chapter 11 of part three breaks with the novel's structure. the chapter should advance the communication officer's story, but he is already dead at this point. instead, we get a first-person narrative from an unnamed female character. she recounts how her father was murdered when she was young. her mother remarried a man who raped her before she was sent to lisbon to work as a maid. after the husband of the house died, the woman brought home a boy that the two raised together. the boy grew up to be the communications officer, the lady of the house is his godmother, and the woman telling the story is esmeralda.