Summary

The story is broken into six numbered parts. In Part One, a man asks a woman, "What is your name?" (153). She answers that he already knows, and the two continue this back and forth.

In Part Two, the narrative moves to the ancient history of the island and its formation. It describes the natives, and how they grew root vegetables, flattened their foreheads, worshipped the gods of the water, and believed that the island was a "raft made of packed dirt and clay, impossible to pilot" (155).

Part Three returns to the interrogation, where the woman goes over design plans for wooden boats in her head instead of answering her questioner. Part Four jumps back to the natives, who do not notice when "a very large brown woman with slanted eyes" placed a tiny boat on the shore, which then...