It's a dream, and the narrator doesn't know what's going on. He thinks he's dreaming. He imagines that he and his father are standing on a mountaintop, facing each other. They're holding each other's arms, and they're going to fight over who gets to go first. The narrator draws a coin from an Italian coin chest and says that he always uses this coin to make decisions. He's picked up a lot of signals from behind him, and he thinks that they are heading his way. He tells his father that he admired him so much when he left the army that he has to put his mistakes behind him and hold onto the good times. They both have to hold on to their values, he says. He remembers his father teaching him how to swim and how he always hated water. He also remembers that his son hated water, and that's why he hates it so much. They go back to the ancient city of ugarit, which was destroyed by a volcano at the end of the 2nd millennium B.C.