Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

The narrator opens with a lamentation over the briefness of his life (thirty-six years and soon to end) and, because of a congenital difficulty breathing, philosophizes about the lungs and breathing: "In the beginning and unto the end was and is the lung: divine afflatus, baby's first yowl, shaped air of speech, staccato gusts of laughter, exalted airs of son, happy lover's groans, unhappy lover's lament, miser's whine, crone's croak, illness' stench, dying whisper, and beyond and beyond the airless, silent void. A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can" (pp. 53-54).

After again mentioning Vasco Miranda's fortress, the Moor enters into family tradition to meditate on Epifania's conspicuous life of prayer, which inspires thanksgiving in Moor that her offspring "by some great fluke" threw off religion. He relates...