The Narrator's Exile and Foreignness

This character thread follows the narrator's sense of being a foreigner and stateless person at every stage of her life.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Foreign Accent

The Foreign Accent Context The narrator orders a blonde beer in a foreign accent and hears herself as a fraud of a country woman. She is an educated university graduate, but she is married to a man who sees her as just another local. Turn She thinks about how the people here prepare for winter like animals, and how she is more of an animal than those half-dead foxes. Her accent marks her as different even as she performs the role of wife. Aftermath The opening scene establishes her exile as both geographical and mental. She is inside the family portrait but not part of it.

The Educated Animal

The Educated Animal Context The narrator describes herself as a normal woman from a normal family, but an eccentric, a deviant. She slides a hand into her knickers while her husband asks for a beer. Turn She thinks of her university degree and sees herself as more animal than the half-dead foxes stuffed with sticks. The countryside has stripped away her cultivation. Aftermath Her education becomes useless knowledge, a relic of a former self. Exile is not just from a country; it is from the person she used to be.

The Polish Country Bumpkin

The Polish Country Bumpkin Context In therapy, the narrator is asked if she misses her country. She imagines a Polish country bumpkin, a strawberry-blonde, an exile just like herself. Turn The professionals ask questions about her loved ones and her country, but her mind plays Glenn Gould. She gives them nothing, refusing to be analysed without clues. Aftermath The exile is buried under layers of evasion. She cannot or will not turn her foreignness into a story the institution can use.

The Lost Child on the Beach

The Lost Child on the Beach Context The narrator remembers being a three-year-old who wandered away from her parents on a beach. She spends the whole afternoon going from tent to tent, eating leftover pastries and being petted by strangers. Turn A large man, a lifeguard, lifts her onto his shoulders, and the whole beach claps to help the missing child find her parents. She wants to say, keep looking, this is not my family, but the thought comes too late. Aftermath The childhood beach disappearance becomes the original model of her exile. She has been lost from the beginning, waiting to be claimed by the wrong family.

The Stateless Son

The Stateless Son Context The narrator thinks of the son she wanted: a son with no record, no identity, no date of birth or last name or social status, born in the darkest corner of the woods. Turn She wanted a wandering son, not silenced with dummies but rocked to sleep by animal cries. Instead she has a registered child in a house with first-aid kits. Aftermath The desire for statelessness is also a desire to escape all social and family claims. The exile passes from mother to son as a wish, not a reality.

early in the story, at the family table

early in the story, while lying in the underbrush

during the therapy sessions at the institution

during therapy, recalling a childhood episode

after the narrator watches her husband tend the baby's burns