| Summary: | The second part of Giuseppe Bergman's adventure in Africa begins with a nymphet who asks too many questions - not just about the facts of life, but about the fictions, too. Chloe beckons us into the tale of Bergman who must make his way to the Hotel Virgoberg, renowned among the jet set and in legend, on a mission to restore a kidnaped child to her tribe. But altruism is not the only thing on his mind. His true longing is to achieve the status of hero in his own adventure, rather than hapless plaything of an omniscient narrator. The plot is continually ruptured by awareness of itself as artifice and much of this authorial tampering is instigated by Chloe herself, as she winks in and out of the story line like a prepubescent Tinker Bell, puzzling over the nature of ink and ontology. The climactic DIES IRAE, the Day of Wrath, begins at midnight as a character's attempt to create "life" results in the escape of the soulless creature (who is more than figuratively full of crap) and sends the Virgoberg community crashing into oblivion.
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