S

Page numbers, if alone, refer to the 492-page editions. Please feel free to add the 547-page-edition page numbers, using the syntax: n/n2 - where "n" is the 492-page and "n2" is the 547-page. Thanks.

Sable, Murray
300; "itinerate race-driver" crashed out at Whole Sick Crew pad

sadomasochism

"a desire he got, off and on, to be cruel," 141; "to flay that tatooing to a heap of red, purple and green debris [...]" 171; "the girl had the passive look of an object of sadism," 221; Winsome and Mafia, 222; song about, 238; Foppl and Bondel, 240; "had the obligatory sport with the black's genitals," 263; "blood crusted on her wrists and ankles," 275; "She wants to be taken, penetrated, ravished." 288; "machines of exquisite torture," 408; "punish their young boy and girl concubines" 444; "cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion" 454

sahha
"goodbye" (423) and "hello" (442) in Maltese; according to Baedeker's Guide to the Mediterranean, the Maltese language is akin to Arabic, but borrowed much from Sicilian dialect of Italian and English.

Sailor's Grave

9; bar on East Main in Norfolk, Virginia

St. Agatha
461; Passport: "a young Sicilian saint who, according to local tradition, crossed to Malta to escape persecution during the reign of Emperior Decius (3rd century AD)." [1] Below the church of St. Agatha are the catacombs containing pagan, Punic and Jewish burial chambers; "another of [Malta's] minor saints"

St. Elmo
338; Italian corruption of St. Erasmus, patron saint of seamen

St. Francis (of Assisi) (1181-1226)
146; Christian saint who founded the Franciscan Order. An ascetic, he dedicated his life to caring for the poor. He is the patron saint of ecology and is often depicted surrounded by birds.

St. George
188; the patron saint of England, Aragon, Portugal and the Slovenes. He is particularly remembered for his adventures with the dragon and his prowess in fertilizing barren women.

St. Giles Fair
307; St. Giles is the patron saint of cripples

St. John's-bread
308; the carob bean; St. John the Baptist was the patron saint of the Knights of Valletta; 312

St. Paul

308; In 62 AD, while being taken to Rome (with St. Luke) to be tried as a political rebel, St. Paul was shipwrecked on the north coast of Malta (Acts xxvii, xxviii); he was lodged by Publius, the Roman governor (who became the first Bishop of Malta), and founded a Christian community before the voyage resumed after a three-month stay; 322; 461

sakieh
82; water wheel used in Egypt for raising water, as from a well, for irrigation purposes

salaam aleikum
457; Maltese: salaam aleikum = Arabic: "salam 'alaikum" = "Peace be with you"; In Malta they say "Sliem ghalikom" meaning "Peace be with you"; "Shalom aleikum" - a pun/joke, 465

Sala di Lorenzo Monaco
163; houses the Uffizi Gallery

Salazar
176; Venezuelan Vice-Consul in Florence

Sant' Ugo di Tagliapiombo di Sammut
473; baronage of, which is "a nearly defunct branch of the Maltese nobility"; La Manganese lives in the villa in Sliema

Saperstein, Iago
419; insurance executive in Washington, D.C.

sapper
331; military specialist in field fortifiction; one who lays, detects, or disarms mines

Sarah
270; Herero concubine of Foppl's

Sartre, Jean Paul (1905-80)
130; French philosopher, dramatist, novelist; existentialist and disciple of Heidegger; "What do you think of Sartre's thesis that we are all impersonating an identity?"

Satan
See Devil

Satin

395; Russian choreographer of The Rape of the Chinese Virgins

Savonarola, Girolamo (1452-1498)

192; a precursor to the Christian Right, he preached a return to traditional values and railed against the humanism of the Medicis who had brought unprecedented prosperity to Florence as well as a different type of artistic sensitivity, a strong scientific impulse and a rediscovered dialogue with the classical world. Savonarola gained a wide following in Florence (his followers were derisively called "the Weepers" because of their penitential practices and professions), but he was hanged and burned after being convicted of falsely claiming visions, religious error and sedition; Read the bio...

