Summary

Chapter 51. Samuel describes a couple of attempts to make the wire in the “Jew hole” work, one of which recreated the earlier experiment in which he placed a wire in his mouth and felt a prayer move through. The same prayer, he said, came through him again, but with no sense of comfort or connection. He gave up trying, he says, after that, but did not give up his religion; he did not need routine to have faith. He spent a great deal of time soon after he arrived watching for Esther and thinking of Claire, feeling himself get closer and closer to her – until, he adds, he found a child and started his “project with assets, with person-derived inhibitors” (277). His obsession with speech and communication, he says, pushed thoughts of Claire out of his mind.

Chapter 52. Samuel describes the process of obtaining...