Four narrators cover events spanning January 1976 through December 1978.

Amadeo Salvatierra, continuing his January 1976 account, dozes off while Lima is out buying tequila and Belano browses the library. He dreams of a young woman moving swiftly through 1920s Mexico City and calls her name: Cesárea Tinajero.

Felipe Müller, in Barcelona in January 1978, recounts traveling to Paris with his girlfriend the previous year and staying in Lima’s squalid room. When they returned to Barcelona they had contracted scabies, almost certainly from Lima, who had clearly known and said nothing. One of the friends whose home they used for daily treatment was Arturo Belano, then working nights as a campground watchman near Barcelona, where the staff called him the sheriff. That same summer, Müller and Belano formally withdrew from visceral realism by publishing a letter in their Barcelona magazine.

Mary Watson, an Oxford literature student, recounts hitching through France in the summer of 1977 with her friend Hugh Marks. Near Orléans, a German named Hans picked them up along with several other travelers and promised them all work in a Roussillon grape harvest. The work was a month away, so Hans proposed going to Spain to pick oranges in the meantime, but the orange work never materialized either. In Barcelona, Hans settled the group at a campsite near Castelldefels, where they encountered the night watchman (Belano). Hans and the watchman argued on multiple evenings. Mary and the watchman became lovers, spent a day together in Sitges, and she later stayed behind in Barcelona with him for 10 days while the rest of the group left. He lived in a large, mostly empty apartment on the Gran Vía with his mother and her younger companion. When Mary finally rejoined the group for the harvest, she found them tense and in conflict. The watchman eventually arrived there too, and that night a drunken confrontation ended with him pulling a knife on Hans and walking him backward to his door before putting the weapon away. The next morning, Hugh told her that after she went to bed, the watchman had run alone into the dark toward the river, then attacked and briefly strangled Hugh before releasing him and weeping. The watchman left before dawn with an apologetic note. Mary wrote him several letters, then met someone else and their relationship fizzled out.

Alain Lebert, a young man living in a seaside cave near Port-Vendres, recounts meeting Arturo Belano at a bar one night when Belano joined the table after hearing a woman read a poem. Belano followed Lebert and his companion, the Pirate, to the nearby caves and slept in an empty one. Over the next weeks, he visits several times, explaining he is searching for a friend who was thrown out of his lodgings. In mid-October, Belano is waiting at Lebert’s fishing boat when Ulises Lima appears. Belano persuades Lebert to get Lima a job on the fishing boat. Lima has no sailing experience but endures the work, including cleaning the foul-smelling hold, without complaint. After a prolonged run of terrible catches, the boat finds a massive shoal and brings in an extraordinary haul over two days. Lima earns enough for a plane ticket to Israel. While waiting to be paid, he vanishes briefly, returning to say he had hitchhiked to Paris and back. When his pay arrives, Belano reappears and they celebrate with an air of finality. The Pirate falls asleep on a bench while Belano and Lima exchange a few quiet words, then Lima boards the midnight train to Paris, with the goal of flying to Tel Aviv.

Five narrators testify across January 1976 through April 1979.

Amadeo Salvatierra produces the single surviving issue of Cesárea Tinajero’s magazine, Caborca. Among its contributors were Salvador Gallardo, Encarnación Guzmán Arredondo, and himself, alongside translations of Tzara, Breton, and Soupault. He recounts the story of Encarnación, a pretty but untalented poet included out of Cesárea’s affection for her. At a stridentist meeting, Manuel Maples Arce insulted Encarnación for voicing opinions about poetry; Cesárea defended her and demanded an apology. After the incident, neither woman returned to the meetings for some time.

Joaquín Font, writing from a mental health clinic in March 1979, recalls a visitor named Álvaro Damián who visited each month for over two years. Font could never remember him from one visit to the next and had to pretend otherwise, though Damián grew gradually sadder each time.

Jacinto Requena, in March 1979, tells his friend, Rafael Barrios, that since Belano and Lima left Mexico a striking number of new young poets have appeared. He also learns that the anthologist Ismael Humberto Zarco is compiling a book of young Mexican poets while excluding Ulises Lima and the visceral realists. Though Zarco invited Requena to participate, he refused out of solidarity with Lima.

Luis Sebastián Rosado confirms boom of interest in poetry and attributes it to economic growth and university expansion. When Zarco calls him for advice on the anthology, Rosado seizes the opportunity to advocate for including his secret lover, a visceral realist known as Luscious Skin. He presents Zarco with two unpublished poems, but Zarco refuses both. When asked for the poet’s name, Rosado pretends not to know. When he tells Luscious Skin of his failure and mentions the other exclusions, Luscious Skin says it is better that way.

