Summary

The chapter about Emmet's past is set in Mali, where he was working with some foreign aid organization. The chapter is told in third person, past tense narration, but there is a certain distance maintained throughout. The narrator will often address the reader directly, but will withhold some information. For instance, the narrative never clearly explains exactly what he was doing or who he worked for, because the narrator focuses instead on his relationship with a woman named Alice and the dog she adopted.

The chapter begins three months after Emmet moved in with Alice, a woman working in the third world to save children and babies. He had just returned from being on the road, and she greeted him cooly, asking him to bathe before they had sex. At the beginning of the chapter, Emmet saw a piece of china...