V.

Rachel walks through New York “as if she were nose-deep in snowdrifts, and yet on route to meet a lover” (19). She is returning from a meeting with a cosmetic surgeon named Shale Schoenmaker, whom she accused of trying to drive her friend Esther Havitz into debt with needless surgeries. She has helped her roommate Esther “out of more financial crises than either could remember” (21). Her friend Slab claims that Rachel helps Esther so she can feel like a mother.

Rachel goes to a party, where she sits on the floor at the center of the crowd. A young man named Herbert Stencil watches her and worries that she does not like him. Rachel does not like “the way he looks at Paola” (22), her and Esther’s new roommate, but Rachel is misunderstanding Stencil’s interest in the young Maltese girl. His father Sidney Stencil is a former British spy who worked in Malta and died while investigating the June Disturbances in 1919. Since his father’s death, Stencil has read his father’s diaries and become obsessed with the identity of a mysterious woman named only V. His “grim, joyless” (23) pursuit of this mystery has no real purpose. Stencil knows that Schoenmaker owns a “vital piece of the V. jigsaw” (24), and, until Schoenmaker is prepared to share this information, Stencil passes the time by investigating the Whole Sick Crew. To Stencil, they seem to be lazy, uninteresting performance artists.

Elsewhere in the city, Paola visits a bar with Roony, Charisma, and Fu. They watch a jazz musician named McClintic Sphere perform.

Stencil is obsessed with “the pursuit of V.” (26). His life as a spy seems dull to him, and he refers to himself always in the third person to blend in among his many false identities. After hearing about the death of Porpentine, one of “his father’s colleagues” (27), he travels to Egypt, where his investigations have led him to a series of eight people located in Egypt in the late 1800s. In this chapter, he attempts to reconstruct their viewpoints and experiences from that time.

P. Aieul, a “café waiter and amateur libertine” (27), watches two Englishmen, the badly dressed Porpentine and Goodfellow, discuss a mysterious woman. Goodfellow plans to “seduce” (28) a woman named Victoria Wren, whose husband or father Sir Alastair Wren is a British politician. Aieul wonders whether Porpentine and Goodfellow are anarchists who plan on assassinating Sir Alastair.

Yusef is an anarchist who runs the punch table at the Austrian consulate on the night of a party. That night, his eyes are drawn to an Englishwoman named Victoria. Sitting next to Victoria and her sister Mildred, Yusef sees Porpentine and Goodfellow in disguises. Yusef wonders what they are planning. When Porpentine falls over, a man in blue glasses and a disguise mocks him.

Maxwell Rowley-Bugge sits in the corner of the restaurant Fink. He is a conman and a pedophile whose presence is tolerated in the city as part of the local “color” (30). He eavesdrops on a conversation between Porpentine, Goodfellow, Victoria, Mildred, and an “emaciated” (32) Egyptologist named Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury. Lepsius, a man in blue glasses, also briefly appears. When the restaurant closes, Maxwell asks Porpentine for money but then declines what is offered.

Aboard a train from Alexandria to Cairo, a “highly religious” (34) conductor named Waldetar inspects the tickets of Porpentine and Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury. When Hugh pulls back his sleeve to show Mildred the wires in his arm, she runs away in horror to her father’s cabin. A fight breaks out elsewhere in the train. Porpentine rushes to disarm an Arab man before he can shoot Goodfellow.

Gebrail is a poor taxi driver with a horse-drawn carriage. His passenger is a rich Englishman with “dead skin” (36) peeling off his burned face. They pull up in front of Shepherd’s Hotel, and the Englishman fetches his “fat friend” (37).

Girgis is a clown by day and a thief by night. He crouches in the bushes beside Shepherd’s Hotel and watches an Englishman (Porpentine) with skin peeling from his face clamber out a window, fall to the ground, and then twice try to climb up again. When Girgis approaches, Porpentine mistakes him for Hugh and complains that Goodfellow “and the girl” (38)—Victoria—are together on his bed.

Hanne is a “stout and blond” (39) barmaid in a German beer hall in Cairo. She dates Lepsius, who tells her that he is a salesman. Lepsius complains that a competitor is underselling him with inferior merchandise. This competitor is Porpentine, who visits the beer hall and talks loudly about a plot to “assassinate Cromer” (40), the Austrian Consul-General. They are joined by Mildred Wren, who insists that Victoria loves Goodfellow and that her father will be furious if he learns about the relationship. Mildred also claims to love Goodfellow.

In the Ezebekiyah Garden Theater, Lepsius enters a private box. Porpentine and Goodfellow enter the box next to Lepsius, quickly followed by Mildred. She leaves in tears a few minutes after, pursued by Goodfellow. Then, Porpentine emerges with a smoking gun in his hand. He enters Lepsius’s box and a fight breaks out. A shadowy figure revealed to be Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury shoots and kills Porpentine.