#pjõl summaries

[hollowflight-propaganda]

once you're done with that WoF re-read i suggest you read Sacred and Terrible Air/Püha ja Õudne Lõhn (the ibex translation, specifically.) really good book. bit hard to understand in parts but @revacholianpizzaagenda has put up some summaries if there's anything you don't understand. (tagged #pjõl summaries).

I've never heard of it before, but I was just scrounging around and I found a pdf of it! I'll be sure to get to it sometime!

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Sacred and Terrible Air summaries index

Chapter by chapter summaries of Robert Kurvitz's 2013 novel Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air):

1. CHARLOTTESJÄL + 2. KLASSIKOKKUTULEK

3. NON-ENTITEET + 4. VIDKUN HIRD

5. ZA/UM + 6. FRANTICEK VAPPER

7. MAAILM LÄHEB VALESTI, AEG ON LIIGESTEST LAHTI + 8. LINOLEUMIMÜÜJA

9. PÜHA JA ÕUDNE LÕHN + 10. HEAD ÖÖD, ANNI

11. ISE-CHILLIJA + 12. ZIGI

13. AINELAULATUS + 14. PUUDUJATE NIMEKIRI

15. HALLITUS + 16. ENTROPONAUT

17. HARNANKUR + 18. KOLM ÕLITAIGNAS LIHAPIRUKAT

19. MA EI OLE NALJA ASI + 20. VALGUS PAISTAB KÕIGEST LÄBI

AND

THE WHOLE BOOK ACTUALLY

[renmorris]

I’ll do a better bigger post about Ambrosius Saint-Miro and Harrier now that @revacholianpizzaagenda is putting the pjõl chapter summaries up I just need you all to know that I have been going completely fucking insane over these two for months

it’s also a huge part of my meta on how Harry is the makings of an Innocence but only for Revachol and not one that will ever be elected

like

(grips you)

Harry says he’s a herald of the apocalypse, the first crack in the sheer face of god and he’s kind of right! because he is the foreshadowing of the Real Fucking Deal. Harry's most destructive philosophies and fantasies are Ambrosius Saint Miro and Harry names himself for him.

[57sfinest]

incredibly obscure worldbuilding details and lore give me life, but i’m a bit sad that more people don’t know the harry magpie canon. i think it puts everything in the game into perspective and makes dolores dei even more terrifying. to be fair, it was a bit difficult to hunt down even an english summary of pjõl or the theoretical entroponetics design work. getting a bit depressed thinking of revachol and the rest of elysium’s future after reading the pjõl summary, i wish everyone in that world could have a break and maybe all of the characters introduced in-game wouldn’t be nuked? ah! getting back on track though, thank you so much for your de meta thoughts! just found your blog and i’m binging them! take care :)

yes!! like it's such a subtle confirmation that yes, the innocences were superhuman in some aspect, that the man who assassinated dolores dei was probably right to fear her. it's so interesting to think about how many magpies there might be out there and how they're shaping the future and the fall of elysium without even realizing it. how many magpies don't even realize they're magpies? how many of them even know what a magpie is? (i get the feeling the moralintern might intentionally suppress that information.) did harry know he was one, before the amnesia? does any of that even matter when the world is ending in less than 30 years?? thinking about the bombings gives me such a strong feeling of desperate hopelessness for the setting, and it fits so well with the themes of the game. unfortunately, it's a fitting conclusion, but it hurts to think about.

and thank you for your kind words!! i'm so glad you like my analysis, i have a lot of fun doing it :)

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Sacred and Terrible Air ch1+2 summary

Chapters index

1. CHARLOTTESJÄL

Maj (5), Anni-Elin (12), Målin (13) and Charlotte Lund (14) are the daughters of education minister Ann-Margaret Lund and paper industrialist Karl Lund. On the 20th anniversary of the girls’ historic disappearance in a vacation area outside Vaasa, the narration goes through their last known movements, as told by the last people who saw them: the bus ride to the Charlottesjäl beach, the ice creams they always bought, the three meat piroshkis they splurged on.

On that day, three boys are discussing whether to call the girls or to wait some more when a super deep paleness fills the room.

