Summary

In the first section of Chapter 5, Labatut describes “a vegetable plague, spreading from tree to tree” (175). The plague, of unknown origin, travels quickly and kills trees from the inside. Labatut pleas with the reader to “kill it with fire” (175) before the plague spreads across the planet.

In the second section, the narrator walks through a small vacation town in the mountains of Chile. He meets a man gardening in his yard at night. The man argues that “it’s the best time for it. The plants are asleep and they don’t feel as much…” (176). The night gardener admits that he was once afraid of an enormous oak in his yard; the tree is now rotting from the inside. He tells the narrator that his grandmother hanged herself in the tree. The night gardener’s father, after cutting down his own mother, began to...