As the narrator sits on her terrace, watching a thunderstorm approach, she realizes that she knows the world. Over time, she recognizes more and more of what is in front of her and that it now feels as though there is nothing new in the world for her to discover. This discovery makes the narrator feel as though the world is closing in around her, and she wonders why it took her so long to realize that nothing new ever happens.

The chapter ends with a recipe for Stuffed amanitas.

The couple, both evacuees from eastern Poland, met in their new village. She worked in the pharmacy, while he worked in the mine. They married two months after their first meeting, and moved into one of the empty houses and made a life together among the former residents’ belongings. Both were promoted at their jobs and were the perfect vision of a happy couple.

They did not want children, and took every precaution to ensure they didn’t. The town began to fill up, and for a brief time, they shared their home with twin sisters for a month. The sisters came from a prison-camp and told the couple that they were subjects of experiments, scientists believing they shared a soul. Despite these horrors, the twins laughed together.

Over time, the couple’s careers advanced, and they drifted apart. He began travelling around the region for work. One day, she discovered a lump in her ovary, requiring treatment, though she went alone. One day, as she sat outside, a young man approached and asked to dig her garden.

His name was Agni, and he asked to stay the night, and she agreed. That night, she was restless, and startled when Agni appeared in her room. He was there to say goodbye, planning to cross the border at night. She told him not to go, and Agni slipped into her bed. He stayed until the day before the husband returned. When the husband came home, his wife cried and told him she required more testing. He was sympathetic, but there was a space between them.

The narrator and R. are sometimes silent around each other. They go so long without speaking that when they have guests, they struggle to make conversation. While R.’s silence is “natural and innocent,” the narrator’s is “gloomy” (282). Even when they make love afterward, they are silent.

When the wife went to the hospital for more testing, the husband remained at home. He came home one day to find a young woman waiting for him. She introduced herself as Agni, saying that his wife asked her to cook for him. He found it strange but let her in. That night, he dreamed of Agni naked. The next night, when Agni returned, she and the husband made love.

Back at home waiting for her operation, the wife felt her world changing, and waited for Agni. It was almost as if he could read her mind, appearing while her husband was away at work. For the wife, her relationship with Agni was about healing, and she felt stronger the more she saw him. She grew distant from her husband, no longer attracted to him and refusing to make love. When she left for the hospital for her operation, all he could think about was Agni.

Home alone, the husband struggled with his daily responsibilities, consumed by thoughts of Agni. When she visited, he asked her questions about herself, but never believed her answers. The husband visited his wife the day after her operation, and he feared she might die, leaving him, but could not help but think of Agni. He saw a future with Agni, and knew he would leave his wife. Ironically, his wife had similar thoughts for her Agni, and even wished she would die to end this torment.

While she recovered, her husband rented a room outside their home to see Agni. They met there frequently, but when the wife returned home, Agni disappeared. For a year, the husband kept the room and drank in despair, always looking out for Agni.

His wife admitted that she was unhappy because she could no longer have children. She wanted them with Agni, but he disappeared. She often repeated his name, hoping he would appear, to no avail. Eventually, she retired from her job and spent all her time at home. Both she and her husband became consumed by longing for their respective Agnis, and grew more and more distant as the years passed. To others, they seemed a normal couple, but they no longer said “I love you” to each other. Instead, they said, “Let’s stick together,” unhappy, but unwilling to leave (299).

The wife was the first to fall ill, no longer able to cook or clean. He helped her with everything, including going to the bathroom, but she never thanked him. They continued to sleep together in the same bed, but at a distance, no longer needing the other’s warmth. Soon, she became confused, lost in time within her own mind. The next year, they both died.

The narrator and R. host people at their home for a lunar eclipse. They smoke marijuana that they planted in the spring and watch as the moon disappears for 10 seconds. In that span, with the sky darker, they see the stars as they have not before, and the narrator is awestruck.

Afterward, the narrator walks to Marta’s, surprised to find her awake. Marta protests, saying that she slept all winter, and does not need more. The narrator asks to see Marta’s basement. It is the same as the narrator’s basement, except for a box the size of Marta, filled with blankets and sheepskin. There is also a pile of potatoes, which Marta tells her is for the spring. The narrator wonders why, as potatoes are stored for the hard winter months.

The narrator considers why they did not see Marta during their first winter, imagining that she hibernates in her basement through the winter. She imagines Marta waking up slowly, waiting for her body to follow her mind. After a while, she rises, and goes upstairs to find her home damp, as though it is thawing. She boils water, warming her hands and sipping it, ridding herself of the chill. She goes outside, amazed to see the sun, but disappointed to see her garden and orchard so sparse. She sees smoke from So-and-So’s chimney, and two people she does not recognize in front of the Franz Frost’s old house.

The narrator cleans out her attic, amazed at how clothes and objects decay. She finds this change beautiful. She laments how people only want new things, attracted by youth and wary of the used and old.

The narrator thinks of the town of Nowa Ruda, its landscape, buildings, and people. She thinks of it as a patchwork town, with Silesian, Prussian, Czech, Austro-Hungarian, and Polish influences, and even though its name is derived from the German word for “new,” there is not only nothing new in the town, but the town itself rejects the new.

The founder of Nowa Ruda was a knife-maker named Tüntzel. Tüntzel was the younger of two knife-makers in his village and left for more opportunity. He packed his life up and left with his pregnant wife. After crossing the mountains, his wife went into labor in a valley. Both she and the baby died, and Tüntzel buried them in the valley.

Tüntzel refused to leave his wife and child’s grave and built a cottage. Before winter, he returned home to visit family and returned to his cottage with a new wife. Every year, they had a child, and as time went on, they built more homes. When Tüntzel was old, more people joined them and formed a village.

One day, as he walked through the forest, Tüntzel found a tree with a strange object embedded in it. When he pulled it out, he saw that it was a knife. He decided to build a church on the site of this tree. Centuries later, a teacher in Nowa Ruda requested a proposal for a monument to Tüntzel, the founder of the town. Tüntzel’s story, however, was in German and not Polish, and the Town Council ignored it.

Within the Cutlers’ belief was the notion of the Salvation Machine. This theory proposed that the sun collected light from matter and distributed it to the planets and the zodiac cycle. They believed that light was within every living being, and that the moon ferried the dead’s souls to the sun. As it waxed, growing brighter, it collected souls, and when the new moon arrived, it deposited them. When the sun collects all light, the Salvation Machine will break, as will everything else.

The narrator visits Marta, and finds her home immaculately clean. Marta gives her the wig she made for her. The narrator tries it on and loves it. She plans to wear it like a hat. Later that day, the narrator returns, but Marta is not there. The narrator suspects that she is in the basement, and though the door is not locked, she does not check.

When R. was younger, he watched the sky for clouds, seeing animals and other objects in them. As he grew older, he saw letters and symbols in the clouds as well. Eventually, there were even full equations in the sky. Now, he plans to return to this habit, using a camera to take pictures of the clouds every day, hoping to find meaning in their patterns.