Savoy
182; hotel on eastern side of Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele in Florence where H. Godolphin wakes up; 188

Sayid, Abdul
22-23; Arab whom DaConho imagines machine-gunning ("yibble-yibble")

scapular medal

121; worn in place of a sacramental scapular (a pair of small cloth squares joined by shoulder tapes and worn under the clothing as a sacramental)

Schachtmeister
267; German: "over-seer of unskilled laborers"; 268

Scheissvogel

165; German: "shitbird"; "the birriere"; owns Biergarten und Rathskeller in Piazza Vittorio Emmanuel where Venezuelan anarchists meet, 179; note on cigarette paper, 174; 190; 201; 203

Schenley Reserve
372; a former brand of Canadian whiskey

schlemihl

"Benny Profane, a schlemihl," 9; "time in reverse or schlemihl's light," 136; "a schlemihl's hopeful face," 148; 214; 215; 216; 285; "But a schlemihl, that was hardly a man: somebody who lies back and takes it from objects, like any passive woman." 288; 369-70; "a schlemihl like me takes and gives nothing back" 370; "Schlemihls don't change." 383; "a world of things that had to be watched out for," 384; "Everybody is some kind of schlemihl." 384; 419; "[Kilroy] acquired the reputation of a schlemihl," 436; "schlemihl-silence," 436; "schlemihl Redeemer," 453;

Schleswig-Holstein
63; northernmost province of western Germany; See also Kiel Revolt

schlimazzel
Yiddish: "bad luck"; an unlucky person; "schlimazzeled out of existence," 24

Schlozhauer's Trocadero
22; restaurant 9 miles outside Liberty, New York; 384

Schoenberg, Arnold (1874-1951)

57; Austrian-American composer and a fundamental shaper of Twentieth Century music; his string quartets; See also entropy

Schoenmaker, Dr. Shale

45; German: "beauty maker"; plastic surgeon who performs Esther's nose job; in World War I, 97; Esther's nose job, 102; 294; 296; Possible source of name?

Schultze, Max Johann Sigismund (1825-74)
324; German zoologist

Schwabing quarter
241

Schwach
259; German: "weak, feeble"; Mondaugen's comrade in his dreams

Schwartz
126; major villain in Mafia's novel ("weak, Jewish psychopath")

Scott, Randolph (1903- )
136; archetypal tall, rugged weathered Hollywood cowboy star; 288

scungille shell
H. Stencil's scungille farm, 62; 178; what Botticelli's Venus seems to be standing in; "There's nothing inside. Only the scungille shell." 370; 384; Education of Henry Adams

Scylla

432; a hideous monster with twelve feet, six heads each with three rows of teeth, and below the waist a body made up of monsters like dogs which barked incessantly. Lived on a treacherous cliff on the Straits of Messina which faced Charybdis on the other side. See also Charybdis

Search for Bridey Murphy, The
95; book Esther is reading on the bus while going to her tryst with Shoenmaker; Read more...

Senglea

464; "where La Valette and the Knights were making their last stand"; According to Baedeker, one of the Three Cities "Opposite Valletta, on the three central creeks of the Grand Harbour"; See also Three Cities

Sensay, Debbie
57; exemplar guest at Whole Sick Crew party

Sephardim
77; a member of the occidental branch of European Jews settling in Spain and Portugal and later in Greece, the Levant, England, the Netherlands and Americas; 78

September 3, 1939
308; the day Britain declared war on Germany

serail
462; Turkish palace

serpent/snake

"her hand snake out all pale to fondle the gearshift" 29; "the shadow of her spine's indentation snaking down a deeper black," 52; serpent-charmers, 85; "how long and snakelike her thighs were" 271; history "a serpent hypnotic and undulant," 307; "History's serpent is one" 310;

