Offred makes a new friend. It has taken...we don’t know how long...for the two, even seemingly in absolute privacy, to break through a barrier and become friends with her shopping companion Ofglen. This is against the law. Any communication can be subversive if it’s beyond scripted greetings. Why? Most communication probably would be subversive, negative about the regime. How could they possibly live under such tyranny and not complain? Too much complaining could lead to action. She remembers delicious fish that were once available...and lists them off sumptuously. Offred wonders if they are now extinct from overfishing...or from pollution from the disasters. The narrator doesn’t know so neither does the reader. There is a building that was once a university. Offred describes it like an old Romanesque structure. She says from the 1800s, but really Romanesque structures (not this one) were built in the Middle Ages. The church walls are heavy, imposing, little light coming in. They were meant to impose fear of god. She also describes the figures on them. Victory and Death are personified on a mural of an inner doorway...