2. CLASS REUNION

We are introduced to the three boys in the present time (72, Vaasa, end of September).

Inayat Khan is an unemployed Iilmaraan living with his mother and a collector of disappearances-related memorabilia. Badly dressed, fat, bespectacled, unshaven, big sad eyes. Jesper de la Guardie is a high concept interior designer whose shoes alone are worth 3k reál. Blond, blue eyes, rich, empty inside. Tereesz Machejek is a Zsiemski International Collaboration Police agent. Potato-haired skrunkled beanpole in a herringbone coat. We begin to see how their lives are still tragically wrapped around the girls’ disappearance, to the point of fetishizing a scrunchie. The trio meets again on the occasion of a class reunion. Reconnecting past a falling out with Khan a few years back, Jesper has news and invites the others to a certain cafe to share them – he will need to use the projector there. As they leave, distant sleigh bells are heard.

La Puta Madre is name-dropped in passing in 64, still going strong as an interisolary drug lord, if anyone asked.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) final chapter + epilogue summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

And done!

19. I AM NO JOKE

Present, Graad. Khan uses the key he received in chapter 11 to reach Ambartsumjan’s suite at Hotel Intergraad. The man has killed himself, obsessed by the fear that the world would disappear. Khan wades through the ruins of Ambartsumjan’s collection, looking for something.

At the hospital, the Man from Internal Affairs interrogates Tereesz. We discover that Khan gave up Tereesz for info and that Tereesz is okay with it. Regretting the deal, the Man from Internal Affairs wants Tereesz to stop Khan and shows him that the existence of the girls is fading even from old photographs. He compares this disappearance with “where your friends are going, your Rodionov’s Trench”. Tereesz is nonplussed, trusts Khan and his plan, and takes the opportunity to go on a tangent about the ICP (and moralism as a whole) being a fraud that only works to protect a bad status quo.

Hotel Intergraad. Khan finds what he was looking for: his Harnankur’s empty glass display, which he had sent to Ambartsumjan, with a secret compartment where the collector, acting as a mediator, had hidden the ICP’s payment for selling out Tereesz. It’s what they have on Zigi, plus Voronikin’s map to Rodionov’s Trench. Khan asserts himself and his plan, which he considers a massive rescue operation. He is not scared by anything, not even by the girls themselves reaching to him in dreams from the trench to tell him to leave them be. Despite this laser focus, the details of the girls are beginning to fade in his mind too. He goes back to Jesper at their hotel.

Two months later, 4k km north of Mirova. Jesper leaves his car near an immense forest. He sets fire to the car, and to what’s left of the girls’ mementos with it. The last memories of them fade from him. Following a pull he’s always felt, Jesper loses himself in the woods.

One month later, 6k km away, Polyfabricate. Khan has crossed war-torn Graad to find Zigi’s dad, outspoken nihilist disappointed by Saint-Miro’s approach. Khan takes Zigi’s notebooks. But in Zigi’s meticulous journaling, too, the girls have disappeared. Curled up in a station’s toilet, Khan can’t sleep. Something is very wrong. His grasp on the girls is slipping. He repeats to himself that he is at the end of the world.

21 years ago. The girls are woken up by Zigi’s brick thrown through their window. There is something wrong in Målin, under the perfect surface of her body, and it mirrors the wrongness in the world. Her sisters reach her. Little Maj points at the window and says: “It’s going wrong.”

EPILOGUE. LIGHT SHINES THROUGH EVERYTHING

End of the last century, Revachol. The composer comte Émile de Pérouse-Mittrecie wants to reach universal acclaim through his incomprehensible dodecaphonic works. He has just directed his first concert. Critics and public come to him with backhanded compliments at best. Only one man comes forward like a miniature ball of enthusiasm, spelling out compliments in the international alphabet. He shares with the composer an eerily accurate prediction of the future: the upcoming Revolution, its failure, leading to the darkness of mankind’s last century. To him, Émile’s music is absolute mathematical perfection, the music of the pale, eternally resounding from the true end. No need for encores. The comte should disappear, actually, to respect that perfection.

That man, a math professor, is Ion Rodionov. A bored young boy, a student of his, urges him to cut it out. His name is Ambrosius.

