this performance, Inoue returns to his school, Mahorowa, followed in his cab by his wives, children, grandchildren, pupils, and a guest. In the centerpiece sentence of the chapter, Inoue recounts his childhood, word for word, as he always does. The sentence modulates between first- and third-person narrative fluidly and unnoticed. He explains that he remembers being born, unable to breath, with his umbilical cord around his neck. His father was absent selling oxygen masks in a lucrative business in post-war Japan. Inoue was a sensitive child, crying out of empathy for seemingly minor occurrences he witnessed, like a child being afraid to swim. At some point, his father's business went bankrupt and their family was thrown into poverty. Inoue's father only sat at the window, smoking cigarettes, so Inoue and his mother made small Christmas baubles. This tedious work only provided them with rice to eat, and harmed his mother's eyes, to where Inoue was consumed with concern for his mother when he could have had a normal childhood. Their situation was so dire that Inoue suggested he and his family commit suicide together. But one day, a mangy, stray, emaciated, white dog came to his school. After a week of it whimpering and crying outside his classroom window, he brought it home, to his parents' protestations that dogs don't eat rice. However, the dog ate the rice, and soon after his father's company restarted, bringing him out of the house, and Inoue back into solitude. To Inoue, there is either practice of the Noh, or non-practice. Even performances are no different from rehearsals. Noh is the realization of death, and that there is no tomorrow, only this moment that we should move through intentionally. The solitude he seeks before a performance can be found in the toilet, where he finds an undisturbed moment to pray before performing the Noh, so that Seiobo may return through his body. 55. Il Ritorno in Perugia A master painter, Pietro Perugina, referred to as maestro, with two exceptions, has decided to move his workshop from Florence back to Perugia, Umbria after 15 years away. His four assistants, Aulista (perhaps meant to be Aulista di Angelo}, Francesco, Giannicola, and Giovanni are instructed to ride in the cart with his belongings on a four day trip. The maestro's motives for moving are unclear, but one night on the hellish odyssey to Perugia, Aulista vividly recalls