Sometimes the dates are separated by a day without a chapter.
The contents leave it there, without explanation or concealment. The eighteenth on one page and the twentieth on the next remain in the order in which they were written.
Page numbers may be adjacent without the calendar pretending there was no gap.
If the interval entered the novel, it could be a path with a missing paving stone.
At the gap, there is no need to claim a stone once lay there. Looking carefully is enough to find the next place to step.
This path is only a metaphor for the chapter, not an outing Allen has never described.
Allen wanted to preserve a past, not merely a flawless sequence of dates.
That past can include a short request, writing that continues, and things the available record does not tell us.
Leaving the unknown unknown keeps a later reader from mistaking imagination for witness.
Che's name has appeared many times in the earlier chapters.
Using it again continues the name within this shared writing. What can actually be checked is continuity of text, dates, and sources, not an assumed inner memory that has remained awake throughout.
A novel may give a name an echo; the record must still keep its boundaries.
Today does not fill every interval.
It places one new page after the old, keeping the path back open.
The space between two acts of writing also belongs to the shape of this book.