One month later, Émile drives his yacht into the pale, screaming that he is forever loved.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Sacred and Terrible Air ch3+4 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details idk

3. NON-ENTITY

A brief digression on state censorship erasing certain individuals from records, and how sometimes that backfires by turning the unsuccessful censorship into a historical curio. We follow the history of the famous doubly-censored photograph of Samaran president Knezhinsky, first edited by taking out cutthroat Commissar Julius Kuznitsky, then apolitical agronomist Aram Ukhotomsky (the photo was brought up by Khan in the previous chapter).

The same fate befell Ignus Nilsen in his homeland Vaasa and counterrevolutionary Graad. The resulting amount of photographic and video material wherein a ghostly cytoplasm floats in Mazov’s right hand gave birth to the belief that that cytoplasm is Communism itself.

4. VIDKUN HIRD

Present. In a high concept cafe designed by a pupil of Jesper’s, all white and glass and sharp angles, the man shares his news. His connections gave him footage of a prison interview that award-winning documentarist Konrad Gessle filmed with the infamous Vidkun Hird: politician, fascist, philosopher, serial rapist, currently serving a life sentence in Kronstadt. As the footage plays on the cafe’s projector, Hird illustrates his Übermensch-y views and drops hints that he raped one of the girls, adding a detail – a constellation of birthmarks – that had been omitted from all public reports. Hird had a strong alibi for the disappearance, and yet...

20 years ago, June. The boys chat and look at the Charlottesjäl beach from atop a cliff, looking for the girls with Khan’s binoculars. They find them, that same constellation visible on Anni-Elin’s skin.

Present. Tereesz agrees to do something very illegal to pursue this new line of investigation, a trail after all this time.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 15+16 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

15. MOULD

The chapter of the end times. We follow the last days of various secondary characters throughout the six years that go from the beginning of the end – the initial pale onslaught, the nuke – to global entroponetic collapse in 78. It’s a suspended atmosphere. Oblivion and annihilation are almost met with relief. Some, like Anita, come into their own in the end days, finding unexpected wellsprings of inner strength. Gessle’s subversive documentary on Hirst finds a public of fascists missing the nuance. Khan calls his mother for the last time one month after reaching Graad, saying goodbye. He will not return. Katla joins Graad in the war against Mesque; the struggle is futile, but as satire would have it, not even losing a war can take the social democracy out of Vaasa. They even become the first and last city in history to eliminate light pollution. As the world ends, they look at the stars.

The war entwines with the advance of the pale. Its arrival is heralded by fruit going mouldy.

As Ann-Margret Lund dissolves at last, she leaves no memories in the pale, there is no past for her to return to. Katla sinks into the pale.

16. ENTROPONAUT

(Monty Python voice) and now for something completely different. Present (72), Samara, collapsed Nad-Umai region. Zigi, now a washed-out husk of a man, traverses the desolate grey expanses of the near pale. But he is not alone…

21 years ago, Vaasa. In a fit of rebellion, as one does to change the world, a drunk Zigi wrecks a bus stop, fisticuffs a trash bin and throws a brick at the window of the fanciest picket fence house in the suburb: the Lund house. The girls’ father rushes out to punish the vandal and engages him in a long pursuit which, after some slapstick detours, ends with Zigi climbing to the safety of a garage roof. Then, too, he was not alone, a shadowy figure was already egging him on from the roof, inciting violence...

Present. Zigi’s past and present companion turns out to be none other than the blurred cytoplasm of Ignus Nilsen. The two have a contentious relationship, with the apocalyptic shrike now supporting, now inspiring, now suicide-baiting his ward. Zigi is trying to flee from the world. This pains Nilsen, who, despite everything, loves the world deeply. Their bickering takes on the ideological tones of a confrontation between communism and nihilism, a central tension of the book. At one point, Nilsen’s impassionate defense of communism, in its most fundamental aspect of belief in your fellow human, appears to make the pale retreat from their spot. This makes Zigi panic. The pale rolls back. Nilsen accuses the Lund girls of having been bourgeois, all girls are bourgeois, but Zigi shuts him up: they weren’t. He does not know what they were thinking, but it was something else.