Angélica Font recounts that, at the end of 1977, Ernesto San Epifanio underwent two dangerous brain operations for an aneurysm, with Angélica essentially his only friend present throughout. He survived but was permanently altered: His voice became thin and high-pitched and his vocabulary shrank. His parents were convinced the surgery had “cured [him] of his homosexuality” (294). Angélica continued visiting and calling him nightly. When Zarco’s anthology appeared, Ernesto failed to recognize his own poem inside it. Angélica’s last phone call with him came from Los Angeles; days later his mother told her he had died quietly in a chair. Angélica was his only old friend at the burial. After, when two teenagers approached her aggressively, she drove them off with a switchblade.

Norman Bolzman, a Mexican-Jewish student in Tel Aviv, narrates Ulises Lima’s stay from February through October 1979.

Lima arrives at the apartment Bolzman shares with his girlfriend, Claudia, and their friend, Daniel, and moves onto the sofa. Claudia and Daniel—old friends from Mexico—are happy to see him; Bolzman is merely polite. Lima quickly confesses his love to Claudia; she tells him he could have written a letter. He writes a poem about the city and reads it aloud. Bolzman finds it genuinely beautiful. At night, however, Bolzman hears Lima crying alone in the dark, which disrupts his sleep and his intimate life with Claudia.

Lima runs out of money and makes no real effort to find work despite Claudia’s escalating pressure. A friend reports to have seen him sleeping at the train station and begging on the street. One evening, Bolzman returns home to find the tension broken. Claudia and Lima are listening to music together and reading poems by Richard Brautigan, translated by Lima. A week later, Lima leaves for a kibbutz but is soon expelled for refusing to work. He sends an essentially incoherent letter from Jerusalem, then postcards from Hebron, the Dead Sea, and Eilat, where he claims to have found work as a waiter. Bolzman grows ill with worry. Claudia, who lost a brother to political violence in Argentina, tells him sharply that Lima’s wandering is not a real tragedy.

A month later, Lima returns with Heimito, a massive, nearly silent Austrian he met in Beersheba. After three days, they leave for the airport. Once they have disappeared through security, Claudia cries.

Three narrators speak across January 1976 through April 1980.

Amadeo Salvatierra recalls how Cesárea Tinajero stopped coming to stridentist meetings after the quarrel over Encarnación. One evening, he took her to a dance hall and, after she began dancing alone in a way that drew stares, he joined her and discovered he was a natural dancer. He tells Belano and Lima that he went on frequenting dance halls for decades, partly chasing Cesárea’s memory. He also describes her brilliance at writing General Diego Carvajal’s political speeches while simultaneously holding conversations, a talent he found extraordinary.

Lisandro Morales, now hiding from creditors and convinced a hired killer is after him, testifies from a pulquería in January 1980. He believes his business collapsed as a direct consequence of publishing Arturo Belano’s book and concludes, with a mixture of resignation and dark humor, that literature is worthless.

Joaquín Font, at the mental clinic in April 1980, recalls Álvaro Damián visiting two months earlier to announce that his family poetry prize, the Laura Damián award, had come to an end due to his bankruptcy. Twenty days later, Font’s daughter informed him that Damián had shot himself. Font accepts the news with quiet resignation and arrives at a premonition that everything is about to get worse.

Two narrators cover events from Israel and Vienna through February 1981.

Heimito Künst, an Austrian camping in the desert near Beersheba, believing he was watching a secret nuclear facility, wakes up in a jail cell after being detained by Israeli authorities. He finds Ulises Lima in the adjacent bunk. The two form a bond during their imprisonment, with Lima sharing food and keeping Heimito calm. After their release, Lima retrieves Heimito from the desert and they travel together to Jerusalem, where Heimito demands and receives inheritance money. They fly to Vienna, where Heimito finds a spare key hidden outside his apartment window.

With no income, they begin mugging strangers to survive. Heimito’s associates in Vienna are suspicious of Lima and hold gatherings full of nationalist rhetoric. One night, a man called Julius organizes a group to lure Heimito and Ulises into the Belvedere park to attack them. Lima pulls a knife and attacks; a brawl breaks out. Heimito and Lima fight off their attackers and escape. Days later, the Austrian police arrest both. Heimito is told by his lawyer that he will be released into his father’s care and sent to the countryside. Lima tells Heimito that he is being deported to France and cannot return to Austria until 1984. They say goodbye in the prison yard and Heimito never sees him again.

María Font, in February 1981, recounts Lima’s return to Mexico. She was living in a room above her friends, Xóchitl and Jacinto Requena, while having an intermittent affair with a married math teacher. Lima visits Xóchitl and Requena, then gets into a fight with Pancho Rodríguez. One night, while Xóchitl was at a visceral realist meeting, Requena returns home and he and María sleep together, agreeing afterward to say nothing to Xóchitl. When María calls the teacher’s house, his wife answers with a hostile tirade and, shortly after, María and the teacher end things. A subsequent attempt to revive visceral realism at a party—attended by Xóchitl but not María—fails entirely. María decides to remain in her room permanently.