What a great entrance for Lomax! He’s like Masters come back out of the French meat grinder as this near rockstar professor with the broken body.
Knowing something through words that could not be put in words.
Their marriage was like “a long truce, a stalemate” = stale mate.
Every time something good is about to happen we get a lot of color imagery, the bad with lack of color, paleness, washed out, winter