Flights

The narrator provides Galina’s monologue at the station as Annushka overhears it. Galina argues for the sanctity of movement. If one were to stop moving, society and its expectations would take control of one’s mind; one would be consumed with thoughts of capitalism and its suffocating institutions.

The narrator switches to a third letter from Josefine Soliman to Emperor Francis I about the remains of her father. It has been two years since Josefine wrote her first letter. She begs that her father’s body be returned to her for burial: “[A]s a Catholic I believe that without his body he will not be able to be resurrected in the Last Judgment” (262). She proposes that the emperor’s motives are racist and argues that institutions like the monarchy exercise their power primarily over bodies; as emperor, Francis’s actions decide “which bodies will be important” and therefore treated with respect (264). She demands the emperor acknowledge her father’s equality and return his body.

The narrator recounts vignettes of her travels through southern islands of the eastern hemisphere. A woman from one of these small islands is no longer allowed to donate blood in her country because she has traveled extensively in Europe and has therefore been exposed to novel pathogens.