Serre Chaude

395; French: "closed/dense; hot"; estate of Mélanie and parents in Normandy; "Her room was hot and airless." 396; 407; See also hothouse

sferics

230; "Sferics" is the shortened term for "atmospherics," natural radio frequency emissions in the ionosphere, caused by electromagnetic energy radiated from nearby or distant lightning; 257;

Sgherraccio

414; "the mad Irredentist"; rumored that V. left Paris with him; Mizzist, 472; See also Mizzi; his name is derived from the Italian phrase alla sgherra which means "cocked" as in a cocked hat, denoting arrogance, and thus sgherro is a gangster or tough guy. The Italian suffix "-accio" denotes a bad or ugly quality. Thus he's a badass gangsta.

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
308; English playwrite, poet and actor

Sheaves, Lieutenant Mungo
458; assistant to the OAG on Malta; Father Fairing complained to him in November 1918 about affairs in Malta; 480

Cairo and Egypt: A Practical Handbook
Shepheard's Hotel

83; in Cairo;

Cairo's Shepheard's Hotel figures prominently in many travel accounts. The prime stopping place for visitors to Egypt from its opening in 1845, one of its many distinguished guests was Charles Lang Freer, an American industrialist and art collector who later donated his collection of Asian art to the Smithsonian. By 1909, Freer wrote of the addition of other accommodations in Cairo:
Tell Louise that old Shepheards remains as dirty and attractive as ever, but new hotels and buildings have sprung up like toad stools since her time, and now, in summer, are empty and ghostly as the ancient ruined mosques.
C.L. Freer to Colonel Hecker, Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo, July 28, 1909 [1]

Sheridan Square
296; in New York City

shivaree

356; corruption of charivari, a mocking serenade accorded to newly married people. See also Charivari, La

SHROUD

284; "synthetic human, radiation output determined"; transparent skin; 368; "Keep cool but care," 369

Shylock

224; Jew in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice; "A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch/Uncapable of pity, void and empty/From any dreams of mercy" (IV, i)

Sirius
See Dog Star

Situation, The
153; Gaucho's, 179; "irreparably bitched up," 188; "no Situation had any objective reality," 189; in Südwest, 234; "The Situation as an N-Dimensional Mishmash," 470; "short of anatomizing each soul, what hope has anyone of understanding a Situation?" 470; described as a complex system, 477; 479; "The Situation is always bigger than you. . .It has like God its own logic and its own justification for being, and the best you can do is cope." 483; "Any Situation takes shape from events much lower than the merely human." 483

Sixth Fleet
429; in Malta; USS Scaffold is part of it

sjambok
240; cattle whip

skin

"thousands of freckles, all of which Schoenmaker had done himself." 45; "he was all points," 58; "His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull" 59; "beneath the careful shell of hair, skin and fabric" 70; "dead skin," 87; "were the skins of others actually beginning to show the blotches of disease?" 90; Vheissu, 170-71; "having caressed the skin of each alien place," 184; "They want only the skin of a place," 204; "bone of the starved corpse there just under the skin" 244; "bleached their hair white and browned their skins" 257; "her back, beaded with old sjambok scars" 270; "how clearly the musculature of her hips stood under the skin, skin with a certain glow," 271; "the Bondel's scarred back," 279; "Its skin was cellulose acetate butyrate," 284; "its skin vinyl plastisol," 285; "Satyrs with the skin of werewolves," 307; "the sky [God's] clear cheek" 339; "knavery of the skin which could harbour such germs," 339; "the skins of fruits only highlighted all shiny by light," 380; See also surface; Lucretius

Slab

35; painter, former love of Esther and Rachel, and one of The Whole Sick Crew; lives with Raoul and Melvin; described, 56; and Esther, 49, 282; and Rachel, 49; Catatonic Expressionism, 282; Whole Sick Crew party, 287; 295; yo-yoing king, 302-03; 347; 360; at Idlewild airport, 363-64; Speculations...;

