The narrator lists the many kinds of divination she finds online. Many are strange, such as “Gastromancy, divination based on sounds coming from the stomach,” and “Tiromancy, divination from the way cheese is cut” (172).

The radio station broadcasts a novel in September called The Secondhand Man. The protagonist is adopted by a couple who lost their son, and he becomes a replacement for the boy. When the man reaches university, he becomes enthralled with Plato and his theory of the idea and its shadow: “[T]hat something real and individual can exist, perfect in its uniqueness, along with something more hazy” (173). He feels as though he is a duplicate, marrying a divorcee and becoming a stepfather. The narrator misses the final two episodes, and suspects he dies.

The narrator and R. receive guests who arrive in a white car. The narrator thinks the color white is not natural, and that many things people believe are white are really just light shades of other colors. She thinks of how sheets, which begin white, always turn yellow with age.

Marta watches as the narrator and R. and their guests set up chairs and food outside to watch the night sky, and hears them react to the rising moon. The narrator sees the moon change colors the higher it rises, but Marta is no longer focused on the moon, but the people watching it.

The narrator’s house is too crowded that night, and she decides to sleep in the nearby orchard. She realizes that the night is not dark, but bright from the moon. The borders around the objects blur, and disappear in this light. The narrator’s hearing improves; she hears her guests sleeping in the house, making it difficult to sleep. She later hears the sound of a comet.

When Paschalis shared his writing with the bishop, it took days for the bishop to read it. Paschalis walked around the city, taken with the new type of woman he saw. He occasionally walked down a street with sex workers, feeling embarrassed when they called out to him.

When the bishop called Paschalis, the bishop complimented his work. However, he did not understand all of it, and found it heretical. The bishop told Paschalis that they would not accept his writing. He mentioned other women who have become saints, but Paschalis knew they rejected him because they despised the imagery of Kummernis, a woman with the face of God.

Afterward, Paschalis walked through the city, upset, knowing he must return to the convent. When he stumbled upon the sex workers this time, one, named Katka, coaxed him upstairs. He confused her by not wanting sex, and instead asked her to help him wear her clothes. Once he was fully dressed as a woman, adopting this new identity, they had sex.

The narrator dreams of receiving a strange letter, folded to make its own envelope. She does not remember exactly what it said, but knows it began with “Wake up!” (187). She thinks it may be a political ad, or an advertisement for a shopping deal. What she does remember, however, is opening it with a knife, feeling like she was cutting open a paper animal.

The narrator’s friends make mushrooms, though her friends refuse to eat when she tells them they are Suillellus luridas. While it is poisonous, the narrator knows it is delicious, and that people ate it for generations. The mushroom slowly attacks the kidneys, doing damage over time. The narrator thinks eating the mushroom makes her both dead and alive at the same time.

The chapter concludes with a recipe of lurid boletes in wine and sour cream.

During a heat wave, the protagonist, R., and Marta sit outside. The heat is severe, and the protagonist and R. frequently take breaks inside the house to escape the sun. Though they apply sunscreen, they burn by the afternoon. Marta, outside her own house, watches as the narrator and R. talk in the sun.

The narrator and R. spend an evening drinking Czech wine. They wonder who changed place names from German to Polish after the war, and how he chose them. Some are direct translations, while others seem nonsensical. The narrator believes that language coexists with people, places, and objects, creating identity and meaning together.

She believes that people resemble words, being attached to places like words are to objects. She remembers when Marta told her, “If you find your place you’ll be immortal” (191).

Ergo Sum ate human flesh in the spring of 1943. He was one of five prisoners in a shack to unload a delivery, but the train did not come. One morning, they found one of the prisoners frozen to death, his foot nearly in the fire. Ergo Sum was an academic until he was 24, when the Soviets invaded and sent him to Siberia.

For two weeks, the men ate the dead prisoner, and Ergo Sum realized that he did not even allow himself to realize it was a man. They often heard wolves, and one night, the wolves descended on the corpse, tearing it apart. The next day, they decided to follow footsteps into the woods, in hope of finding safety. They walked all day, and as night fell, they found a small village. Soon, Ergo Sum met some Polish soldiers and found his way to Nowa Ruda, where he became the classics teacher.

After Christmas, Ergo Sum always felt intense sorrow, and as the years went by teaching, he found he had less motivation to continue. When he felt particularly poorly, he read Plato to comfort himself. Despite a lifelong devotion to Plato, Ergo Sum felt startled one day when he read in The Republic, “He who has tasted human entrails must become a wolf” (200). His mind filled with the frozen landscape of his past. He took leave from work, and at the next full moon, found himself howling.

He tried to stop himself from giving in to the wolf inside him, but it only pained him. He researched and accepted that he suffered from lycanthropy, when a man becomes a wolf. On the third full moon since his transformation, he changed his locks, tied himself to a chair, and took some morphine, hoping to pass the night without being discovered.

In the first dream, the narrator sees her own back. She notices that there is a navel in her back, the opposite of the one in the front. This one sticks out.

The narrator finds herself on a bridge in the second dream, reaching her hands into the water to catch small, golden fish. More appear every time she catches one.

Marta asks the narrator how she cuts her hair so evenly. To demonstrate, the protagonist cuts Marta’s hair. Marta loves it, and the narrator allows Marta to cut her hair too. When the narrator attempts to clean up their fallen hair, Marta stops her, wanting to save it.

Marta tells the narrator that people take after the land they live on. She describes the ways in which those born on light and sandy soil are different from those born near water, or on rocky ground. Each have their own characteristics and forge relationships differently. When the narrator asks Marta which group she belongs to, Marta cannot tell her.

The von Goetzen family lived in a mansion for generations. Each member was born there, and rarely left. If they did, they did so to further their education in ways that would allow them to better enjoy life at the mansion. From the time they were born, the von Goetzens enjoyed a happy life, with love and care around them. Love was strong at the mansion. Even after scandals and betrayals, the bonds remained strong. When one von Goetzen died, another was always ready to take their place in the mansion’s hierarchy.

Despite their happy existence, the von Goetzens were unexpectedly forced to leave the mansion. With war approaching, they decided to go to a smaller von Goetzen mansion, in Bavaria. Even as the Bolsheviks approached, the von Goetzens tried to find a way to stay.

The von Goetzen who owned the other mansion went into the village before the family left, and found it in chaos, with people packing and leaving while the sound of cannons echoed in the distance. The pharmacist told him that his family was staying, and offered the von Goetzen his new car. As he drove back toward the mansion, the von Goetzen realized that the Bolsheviks could confiscate the car. To prevent this, he hid the car in the forest. At the mansion, he found his family waiting to leave. The von Goetzens watched as Bolshevik soldiers stole their horses to pull their cannon and left in the direction of Waldenburg.