Rain in turbid China, back-arching China, ease-kindling China, China adhering, surprised, to thousand-year-old texts. Rain on the fields, into the cracks in Wu-Li's shack. He sits remarking on texts attributable to the vagabond merchant-poets of A.D. 400. His wife is hanging socks on the fireplace. Cheese-crisp Belafonte turns the other cheek to the sufferings of native elderly. He is flying in a greenish plane, plucking courage from his ever-changing situation. This is the China of his grandfather, he is thinking as the engine idles and Belafonte dies with Wu-Li and wife.
Coastal marshes evaporate in California, enticing slat hounds to call in their bundle. "I have a hard time relaxing," John thinks. "Just to let things happen--for that my head is no good. My head is good for terseness, ambition, the turnip endeavor, old chastity, restorement, and vernacular greed--but not for relaxing. Not for letting things happen." He lives in a shack by a road that leads to riches. Carl is churning out miles, engrossed though in shrubs, and the two achieve minutes of horror and John's project loses its impact.
In Bangladesh, a city of coal-black tenements speaking against the sunset idle words of kinship and glory, speaking these words to Martin, who paints, a man is upsetting sausage in cartfuls with horrible veerings. Finally he and Martin, who has a sense of society, lunge at torsi and fall in a hole. The bottom is scattered with broken pots and is lower than Bangladeshi streets.
"A perfect performance," says Robert. "Never a better sweep or swoop of baton. Never a lesser groaning boredom than this I have felt today." Marc Antony, stuck on a passage of Heidegger, yells out his anger. Later Robert loses his cool and the building caves in. Ugly Tuck, picking through horror, finds some beautiful things