Summary

Chapter Five recounts, in first-person present tense, Clytemnestra’s point of view immediately following her death. It is a time of being awake or being almost awake; it is a time in which she is confronted by “traces, traces of people, presences, sounds” (227), deep within a grey area between memory, life, and the afterlife.

She thinks about one remnant of her past – a vision of her mother, who is helpless and is held down by “a figure above her, or lying on her . . . a figure with a beak and wings, with the shape of wings, the wings beating in the air” (227). She does not know why she sees this or what it means. All she knows is that she wants more: “There are presences I wish to encounter,” she thinks, “presences that are close but not close enough to touch or be...