Muller
how did the diamond get into the fetish in the first place? Why did Balthazar create a second fake fetish? Why does Tortilla make the mistake of taking the fake Fetish and leave behind the original in Balthazar's apartment when he knows the original had a broken ear? He had the note that said "Broken Ear"
I think these questions have already been answered last year on the
The Broken Ear: explanation of plot thread...
it bothers me that Alcazar doesn't find out that Tintin wasn't a spy.
What bothers me about Alcazar are his most threatening last words towards Tintin (p.38, A2), and the fact there isn't the slightest discussion about that when they meet again in
The Seven Crystall Balls... About the parrot, you'd better ask Bianca...
The loose ends are many.
I agree with you but, imho, the Tintinologist should
once and for all take seriously what has been sometimes said about the corpus, namely
'Tintin is a totally unique world'*...
What are the facts in
The Broken Ear-
colour edition?
The fetish's robbery at the museum is noticed by the attendant at 7.14 A.M (p.2, A4)...
Then, soon after 7.30 A.M (p.1, C1), the same attendant notices the fetish's robbery (p.1, C5)...
If there are two different times for the robbery, then 'obviously' ...there are two fetishes.
The fetish's
duplication matches with its two different engravings in Walker's book:
- no colour, with a signature (p.2, C4)...
- yellow colour, with another signature (p.3, C4)...
Thus Tortilla is not as dumb as it seems, for he is able:
- to duplicate the fetish by removing it at two different times (p.1, C5 & p.2, A4)...
- to make the fake fetish's intact ear look like broken to everybody but Tintin (p.3, A2 + B1)...
- to make the broken ear look like intact to everybody but criminals, namely himself and the two villains, who all know the fetish that conceals the diamond does have a broken ear, as all of them know Lopez' note about it (p.55, A4 + B3)...
Thus Tortilla is an expert in fake
duplications*, just like Walter* is a specialist in
impossible speeds*, and these men's activities both pertain to
spatiotemporal faults*...
The fetish sold to Goldwood by Balthazar's brother after a prolonged
unseen passage in a trunk is finally broken and brought back to the museum by Tintin (p.62) after the loss of the diamond it concealed...
This last fetish is still different from the ones seen in Walker's book, for its leften arm isn't drooping anymore, but has become horizontal, as if it were using kind of an
unseen transmission system...
The
Indian fetish's
duplication and changes fit with the
spatiotemporal faults* usually noticed when
Indians* appear in the corpus, and all this might be linked to
stars*.
Scenes that were removed from
The Broken Ear-
B&W edition
Tintin makes a dream where, across a room that widens (plate 4, compare B5 + C2), an
Indian blows an arrow at him with his blow-gun just before vanishing together with an alarm-clock, as soon as Tintin puts the light on (plate 5, A1)...
This image matches with the 'bat & star symbol' at the Music Hall (
Seven Crystall Balls*), as well as with Prof. Paul Cantonneau's interests (
stars & Indians*, scattered in the corpus as they are on the Earth's surface)...
Such avatars could respectively stand for
the space & the time required to write and read an
unseen transmission system*, hence stand for such a
transmission system itself...
Other
obscure passages removed:
Walkerss (sic) takes the fetish to Europe and relates his expedition in a book issued in 1853 (sic, plate 3, last frame), but the fetish appears in the museum
8 days only before it's robbed by Tortilla (plate 3, B2 + C1)...
Thus the fetich remains
unseen for over 80 years (1853-1935), and appears again during Tortilla's
unseen passage only, as if this
Indian* fetish had been using an
unseen transmission system* to communicate overseas with Tortilla, because the latter leaves South America long before** the fetish's arrival at the museum...
Then the B&W
Broken Ear goes on just like its colour version: Tortilla lost Lopez' note, which is found by Ramon Bada & Alonzo Perez, their tracking him back to S.America and killing him for a fake fetish, etc.
But how could the Arumbaya
Indians* transmit an
unseen message* about
stars*?
* please search for related threads...
** the sea trip from South America to Europe lasts 15 days, see last plate of the album...