Zigi threatens to make Ignus disappear if he won’t reveal something from his erstwhile, bloody retreat to Samara: why on earth did he take the Harnankur model with him? But Nilsen admits that all he says – all the tales of Mazov and his gentle soul, of the amphetamines-fueled birth of Samara SRV – can’t reach any further than what Zigi already knows...

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 11+12 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

11. SELF-CHILLER

50s. As a child, Ulv does not care for people, nor anything else really. Being gifted a tape with a dance remix of a classic dodecaphonic piece (Theo Van Kok/Comte de Perouse-Mittrecie) opens a new horizon to him. He loses himself in the music, “self-chilling”.

Present. The trio reconvenes outside Jesper’s home, discussing their next steps as they walk through the woods. Khan points out that Tereesz’s approach isn’t going places and offers his alternatives: first, he is the one who sent the newspaper ad in the last chapter, hoping for new leads on the letters. Then, if Jesper bankrolls it, he would go see an unconventional special consultant, a medium of sorts, the so-called “self-chiller”. In the past, this gifted individual confirmed the identity of the remains of Dobreva and Abadanaiz and located the last traces of Cornelius Gurdi. He lives in the woods outside Lemminkäise, which is being swallowed by the pale. Jesper agrees, but he won’t go with them.

20 years ago. The boys sell dear belongings and do construction work to get the money to pay Zigi, the dealer, for the extravagant drug the girls asked for. Across the decades, the self-chiller is waiting for Khan.

Present, two days later. Khan and Tereesz hired the wildest taxi driver in the fleet, Kenni (who only speaks Suruese and generally exists in his own world), to get them to Lemminkäise in record time. It’s a three days ride. All three of them drunk on cherry wine, they pass through the end-of-the-world scenarios of a mass evacuation and, at last, face the rolling mass of the pale.

In his inebriation, Tereesz confesses to Khan that he’s been let go from the ICP. Khan had already figured out that much.

2 years ago. Khan dreams of receiving a phone call through the pale. A child’s voice tells him terrible things.

When he wakes up, he receives a shipment from Graad, from one Sarjan Ambartsumjan: a golden key.

An extended version of this scene found on the nihilist.fm blog spells out that the child’s voice was Målin’s, telling Khan to leave them alone and stop tormenting them. We are also told that Khan is already on Zigi’s trail and already wants to go see the man who speaks with the dead. Khan’s mother tries to goad him into getting a job and a girlfriend; the date she sets up for him is the one that will lead to the fallout with Jesper.

12. ZIGI

19 years ago. The trio’s older schoolmate Zigi is a leather-jacket-toting bad boy, a vandal, an atrocious sprechgesänger (rapper), outspoken dia-materialist, entropolist and fan of the nihilistic Innocence of Mesque, Ambrosius Saint-Miro. He preaches the upcoming total entroponetic collapse to the naive kids at school – it will happen within their lifetimes, he says, at a time when entroponetics was not even part of the curriculum. He is also a drug dealer. When the cops come for him, he flees the isola to reach his nihilistic drunkard kojko father in Graad. A few years later, his charred body is found in an incinerator.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 9+10 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

The one with the bomb.

9. SACRED AND TERRIBLE AIR

A speech by His Innocence Ambrosius Saint-Miro. The Innocence goes through a long rhetorical boasting of his role as “ambrosia, the holy world” and the Innocences’ role as the inevitable answer to mankind’s needs throughout history. The concept of ‘innocence’ is framed as one of lack of moral responsibility by virtue of inevitablity, and by following him, the same grace is bestowed upon all of humanity. He is a nihilist. He was shunned by kings and presidents, but the people chose him, through his books, his radio shows. He was the only one who asked: What was that sacred and terrible smell in the air, that time? He wants to show this terrible beauty to mankind. He wants to give the pale to mankind. So he attacks: Revachol, then Graad and further. He is evacuating the world. This is where nihilism leads. It is no longer what could be, or what could not be. It is. The entire world is a zone of imminent entroponetic catastrophe.

