crew. He finds Paola, who hands him a collection of documents titled Confessions of Fausto Maijstral.