Summary

“Swiebodzin” is named after a town in Poland, the narrator’s home country. In this vignette, the narrator arrives at a shelter on the rugged coast of some unnamed, isolated location. In the shelter, there is a guestbook where other travelers have signed their names and answered the “Three Pilgrimage Questions” (329), which are:: Country of origin, last visited place, place of destination. One of these guests is from Sweibodzin, and this evokes memories in the narrator, of familiar smells, garden tomatoes, and other images that suggest they are memories of her home country. This makes the narrator feel an uncomfortable wave of nostalgia, and her present reality fades. She calls the rest of the day a ‘fata morgana” (330), a type of mirage.

“Kunicki: Earth” is the final part of the Kunicki narrative. In it, Kunicki’s wife and child have since reappeared and they...