Sliema

313; Town which lies across the Marsamuscetto Harbor from Valletta; where the Bad Priest lives in Malta; 339; Map of Malta

Slime, Kenneth
91; "at the Embassy's girl [...] "; British agent

Snow, Hank (1914- )
357; popular Canadian country-western singer and Grand Ole Opry regular; he moved to the U.S. in 1948 and became a U.S. citizen in 1957

Socialist Awareness
405; grows, according to Kholsky

Sodom
319; biblical city destroyed by God for its wickedness (Genesis 18-19)

Sofia
63; Capital of Bulgaria, located between the Rila Mountains and the Balkan Mountains. In the course of its history it has been often plundered and bombarded; during World War II it was occupied by Germany until 1944 when it fell to Soviet forces and a communist state was established.

songs/compositions

Christmas Eve on Old East Main, 9-10; Auld Lang Syne, 11; Poor Forlorn Civilian (P.F.C.), 13; Chow Down, 13; It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, 15; "Blue Suede Shoes," 32; Algerian pacifist song, 32; Wanderin', 34; Tienes Mi Corazón, 41; Porcépic and Goodfellow "singing a jovial song," 65; "It isn't the girl I saw you wiv in Brighton" (Porpentine sings), 87; Manon Lescaut (Puccini), 91; "Leavenworth Glee Club Sings Old Favorites" 124; "Volkswagens in Hi-Fi," 124; hillbilly song, 130; Madame Butterfly, 139; "The eyes of a New York woman," 141, 214; spontaneous musical ("Non dimenticar, che t'i'ho voluto tanto bene"), 141; O Salutaris Hostia, 145; Don Giovanni (Mozart),158; "an old revolutionary song" 188; Onward Christian Soldiers, 189; Let Me Call You Sweetheart, 214; "a song about Davy Crockett," 219; Winsome's parody of Davy Crockett song, 220; Fugue Your Buddy, 223; Pig's and Charisma's drinking song, 224-25; Godolphin's fox-trot, 249; Auf dem Zippel-Zappel-Zeppelin, 251; "splinters of sentimental ballads," 258; "minor-keyed Charleston," 260-61; Down By The Summertime Sea (sung by H. Godolphin), 278; Foppl crowd's "rousing valediction," 279; Bondel's song, 279; Partridge in a Pear Tree, 282; Tractatus song, 288-89; "I want some young blood," 300; "vulgar song," 324; "Colonel Bogey March," 325; Sylvana, 327; "Come with me to Lenox," 351; "It Don't Hurt No More," 357; Fever (Little Willie John), 353; Melvin's song in praise of Slab, 355; "Don't Be Cruel," 361; Taps, 376; You Always Hurt the One You Love, 380; music-hall song, 396; waltz, 400; Porcépic's Latin song composed for Black Mass, 401; Russian ballads, 403; Adoration of the Sun (tango played on the piano by Porcépic), 404; revolutionary songs, 405; "Be-Bop-A-Lula," 418; The Old Gray Mare, 427; "Let's all go down and piss on the Forrestal" 427; People Will Say We're In Love (from Oklahoma), 429; "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66," 433, 434; Every Day I Have the Blues, 434; C'est Magnifique, 438; "The Song of the Marines" (lyric "Sally and Sue, Don't Be Blue"), 438; I Only Have Eyes For You, 440; I Apologize, 440; "Mickey Mouse March" (parodied as "F-U-C-K-E-Y Y-O-U-S-E"), 441; "monotonous Levantine lanterloo," 460; S. Stencil's, 466; La Bella Gigogin, 477; "old vaudeville songs," 481; See also music

