Petersburg - post V

This book ends in a way you could not have predicted with the victims emerging just at the end without any real victors. The phrase that will linger is “cerebral play” referring to the thoughts and dreams inspired by a city where everything seems to have its own lifeforce from the statutes to the fog.

Bullet points between pages 232 – 293

* Following his son’s performance at the ball Apolllon the senator is ruined and seems to suffer some sort of break down which sees his glittering career literally disappear overnight

* He wanders through the house into his son’s rooms and discovers the sardine tin with the bomb and takes it back into his study and then heads out to see his estranged wife in her hotel

* Meanwhile Nikolai has been taken prisoner by Sergei who declares after a spell of hysterical rage that he has taken Nikolai to make sure he doesn’t use the bomb to kill his father but allows his captive free after the denials make him believe he is mistaken

* Dudkin fulfils his oath to the bronze horseman and kills the party contact who had started the whole ball rolling about the bomb and he has clearly gone mad because he is still crouched over the body and discovered the morning after

* Nikolai having escaped from Sergei’s clutches heads home to try to find the bomb and ransacks his room without discovering it and tries to calm himself believing that Sergei has taken it and then is called to meet his mother

* He cries when he sees his mother and for the first time in years his father shows tenderness towards him and then allows his son to take his mother back to her hotel and they all turn in for the night with the bomb still undiscovered but getting closer to going off

* The bomb explodes in the study but does not kill Apollon but he seems to understand that it was meant for him and his son was going to use it and does not see his son again instead running away from him

* Apollon moves to the country after paying for his son and wife to travel and Nikolai becomes an expert on Egyptian history ending his life living completely alone after his parent’s death – his reward for making the promise to kill his father one presumes

Full review will follow after my own cerebral play after reading this book has calmed down…