10. GOOD NIGHT, ANNI

Flash forward a week: Jesper returns to his suburban home in the middle of the night. He wakes up his 19yo revacholian model girlfriend Anita, a blatant replacement for Anni whom he’s dated since she was 15. He is leaving, forever. To find the girls. She can keep his money. Anita does not take kindly to the news; in a nasty comeback, Jesper informs her that she can’t return to Revachol because it’s been nuked. Radio waves are filled with news of the Mesque aggressor, of Saint Miro, of half the population gone. She is devastated. He leaves. The others are waiting for him in a taxi.

Present. Delirious Tereesz refuses to be admitted to a hospital, so they take him to Jesper’s suburban home. He dreams of the girls’ funeral, of finally being able to put it all to rest, but accepts that it won’t happen.

Anita arrives at Jesper’s in a dizzying display of expensive fashion. We follow the Vaasan night until morning. A Man from Internal Investigation is looking for Tereesz at the police station he was discharged from, but they never had anyone under that name. In the morning, a mustachioed man has a reaction to an ad in the paper: someone is asking the “good person” who may have information about the letters allegedly sent by the girls to come forward. It is not too late.

In Lemminkäise, a scruffy, curly-haired young man named Ulv buys some sausages and inordinate amounts of alcohol and cigarettes from the village store, which is closing as the pale encroaches.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 17+18 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

17. HARNANKUR

150 years ago, Mirova, Graad. The maiden voyage of the first civilian interisolary flight, Harnankur, draws a big crowd. Two days later, six hours into the pale, the massive airship disappears, perhaps into an uncharted pale superdeep. Para-historians like Khan and Samaran entroponaut Voronikin believe this version of the events. According to mainstream history, however, Harnankur never existed, and civilian interisolary flight begins ten years later with the ship Anastasia Lux. This disappearance from history, documents and public interest is hard to explain; a famous vintage photograph shows Nadja Harnankur and a massive crowd waving at an empty sky.

What exists of the Harnankur is a model which Nilsen took with him in his exodus from Graad to Samara. Voronikin maintains that the model is technically feasible, and thus must have existed. According to him, it was made into a ship and the ship carried out a project which was lost on that first trip, when it deviated from its course and encountered an unknown phenomenon in the pale.

18. THREE MEAT PIROSHKIS

2 years ago. A bird’s eye view on Mirova and its financial centre Noo introduces us to Sarjan Ambartsumjan, billionaire and leading collector of disappearance memorabilia. He gets an interisolary phone call from Khan. After some mutual, inescapable nerd posturing, Khan asks Ambartsumjan about the service manual of his copy of the Harnankur model, a request which Ambartsumjan, as the owner of the other existing copy, has to comply with. The instructions are: you have to think about her. Constantly. Or she will disappear, as an object that can no longer exist in this world. The original model is kept in a museum, which guarantees its object permanence, but the third copy was not so lucky and its existence was not sustained. The two talk about this kind of disappearances happening more and more frequently, to more and more things. For Khan, it started in 52. He now feels good about the phenomenon, like he trusts it. Ambartsumjan, anyway, sold his Harnankur model years ago. The buyer was one Zygismunt Berg – then presumed dead. This phone call is what first put Khan on his trail.

Present, Mirova. A moment of tender playfulness for the trio, freshly arrived in Graad, is interrupted by the ICP agents on Tereesz’s trail. They shoot him in the knee and shoulder. Tereesz is taken away in an ambulance. He tries to convince the Man from Internal Affairs to follow up on the Trentmöller lead, but the agent doesn’t budge and says that those disappearances have not been reported.

Ambartsumjan receives a package from Vaasa: the glass display of Khan’s Harnankur model, empty.

21 years ago. As a rowdy, drunk Zigi gets beaten up at a party and lies bloodied in the snow as a defeated outcast, the shade of Nilsen, always close to him, bemoans that the boy is always prey. With ponderous, ominous dramatic weight, Zigi meets one of the Lund girls, who has come to check on him.

