(urth) Seven American Nights Forgery?
Dave Tallman
davetallman at msn.com
Tue May 6 22:32:35 PDT 2008
The story ends with "Do you think this is his handwriting?...Perhaps.
Perhaps."
And perhaps not. This adds K+1 to the abstraction. Nadan's account is
already unreliable because of drugs he may have taken, his excisions,
and other omissions. What if some of the story is forged? We know the
museum man has a machine that can forge handwriting, and another that
can compose stories. It's not implausible that it could do so in Farsi.
Suppose the U.S. government decided that Nadan needed to disappear. They
might have planted the notebook to lay a false trail for the
investigator. I don't think the whole thing is forged -- that would be
too simple of a "closed loop." The notebook is not of American
manufacture; it wouldn't be so easy to replace the whole thing. But if
the forging machine can wield a pen it would be easy to add a misleading
ending.
Where does the forgery begin? The story of the glass of alcohol is
fishy. Ardis would know that most Muslims don't drink, and could have
learned from Bobby that Nadan himself doesn't. Knowing this, Nadan
wouldn't have used that particular ruse. (By the way, the story seems
like a twisted version of Cupid and Psyche). If my theory is true, the
government also killed Ardis with his gun. She probably does have a
deformity but the real Nadan never saw it.
The Easter parade account also looks wrong. A Muslim wouldn't refer to
Jesus as "the dead leader lifted up," since Jesus is respected as a
prophet in Islam. This could have been forged in case the paraders
remembered seeing them. This might have been the last time both were
seen alive. The costumes for the party were both fairly concealing
(armor and Egyptian robes), allowing an impersonation there.
Further back than this, the story looks genuine. I believe at least the
account of the room being searched is real. That's when the government
agents took a copy of the journal as input for the forging machine. They
may also have chemically analyzed the remaining eggs and taken the
hallucinogenic one. They would want Nadan sober for his interrogation.
What was the motive for the abduction? The museum man could well be a
high-level government agent. The man with no lower jaw may have let slip
a major rumor when he said "Someday we are great again." Given the way
he talks, there's no phonetic difference between that and "Sunday we are
great again." Perhaps a big forgery was planned for Easter Sunday that
could change the fortunes of fallen America.
If so, the appearance of the museum man at the play was no coincidence.
He followed Nadan there and pumped him to see what he knew. A few days
later, someone decided that Nadan knew too much...
Does the forgery account for a missing day? I doubt it. Computers can at
least count. I count seven full days if the first day of sightseeing
went north but not all the way to the ruined capital buildings. There
are a few hints that this is the case:
1) Writing with closed shutters and a candle (p. 340, Orb edition of
IODDAOSAOS). Something outside beating on the shutters (A wild animal?
Moths?) seems to indicate late at night. On the day he visits the ruins,
he opens the shutters and the sun is just setting.
2) He's fearful and homesick that first day. The second day he's brave
enough to go out to a restaurant and to the theater at night.
3) His attitude about going to the park changes. On p. 339 he wants to
postpone it until he has seen other things. On p. 344 he is ashamed he
didn't go that day. This seems more likely if they are two different days.
4) He says he spent the whole day at the ruins on p. 347. The other day
mentions sleeping late, listening to musicians, and people-watching. His
first writing for that day is at about 4:30pm (midnight Iran time with
local daylight savings time p. 338) back in his room, which doesn't
allow that much time for ruin explorations.
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