soul

"soulless stomachs," 23; "artistic soul," 56; "they talked a great deal about soul and the anti-intellectual," 60; "Soul cannot commend no-soul." 78; "Anything that can get drunk [...] must have some soul" 78; "a soul worth saving," 121; "faces pale and soulless as the other side of the night," 138; "the soul's passage down the toilet," 146; "I wondered about the soul of [Vheissu] [...] if it had a soul." 170; "Aristocracy is in the soul." 224; Stencil "afflicted by a kind of soul-transvestism" 226; "To fetch your soul away from light," 254; "for these the dearest canvases in his soul's gallery" 273; "where the soul's passage was more a mass migration across that choppy fetch of Atlantic" 273; soul depression, 277; "You don't even have a soul. How can you talk." 286; "It was her soul he loved." 296; "didn't every girl want a man to love the soul, the true them?" 297; soul-dentist, 297; "Her soul would be there on the outside, radiant, unutterably beautiful." 306; "So we do sell our souls: paying them away to history in little installments." 306; "false assumption that identity is single, soul continuous" 307; "two souls united before God" 313; Bad Priest "prowling for souls," 314; "attached like a black slug to her soul," 314; 318-19; dual soul, 320; "zygote has no soul," 321-22; "a mechanical and alien growth which at some point acquires a soul" 322; Fausto's, 322; "every civilian with a soul was underground" 323; 324; "not to probe the wards of either soul" 337; "the object of male existence was to be like a crystal: beautiful and soulless" 340; "'God is soulless?' [...] 'Having created souls, He Himself has none? So that to be like God we must allow to be eroded the soul in ourselves. Seek mineral symmetry, for here is eternal life: the immortality of rock." 340; 354; 360; "clumsy soul," 383; "Who knew her 'soul,'" 400; "the mirror's soulless gleam," 411; soul-dentist, 422; "If the soul [...] is light," 447; "[Stencil] has a soul possessed by the devil sleeping in his bed." 450; "Seeking perhaps to reclaim souls," 469; "short of anatomizing each soul, what hope has anyone of understanding a Situation?" 470; "And there he would float before final assault on the gray hemispheres: the soul." 471; "Valletta seemed soul-kissed into drowsy compliance." 485

soutane
313; ankle-length garment with close-fitting sleeves worn by clergy; 339

SP
10; Navy Shore Patrol

SPA 4 Able
377; radar antenna on USS Scaffold

Space/Time Employment Agency
215; on lower Broadway near Fulton, where Profane looks for a job

Spad
98; French WWII fighter planes; 387

Sphere, McClintic

52; Name? black jazz saxophonist at V-Note; "hand-carved ivory alto saxophone," 59; contract with Outlandish Records, 223; 280; 298; "Give me back my eye." 299; 348; 365; "keep cool, but care," 366; Mister Flab, 366

Sphinx
74; near Cairo; an ancient Egyptian tomb/monument with, according to Baedeker, "the form of a recumbent lion with the head of a king (Khephren?), wearing a headcloth adorned with the royal serpent. In front of the breat is the image of a god, much weather-worn. The head also is sadly mutilated, the nose and beard have broken off [...]" (p. 462)

Spitfires
314; British WWII fighter planes; 323; 331; 338

Spugo, V.A. ("Brushhook")
113; plotter for Alligator Patrol

Squasimodeo
419; former civil servant under Mussolini who brought the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto to Petard's attention

Star of Malta
444; Laferla steamer ship H. Stencil takes from Syracuse to Valletta in 1956

star-shell
323; a shell that on bursting releases a shower of brilliant stars used to illuminate

Stencil, Herbert (b. 1901)