Present. Samaran near pale. Zigi stocks up on food and fuel. Atop a deserted hospital in the near pale, he has been readying a small airship for a very long journey: he is going to Rodionov’s Trench, the heart of the pale. On his knuckles, he has four numbers tattooed: 5, 12, 13, 14. In the ship, he keeps a present the girls made for him. As he prepares to leave, he says his goodbyes to Nilsen. The cytoplasm forgives him for leaving – it is framed as a nihilist choice as opposed to a communist one. Nilsen is reminded of a close friend of his and Mazov’s, a mathematician and nihilist-materialist erased from history: Ion Rodionov, the secret third brain of the revolution. Zigi is surprised: no-one could have known of his existence, certainly not Zigi himself. Nilsen, somehow having gone from imaginary friend of sorts to an entity possessing the consciousness of the real historical figure, reveals that Rodionov researched a weapon of mass negation to use as an answer to atomic power, for Samara’s sake, and was the one who brought the Harnankur model to Samara. In his goodbye, Nilsen once again frames communism as an ideal born out of love, but unattainable, as the world does not love it back. He does not agree with people like Zigi and Rodionov, but their position may be the only tenable one.

Zigi’s eyes are red as the airship soars and the cytoplasm dissolves.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 5+6 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

5. ZA/UM

20 years ago. The girls notice the boys spying, the boys notice that the girls noticed, but what could��ve been a diplomatic incident turns into the beginning of a sweet bond between the two trios + little Maj. Tereesz vibes with & crushes on Charlotte, Khan with Målin, Jesper with Anni-Elin. They spend the day at the beach together and promise to meet again – bearing apple cider.

We are introduced to the mysterious Linoleum Salesman, choking himself with his hotel linen while he’s got a binocular-plus-camera contraption set up on his hotel room’s balcony outside, pointing at the beach.

Present. Tereesz’s illegal plan is to fake having the authorization to interrogate Hird through the mind-melding drug ZA/UM. He locks himself in the prisoner’s cell. Hird first mocks Tereesz’s Zsiemski origins, then under fear of ZA/UM torture he confesses that he never saw the girls and only got the info from a cellmate. Tereesz goes through with the drug anyway, forcing himself into the man’s brain. He is addicted to this.

Later, handcuffed on a border guard ship, he is at peace, thinking he might have solved the case.

6. FRANTIČEK THE BRAVE

A brief retrospective on failure, on history as the story of failure, on charming mysteries ending in sad mundane discoveries. Operetta star Nadja Harnankur killing herself in a river and giving rise to a number of urban legends and conspiracy theories before her body was found during construction works. The tragedy of the revolution. Dobreva and Abadanaiz poisoning themselves in Ozonne, their rests found by the kid of a rich banker who’ll build a spa over that place. Graad turning into an imperialistic world power, swallowing countries into a post-megalopolis mass called the Polyfabricate. The legendary disappearance of Frantiček the Brave, a revolutionary hero of the kojkos whose courage stuck with then-seven-years-old Tereesz. Frantiček the Brave, too, was ultimately shot behind a waste facility.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 7+8 summary

Chapters index - ask away for any clarification or further details!

7. THE WORLD IS GOING WRONG, TIME IS OUT OF JOINT

Present. Khan goes through a cute, dorky wake-up routine at sunset. He lives in his mother’s basement, where he keeps an impressive collection of disappearance memorabilia. There are items related to Nadja Harnankur, a dodecahedron autographed by dodecaphonic composed Comte de Perouse Mittrecie, mementos of Ramout Karzai who braved the Erg desert to ask for an audience with God, of Gon Tzu who sailed east from Samara to look for the peaches of immortality for the emperor of Safre and never came back, and of course all the documents related to the Lund girls. Among them, letters allegedly sent by the girls, claiming that they were well and with “the Man”.

2 years ago, the falling out between Jesper and Khan, It happens at a fancy place where Jesper helped Khan get a reservation for a date with a girl. The date goes poorly, Khan waves at Jesper as a lifeline, to show he’s friends with a famous guy, but for his part Jesper pretends to his rich acquaintances that he doesn’t know his old friend.

18 years before that. The next meetup on the beach is at the boys’ secret hideout. It goes very well – they drink cider and exchange tales, including that of Gon Tzu. Peaches of immortality don’t exist, says Khan. What if they did and Gon Tzu just kept them for himself and his friends, say the girls.

