ATD 243-272
- Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.
Contents
Page 244
ragazza
Italian 'girl'.
Picardy thirds
Cf p50.
Page 245
twentyfold
5 chums times 4 suspects each.
San Polo
Wikipedia
Page 246
giadrul
???
"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in here?"
reminiscent of a similar line from the film Casablanca, spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."
Page 247
Dum vivimus, bibamus
While we live, we drink. Corruption of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".
Napoleon's abolition
1797. Wikipedia
Polos' return
1295. Wikipedia
Page 248
Doge's hat
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. Wikipedia entry
Page 249
Clifford's term
WK Clifford. Wikipedia
Page 252
Mattoidi
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.
Page 254
"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually." Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.
Page 255
Bastille Day
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. cite and pic
Page 256
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See page 123 for more on Tetris.)
Page 269
the dirt, the blood-red dirt