52; "world adventurer," yarn spinner and member of the Whole Sick Crew; on mission to find out who/what V. is/was; "Born in 1901, the year Victoria died", 52; working in London for the F.O. in 1939, 54; "waiting for a coincidence," 56; "quick-change artist," 61; "always referred to himself in the third person", 62; in the sewer, 128; shot in Fairing's Parish, 131, 450; with Zeitsuss, "smiling his father's Foreign Service smile," 132; Limey, 132; 152; "architect-by-necessity of intrigues and breathings-together, 225; " and whatever impersonations that might involve," 226; "contemporary man in search of an identity," 226; Stencilized, 228; 296; on attempt at yo-yoing ("came out with one rib to his umbrella broken and a vow never to do it again."), 303; "a dual man, aimed two ways at once: towards peace and simplicity on the one hand, towards an exhausted intellectual searching on the other. Perhaps Maratt, Dnubietna and Maijstral are the first of a new race. What monsters shall rise in our wake. . ." 309; 319; return to Malta, 367; talking to Profane, 385-92; "on a private manhunt. Or womanhunt, no one is sure," 386; "Was it boredom [...] or was it something buried in the son that needed a mystery, any sense of pursuit to keep active a borderline metabolism?" 386; "had left pieces of himself--and V.--all over the western world," 389; the metal dentures "a peace-offering" to Malta, 389; steals Eigenvalue's metal teeth, 391; "Stencil's mad time-search," 406; departs for Malta, 422-23; in Malta, 443; His prayer: "Fortune, may Stencil be steady enough not to fasten on one of these poor ruins at his own random or at any least hint from Maijstral. Let him not roam out all Gothic some night with lantern and shovel to exhume an hallucination, and be found by the authorities mud-streaked and mad, and tossing meaningless clay about." 447; ; "God knows how may Stencils have chased V. about the world"--Fausto M., 451; in love with his own death? 451; off to Stockholm, 453; 489; Adams on Stencil

Richard Romeo speculates the following:
Is Herbert Stencil somehow related to Herbert Spencer who is mentioned

in Henry Adams' Education? Seems plausible.

Some facts:
  1. Herbert Spencer, an Englishman, said that society and living organisms are alike because they both grow and die.
  2. Spencer was regarded as one of the most brilliant intellects of modern times. He wrote many books about society.
  3. Human society, according to Spencer, is moving to a better life, even though hardships exist. Once society reaches a balance, it will enjoy peace, freedom, and harmony.


Stencil, Sidney (1859-1919)

52; father of Herbert ("His father. Ha."); served in the Foreign Office; 63; questioning the Gaucho, 181; 188; "Soft-shoe Sidney," 189; died in Valletta in 1919; and Carla Maijstral, 319; 381; meets Fausto Sr., 444-45; 450; in Malta gathering intelligence for the F.O., 465; "old soft-shoe artist," 469; dream of microscopic brain exploration, 471 ("the network of white halls in his [H. Stencil's] own brain" 53); theory of Paracletian politics, 480; meets "V.", 486-88; affair w/V., 488, 489; His prayer: "let him [Maijstral] be less and less sure as he gathers years [...] " 491; waterspout (June 10, 1919), 492

Str. San Giovanni
318; in Malta, terminates at the Harbour

Strada Reale

308; now Kingsway, in Valletta; many streets in Malta had Italian names, but they were given English names after Italy declared war in 1940; 457; 467; See also Kingsway

Strait Street
Straight St. in Valletta at night in 2004

416; in Valletta, Malta, aka "the Gut." Passport's Illustrated Guide to Malta: "The exceptionally narrow Strait Street was the only place where the Knights were allowed to fight duels. Once a notorious red-light area, known to British servicemen as 'The Gut', this is still fairly sleazy at night." [2]; aka "Strada Stretta," 468, 469; Strada Streeta, 474

Straits of Messina

432; The narrow passage between Sicily and Italy, flanked, in Greek legend, by Charybdis and Scylla

strand wolf
252; brown hyenas that prowl the beaches in Südwest; 254; 267; 268; 274

