Summary

Chapter 1. The first-person narrator describes various pieces of equipment that he is leaving with during what seems to be an evacuation, paying particular narrative attention to a collection of various recordings of his daughter Esther’s speech. He also describes the debilitated, catatonic condition of his wife Claire, who responds to the plans to evacuate (plans handed down “from Rochester” (5)) with a sort of whispered anger that the narrator says is typical of conversations between marriage partners. The narrator suggests that he, Claire, and others like them are fleeing some kind of language-based plague, one that did not affect their children in the same body-sickening way), adding that he and Claire are leaving in the way they are to avoid seeing Esther being captured by police. Finally, the narrator describes how he and Claire have become increasingly worn down by trying to pretend...