The chap­ter opens with a group of characters—Julia, Mau­ro, David, and Betsy—concluding a meal and prepar­ing to leave. Bet­sy, strug­gling with mobil­i­ty, leans on David for sup­port, remark­ing on his steadi­ness despite his drink­ing. Their farewell is tinged with a sense of tran­sience, encap­su­lat­ed by Betsy’s com­ment: “If it only hap­pened once, it didn’t hap­pen at all.” The scene shifts to a con­tem­pla­tive obser­va­tion of the court­yard, where the rem­nants of the evening—elongated shad­ows, bare tables, and dis­tant kitchen noises—create an atmos­phere of qui­et dis­so­lu­tion. The nar­ra­tive then tran­si­tions abrupt­ly to a reflec­tion on the death of the narrator’s moth­er, whose pass­ing is marked by a lack of con­ven­tion­al grief. The coffin’s entrance is described as more shock­ing than the death itself, high­light­ing the dis­so­nance between the phys­i­cal final­i­ty of the body and the lin­ger­ing, unre­solved pres­ence of the moth­er in the lives of her chil­dren.

The nar­ra­tor explores the after­math of the mother’s death, not­ing a para­dox­i­cal sense of light­ness and unease. The mother’s life is por­trayed as a per­for­mance of suf­fer­ing and con­trol, her body a site of defi­ance against soci­etal norms. Her decline—marked by self-inflict­ed ail­ments, a wheel­chair, and even­tu­al cancer—becomes a metaphor for her rejec­tion of real­i­ty. Even in death, she haunts the narrator’s dreams as a grotesque, unsee­ing fig­ure, embody­ing the unre­solved ten­sion between her con­struct­ed iden­ti­ty and the truth. Mean­while, the sto­ry shifts to G, a film­mak­er who con­ceals his iden­ti­ty to escape famil­ial and soci­etal expec­ta­tions. His films, char­ac­ter­ized by nat­u­ral­ism and detach­ment, baf­fle audi­ences accus­tomed to author­i­ta­tive sto­ry­telling. G’s artis­tic vision is root­ed in his child­hood as the eldest sib­ling, bear­ing the brunt of his par­ents’ rigid con­ven­tions, which he lat­er evades through secre­cy and rein­ven­tion.

G’s jour­ney unfolds as he aban­dons teach­ing, moves to the city, and nav­i­gates the intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles of his broth­er, who open­ly chal­lenges their con­ser­v­a­tive upbring­ing. G, how­ev­er, remains silent, his anonymi­ty a shield against the bur­den of iden­ti­ty. His nov­el, pub­lished under a pseu­do­nym, explores the alien­ation of youth in a bour­geois town, mir­ror­ing his own strug­gle with authen­tic­i­ty. The fail­ure of his sub­se­quent stories—rejected for their moral­is­tic tone—reflects his iso­la­tion from con­tem­po­rary trends. His film­mak­ing attempts are sim­i­lar­ly fraught; the prac­ti­cal demands of the medi­um clash with his desire for pas­sive obser­va­tion. Yet, his reviews gain notice for their lack of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, embody­ing his belief that true per­cep­tion requires the erad­i­ca­tion of the self. The nar­ra­tor par­al­lels G’s eva­sion of iden­ti­ty with their mother’s life­long per­for­mance, both resist­ing the con­straints of real­i­ty.

The chap­ter con­cludes with the narrator’s med­i­ta­tion on the mother’s lega­cy: a frac­tured sense of self and a dis­trust of love and lan­guage. Her stories—mythologized tales of roman­tic and artis­tic near-misses—serve as a form of con­trol, rewrit­ing his­to­ry to suit her nar­ra­tive. The chil­dren, trapped in her con­struct­ed real­i­ty, inher­it her aver­sion to truth and free­dom. Her death offers a ten­ta­tive lib­er­a­tion, yet the gap she instilled in them remains. G’s tra­jec­to­ry mir­rors this ten­sion; his artis­tic invis­i­bil­i­ty grants him free­dom but con­signs him to obscu­ri­ty. Both nar­ra­tives con­verge on the theme of authorship—whether of one’s life or art—and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of true auton­o­my. The mother’s defi­ance of real­i­ty and G’s refusal to claim his work under­score the chapter’s cen­tral ques­tion: Can one exist with­out being seen? The answer, sug­gest­ed through their par­al­lel strug­gles, is fraught with ambi­gu­i­ty.