Strategic Air Command
124; elite U.S. Air Force bomber squadron

street

"they had all fused into a single abstracted Street,"10; "brief promenade in," 25; "Your boy's road that I'll never see," 27; Profane "roamed around the streets late that night studying the classified by streetlight." 36; "if [Profane] kept going down that street, not only his ass but also his arms, legs, sponge brain and clock of a heart must be left behind to litter the pavement, be scattered among manhole covers." 40; "its streets the courtyards of limbo," 52; "how many more pools of light he could reasonably expect from the street at night." 76; "one wrong word would put [Profane] closer than he cared to be to street level," 137; Lucille's eyes "seemed to absorb all the light in the street" 140; "sorrow so big it filled him, leaded out his eyes and the holes in his shoes to make one big pool of human sorrow on the street," 141-42; "Behind them the street was chaos." 151; "dream-street," 151; "the seeming vastness of that street," 188; "Blood began to stain the pavements," 209; "If under the stree and under the sea are the same then [Profane] was king of both." 215; "singing a death-song and seaving side to side in a chain, broadside to the street's center-line." 244; Meroving "led him by the hand through narrow streets," 244; "The landscape was an empty street, drastically foreshortened," 282; "Either the street or all cooped up." 291; "ready to run to the street," 294; di Chirico's, 303; "who can hear [...] vehicles in the street when one is occupied with the past?" 307; "Children listen [...] to bombs above in the streets." 310; "This empty street." 317; "[Fausto II] took at this time to shambling about in the streets, during raids." 323; "we all must [...] find ourselves on the street [...] of the 20th Century, at whose far end or turning — we hope — is some sense of home or safety. But no guarantees. A street we are put at the wrong end of, for reasons best known to the agents who put us there. If there are agents. But a street we must walk." 323-24; "in dream there are two worlds: the street and under the street. One is the kingdom of death and one of life." 325; "dream-street" 325; "Somehow the street — the kingdom of death — was friendly." 330; "vibrating like a shadow in some street where the light is too clear," 336; "the Bad Priest had been known to gather about him a small knot of children in the street and give them sermons." 340; "colonial lanes," 351; "How many times have you told me about under the street, and on the street, and in the subway?" 358; "Dedicated to the duck's-ass heads and bursting straight skirts of the Street." 360; "on or off the Street, there is no one of us you can point to and call well" 360; "it is two dimensional, as is the Street," 409; century's, 450; "the Street for them separately to return to," 453; "I am the Street," 454; "The street [...] was level and clear. Hand in hand with Brenda [...] Profane ran down the street." 455; "Such were the topological deformities of this street that one seemed to walk through a succession of music-hall stages," 468; "frenzy of the street," 470 ; "the politics of the street can overtake even the most stable-appearing of governments; like death it cuts through and gathers in all ranks of society." 471; "The street and the hothouse; in V. were resolved by some magic, the two extremes." 487; See also hothouse; June Disturbances; underground

striker
16; Navy: an apprentice who has received schooling or on-the-job training for a particular "rating" (job) aboard ship.

subaltern
269; subordinate

succubus
Demon assuming female form to have sex with men while they sleep; Rachel visited Profane "occasionally [...] at night, like a succubus," 30; "She would come to him at night not as a succubus but seeking instruction," 121; "Astarte now leaned from the xebec's bowsprit [...] as if it were male and asleep and she [...] a succubus preparing to ravish." 457

Suck Hour

13; the hour in the Sailor's Grave bar when the boys get to suck the tit-shaped beer taps; See also Maman; mothers/matriarch

Sudan

459; Republic in NE Africa. In the early 19th century Egypt gained control of N. Sudan but was unable to unify the fragmented tribes of the South sector. After British-Egyptian forces retook control in 1898, Sudan was under joint rule of Britain and Egypt (Britain exercised actual control), from 1899-1956; See also Fuzzy-Wuzzy; Gordon, General; Khartoum; Kitchener, Sirdar; Mahdi; Mohammed Ahmed

