S and Osfour pass a vendor who is roasting “scorched-black and pungent” nuts on his cart. Even after S passes the grill, the heat from the coals seems to cling to him. He wonders if he is feverish, that “perhaps the relentless strangeness of this place is the product of some equatorial delirium.” As the sky darkens, Osfour quickens his pace as an aeroplane “screams across the night sky above them.”

“The invasion,” Osfour murmurs. “Hurry.”

The longer S remains in this market, the stranger his experience becomes. S is having near-hallucinatory sensory encounters and his strange behavior will surely call attention unless the two leave quickly. This scene, like many others  in SOT, provides another fantastical example of S’s life

Eric notes that the presence of aeroplanes suggests a passing of years since the time in chapters 4 and 5.

Additionally, Eric reminds Jen that there is only a month left before “Moody’s ‘important announcement’ about ‘the twentieth century’s most confounding literary mystery,” i.e., his release of research on the true identity of Straka. Eric is fuming and hopeless, embittered that his hard work may become useless if Moody releases his book before Eric has the chance to announce his findings. Nonetheless, Jen encourages him by reiterating, “You don’t think he has it right. We must have enough to torpedo his idea.” The goal for Eric and Jen now is to hunt for enough evidence to extrapolate the true identity of Straka and refute Moody’s ideas.