Difficulty understanding sentence with “it was always to”

Am reading the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer at the moment being halfway through the second book. While reading the first one, got now and then my eyebrows raised at the language of the book. But the following has had me completely at a loss—I simply can't get my head round it:

"I don't remember."

Her constant use of those words had begun to grate. [...]

"Are you sure?" Of course she was sure.

"I think I would remember forgetting that."

When Control met her gaze now, it was always to the slightly upraised corners of her mouth, eyes that had a light in them so different from the last session. [...]

"This isn't a joke," he said, deciding to see how she would react if he seemed irritated. Except he really was irritated.

Google does not know such a locution. Somebody, please, parse it to me!

3 Answers
3

Imagine this:
Two people love each other. They fight. They break up. Then, they sometimes see each other in public places. This can be described as a past action in the following way:

Now, when John saw her, it was always a reminder of times past.

I prefer to put the now up front to make it easier to understand.

The expression: it was always means: this always occurred. The to is just describing the situation.

The to is not part of the "it was always". To means: accompanied by or occurring at the same time as what precedes it.

In your sentence, it means: the slightly upturned corners of her mouth happened when he met her gaze.

I find that sentence rather awkward, and I'm not surprised you found it hard to parse. Allow me to expand the context a bit for other people encountering this question.

"I don't remember."

Her constant use of those words had begun to grate. [...]

"Are you sure?" Of course she was sure.

"I think I would remember forgetting that."

When Control met her gaze now, it was always to the slightly upraised corners of her mouth, eyes that had a light in them so different from the last session. [...]

"This isn't a joke," he said, deciding to see how she would react if he seemed irritated. Except he really was irritated.

The context is that now, in this session (in contrast to the previous session), whenever Control meets her gaze he sees "the slightly upraised corners of her mouth" and a light in her eyes. His response, "This isn't a joke", shows that he feels she isn't taking the interview seriously.

The reason you're having difficulty here is because this is a terribly written sentence. The problem is that the author is treating the subject of "to" in the phrase "it was always to" as like an actual thing, in this case, "the slightly upraised corners of her mouth." This phrase almost always requires the subject of "to" to instead be the ACTION of something, so "always to the sound of the playing of violins", or "always to the sound of violins playing".

Actually I recognize there, that the subject of that is also a "thing", a "sound", like in the first example, instead of an action, like "the playing of", or something, but whatever. It's a weird phrase anyways.
This has confused me writing this, but it should be known that this is a poorly written sentence.

First of all the writer is saying the meeting of two people's gaze is always accompanied by something to do with a mouth, which is incredibly confusing since they are both things that occur on a person's face, and could necessarily be gazed at (when I met her gaze I would always just look at her upraised corners of her mouth or something) in the process of gazing. But that isn't even what the author is trying to say. They're trying to say that two people gaze at each other and one of the people's mouths makes a movement AT THE SAME TIME. In this case, the phrase should be

"When Control met her gaze now, it was always to a slight rise (ACTION!) in the corners of her mouth"

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