(urth) More PEACE

[Andrew Bollen]

If the troll in Weer's walled-garden dream is indeed linked to gnome-prince
Peacock, then its interesting to think about why it has "fallen from his
little pedestal".  Maybe there's a story concerning the cave he, Olivia and
Weer visit: perhaps Peacock salted the cave with the skull and
wall-markings, to set-up a "discovery" of a paleo-Indian site - an academic
career-maker for him?

Little hints: he & Olivia chatting about Altamira, I think the first major
Spanish paleolithic site discovered, and his speaking of paleo-Indians. The
giant ground-sloth tooth he supposedly discovered in the area, and his lack
of a satisfactory answer to Weer's question about why a grass-eater would
inhabit that stony, hilly region - perhaps the sloth tooth was another
salting, setting up the main discovery: paleo-Indians hunting mega-fauna
etc. Peacock, having discovered the cave on his earlier trip, would surely
not have waited until returning with Olivia and Weer to explore it (unless,
for example, he wanted witnesses to his "discovery")?

And then Gold's analysis of the Venus de Milo as a certain modern forgery -
questioning how it could have lain undiscovered in an easily-accessible
cave for hundreds of years. Peacock's "discovery" is at least a little more
plausible. Thematically, Peacock as forger of the distant past fits well:
he, Gold, the ladies faking up an Indian treaty ...

I suggest that Olivia quickly cottoned on to his plan, and derailed it -
during that little interval while they talk together in the cave in the
absence of Weer. He seems that most likely of the four suitors to win
Olivia, in terms of his personal attributes - "He had been young, slender,
and handsome; and most important of all he had been of that intelelctual
and almost pedantic cast of mind for which my aunt had hungered all her
life".  Perhaps being revealed as a fraudster - falling from his pedestal -
was one reason why things never went further for him.

And I would guess that it provides a better motivation than jealousy - for
which there is absolutely no hint in the text that I can see - for why he
may have killed her, if you believe he was the one who ran her down. (Which
I don't -  Weer is a better candidate for that, hitting her accidentally in
the car he certainly possessed at the time; but I don't really believe that
either.)
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