Vera’s pregnancy

Vera’s pregnancy enters the novel’s closing scene as a visible sign of a future that outlasts its characters: while Frank and Vera take turns pushing their child’s pram, the narrator bows first to the baby and then to Vera’s belly, linking the family’s immediate happiness to an unfinished evolutionary journey.

Appearance in the Closing Scene

At the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, Frank and Vera take turns pushing the pram. As the group passes the ceramic depictions of Spain’s provinces, Ana and José tell a short story, legend, or anecdote about each one. At Zaragoza, while José speaks of the basilica and its Goya frescoes, Frank and Vera give the pram to Ana, take each other’s hands, and look steadily into one another’s eyes. The narrator describes the two halves of a circle as finally complete: the scene’s reunion is connected to Frank’s letter to Vera.

The pregnancy is present in this scene alongside the baby in the pram, making the future tangible in two forms: a child already being cared for and another on the way. Later, the narrator bows first to the pram carrying the little Manuel and then to Vera’s belly. The deliberate order recognizes both the child who has arrived and the one still expected.

The Evolutionary Journey

The narrator sets Vera’s pregnancy within a reflection on descent and change. He describes himself as a postanimal primate descended from creatures that lived tens or hundreds of millions of years earlier, and suggests that humanity may still be in a chrysalis-like state. His bow to Vera’s belly leads into the declaration that the vast relay race of evolution is not over: it will continue far beyond the people present, toward a destination they cannot yet know.

This framing makes the pregnancy more than a private family development. The unborn child belongs to a future that the narrator can imagine only as continuation, not as a settled destination. Against the novel’s recurrent awareness of death and finite lives, Vera’s pregnancy provides a concrete image of life moving forward through generations, while leaving the outcome of that long journey open.

Narrative Significance

The scene brings together the novel’s personal and evolutionary scales without making them identical. Frank and Vera’s handclasp and their shared care of the pram mark a renewed intimacy; the narrator’s gesture toward Vera’s belly turns that reunion toward what is still to come. The ending offers neither a prediction about the child nor a conclusion to evolution. Instead, it closes on the contrast between the small, immediate act of caring for children and the immense, unfinished movement of life beyond the present generation.