Bess goes to the boat and submits to the sailors’ beating

Bess goes to the boat and submits to the sailors’ beating as an act of sacrifice that, in the book’s interpretation, may revive her crippled husband. Her story is introduced not as a fully recounted plot but as a possible parallel to the sacrificial acts in Andrei Tarkovsky’s films: an act that seems irrational or destructive may become a means of restoring life and meaning.

The Sacrificial Act

The book describes Bess going to the boat with a violent sailor and allowing him to beat her, probably to the point of death. It presents her action as a sacrifice directed toward her husband’s revival. The outcome is framed as a possibility, not as a confirmed consequence: the passage says that her sacrifice will revive him, while qualifying her likely death as probable.

Comparison with Tarkovsky’s Films

Bess’s sacrifice is proposed as a possible connection to the endings of Nostalgia and Sacrifice. In the former, Domenico burns himself publicly; in the latter, Alexander burns down his beloved house after praying for a nuclear war to be averted. The acts differ in what is sacrificed, but the book links them through their apparent lack of rational utility and their capacity, within the films’ logic, to restore faith or meaning. Bess’s action extends this pattern from self-destruction or the destruction of a home to a sacrifice undertaken for another person.