{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/672",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 672,
    "subject": "The lady in pink\\ VRT's mother",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-27T13:50:59+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-27T13:50:59+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0012-0008@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-27T13:50:59+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The lady in pink\\ VRT's mother",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Robert Borski wrote: \nShe lives in the same boarding house as Marsch/VRT and she is the woman\nidentified as Celestine Etienne."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "An intriguing idea. My biggest problem with it is that surely Mlle\nEtienne is too young to be David's mother. Marsch judges her to be 27 or\n28; Gene he judged to be 18, and David is at least as old as his\n\"brother\". Mlle Etienne would have been about 10 when David was born!\n\nOn top of this, I don't feel that her lanky looks are the same thing as\nthe elongated beauty of Maitre's prostitutes. She comes across more as a\nlonely, awkward spinster - especially given the candle reference.\n\nI've always assumed that the lady in pink was Gene's surrogate mother.\n\n\nNow have a crack at my theory, Robert. I say that we meet - well, almost\nmeet - VRT's mother. She's the prisoner in the next cell. \n\nFor one thing, the female prisoner is described as \"illiterate... and a\nhabitual petty thief\", which is what we would expect of an Annese woman.\nFor another, we have VRT's conviction that his mother is alive and would\ncome back to town for the winters. He also says of her that \"there\nseemed to be some reason to think, at Roncevaux, that she had come\nhere\".  \n\nFinally, I just plain love the irony of VRT being next door to his\nmother in jail without realizing it, and I suspect G.W. would too. And\nwhy else give VRT a mysterious neighbour, and reveal telling details\nabout her in the last moments of the story?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}