This page tells the reader about the organ grinder whose wrists will be broken by the organ owner’s sons. This ” side-story” is ostensibly meaningless and irrelevant, just like the one about the woman who rents the room on pages 4 and 5. It is hard to say what exactly is the purpose of this small occurrence, but according to Cate Ross in her Blog “The Book Blog of Evil,”  “the story of the organ grinder is, in miniature, the story of Straka’s work. It is no coincidence that there are nineteen organs to rent–nineteen is a recurring number that stands for Straka’s group of radical labor activists who constitute a group called “The S.””

Photo uploaded by Wikipedia user Pablomismo. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c15967.

According to the wikipedia page on street organs, mayor Fiorello la Guardia “banned the instruments form the streets of New York, where monkeys were usually used, in 1935 on the pretext that organ grinders were beggars and caused traffic and the organ owners were responsible for organised crime.”

On the notes of this page Eric tells Jen, and therefore the reader, about “The S.” for the first time.

Desjardins theorized about some kind of secret org (in the real world) called “The S.”

Eric’s theory is that, with the organ grinder story and emphasis on

generations

, Straka was

dropping hints that the S had reconstituted itself.