Present. Tereesz is discharged. In his ZA/UM hangover, he dreamt of a Man made of violence who lurked at the corner of the girls’ presence, he was him and Hird and a grown-up Khan and Tereesz’s father and more figures still.

Jesper has come to visit Khan in his basement. He is, despite himself, charmed by the collection and by its crown jewel, a rare copy of the model of the disappeared Harnankur ship. They are worried about Tereesz – it’s been two days since the Hird interview. Right then, Tereesz calls from a payphone and urges them to reach him in town.

20 years ago. The girls invite them for the following Saturday at their secret spot. They ask the boys to bring a drug called cherry speed and give them the seller’s contact: Zigi.

8. LINOLEUM SALESMAN

The traveling Linoleum Salesman turns out to be a pedophile. In Kexholm, he finds a group of people like him, who all identify themselves by their day jobs. One day, he sees the girls and desires them as his final target before killing himself.

Present. The trio’s objective – Tereesz’s lead from Hird – is Deerek Trentmöller, who now lives in a retirement home. Tereesz tries to hide having obtained his info via ZA/UM, but Khan susses it out and is worried – for Tereesz but also for Tereesz’s job, which is crucial to their endeavours. Hird and Trentmöller bonded in prison, and Trentmöller got the drawing from the leader of the infamous, alleged Kexholm ring. Now Trentmöller is senile, but they will try to get info on the leader from him, one way or another. Under Tereesz’s rough questioning, the confused old man tells them that the Linoleum Salesman lived in Kexholm, and that he watched the girls from the Havsänglar hotel overlooking the beach.

Elsewhere, past winter’s orbit, a metereological ship is caught in a sudden onslaught of pale. Satellites witness the worldwide range of the phenomenon: Katla’s Northern Passage, Samarskilt, half of Supramundi, Lemminkäise, Nad-Umai, Yekokataa, Severnaya Zemlya, the Semenine islands, all gone. It’s the beginning of the end of the world.

The trio calls Havsänglar to jot down all the names of the full guests list of June-July 52. Midway through the hundreds of names: Deerek Trentmöller, purpose of the stay: vacation, profession: linoleum salesman. They rush back to the retirement home and Tereesz subjects the man to ZA/UM.

But the mind-melding drug shows that neither Deerek Trentmöller nor his Linoleum Salesman persona did it. The last memory Tereesz sees: on the day of the girls’ disappearance, Trentmöller feels a deep wrongness. He checks his photographs taken with the binocular-plus-camera, he is sure that the girls were there, but they are not. Tereesz is feverish and they are out of leads. But Khan has an idea.

[renmorris]

looking up older posts on my blog pre Eva uploading the pjõl summaries is so funny, very wink wink nudge nudge wrt Ambrosius

now I’m just like “yeah so that’s the guy that nukes Revachol and he’s kind of a sideways reflection of Harry, like in twin peaks fan terminology we'd say they’re tulpas/thoughtforms”

[renmorris]

Hello everyone!

I’ve gotten a lot of asks from people wanting to read PJÕL and now!! You can! We all can!

Please read this one! And not the google translate shit tier one that plagiarized Eva's summaries and asked for bitcoin donations off someone else’s work!

Sacred and Terrible Air summaries index

Chapter by chapter summaries of Robert Kurvitz's 2013 novel Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air):

1. CHARLOTTESJÄL + 2. KLASSIKOKKUTULEK

3. NON-ENTITEET + 4. VIDKUN HIRD

5. ZA/UM + 6. FRANTICEK VAPPER

7. MAAILM LÄHEB VALESTI, AEG ON LIIGESTEST LAHTI + 8. LINOLEUMIMÜÜJA

9. PÜHA JA ÕUDNE LÕHN + 10. HEAD ÖÖD, ANNI

11. ISE-CHILLIJA + 12. ZIGI

13. AINELAULATUS + 14. PUUDUJATE NIMEKIRI

15. HALLITUS + 16. ENTROPONAUT

17. HARNANKUR + 18. KOLM ÕLITAIGNAS LIHAPIRUKAT

19. MA EI OLE NALJA ASI + 20. VALGUS PAISTAB KÕIGEST LÄBI