Südwest

228-279; Deutsch-Südwestafrika; German colony from 1892 until 1915 when it was taken by South African forces during WWI. It was made a Protectorate of South-West Africa under the League of Nations; now called Namibia, it was under South African control until 1990 when it gained its independence. Südwest; Wikipedia

Suez Canal

79; In 1956, Egyptian president Nasser seized the Suez Canal, which was under British-French control. Anglo-French forces intervened, but differences of opinion in Britain, the United States and elsewhere, combined with veiled Russian threats, caused the British and French to back down; 186; 428; "We [the U.S.] voted in the Security Council with Russia and against England and France on this Suez business." 431, 448

Su Feng
396; character played by Mélanie, "who is tortured to death defending her purity against the invading Mongolians"

suicide

compulsion to, 24; H. Stencil's mother, 52; H. Godolphin contemplating,183; "the suicidal fact that below the glittering integument of every foreign land there is a hard dead-point of truth." 184; "Venezuelan problem [...] no way out of it except suicide." 195; Elena's attempt, 318-19; Winsome's attempt, 361-62; 390; "Itague thought [Mélanie's death] was suicide," 414; "suicidal workhorse trumpet," 434-35; Elena with S. Stencil ("Threatening suicide?"), 483; "There is always the way out that Carla Maijstral threatens to take." 484; See also Brody

Sullivan, Ed (1902-74)
25; originally a newspaper columnist, he hosted a popular TV variety show from 1948 to 1971.

Sultan
462; in Constantinople who imprisons Mara; aka "His Ghostly Magnificence," 463

Surd, Howie
372; drunken yeoman on USS Scaffold; 424

surface

skin-pattern, 26; 47; "beneath the careful shell of hair, skin and fabric lay holed and gray linen and a ne'er-do-well's heart." 70; "But beneath?" 74; plate, 90; love of face, 97; "cultural harmony," 103; 115; 139; shallow myth, 142; Lucille, 143; 146; accidents of history, 155; "mosaic of tilted street-surfaces," 139; Mantissa's eyes, 159-60; Vheissu "like the skin of a tattoed savage." 170; "that skin. . .would begin to get between you and whatever it was in her that you thought you loved." 171; tourists "having caressed the skin of each alien place," 184; "As if something trembled below its surface, waiting to brust through." 201; tourists "want only the skin of a place, the explorer wants its heart." 204; "Nothing" beneath the skin, 204; "The skin which had wrinkled through my nightmares was all there had ever been [...] a dream of annihilation." 206; Botticelli's Venus ("gaudy dream of annihilation" - 210), 209; SHROUD: "Its skin was cellulose acetate butyrate, a plastic transparent not only to light but also to X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons." 284; painting's surface, 295; "a row of false shop fronts" 324; 345; Paola's "protective coloration," 350; texture, 354; "the colors on the wall-size painting were shifting," 355; "enveloped them like a velvet teaser-curtain" 400; V.: "skin radiant with the bloom of some new plastic;" 411; "Because we do paint the side of some Peri or other [...] We call it society. A new coat of paint;" 461; "And all faces are blank masks." 487; 492; See also espionage; Schoenmaker, Dr. Shale; skin; Lucretius

Surgeon Dentist, The
154; Paris 1728 first edition of owned by Eigenvalue

Suzanna Squaducci
21; luxury liner; 33; taking Paola, Stencil and Profane to Malta in late September 1956, 367; departs for Malta, 423

Swakopmund

235; Südwest city located midway down the coast; 266; Map of Südwest

Sylvia
349; Ruby's friend

Syracuse
444; city and port in southeast Sicily

References

  1. Cook, Thomas, Passport's Illustrated Travel Guide to Malta, from Thomas Cook, Passport Books, a division of NTC Publishing Group, Lincolnwood, Illinois USA, 1994
  2. Cook, Thomas, Passport's Illustrated Travel Guide to Malta, from Thomas Cook, Passport Books, a division of NTC Publishing Group, Lincolnwood, Illinois USA, 1994, p.47

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