Subject: (whorl) Betel & Quetzal

From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 01:05:35 +0000

[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Why is the extremely minor (?) character Maytera Betel
always carefully described as dark and sleepy-eyed?  It's
bothering me.  Sounds dangerously like a deliberate clue,
like Tussah's coarse skin.  I can't think of any other
sleepy-eyed characters, but Poppy of the yellow house is
dark, and named, like Betel, for a narcotic plant.  Could
Betel have reenacted Rose's shame more recently, and do we
care?

By the way, there seem to be two different, unrelated plants
called betel, both of which are narcotic.

Also, I don't remember anyone commenting on the passage in
III, p17, in which Quetzal removes a powder puff from a
drawer across the room, without leaving his chair.  So does
he have a chair with wheels, or telekinesis, that's what I
want to know.

I just watched Disney's _Jungle Book,_ and now Quetzal makes
me think of a cross between Disney's serpent Kaa and the
Simpsons' Montgomery Burns (as playing a vampire in the
Halloween special).

	r.

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:30:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #5599352 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

Ranjit,

I agree with you--that Betel is a puzzler.  She was a sibyl at Sun
Street and might have been senior sibyl when Magnesia the maid of all
work posed for the painting (see Q&D "Magnesia" entry for the tangle
around the painting).  I also agree there is something of the "shame
of Rose" going on, also linked in with that painting thing, where we
are told "the artist was a relative of the senior sibyl," "the artist's mother
posed as Molpe," (the painting perhaps took place at the manteion, otherwise
why would Magnesia be around?); so how many relatives in this scene,
and why were they all at the manteion?  Unless there were just the
woman (sibyl) and her son (artist)?

Even if that doesn't pan out--Betel may have been the sibyl whose
death triggered the need to bring a chem sibyl into the manteion.

Good hunting, Ranjit!  Tell us what you find.

=mantis=