A Final Image Picture, at dusk, a narrow causeway of driftwood leading to a small pavilion. Inside, an old woman sits with a basin of water whose surface is so still it shows interiors of other houses. Travelers come, place their hands on the basin, and watch for an image: a child running through reeds, a pair of shoes left by a doorway. They are offered a bowl of sugared fruit and told, softly, what they already feel—that to take the fruit is to exchange a piece of the world for a quieter heart. The island waits at the margins of that decision, patient and luminous, the very embodiment of paradise devoured.
