'With great joy,' I said. I stood up, lifted the half-broken casket of the bones, and stood ready for any help he would need. He piled my arms with a few soft sacks that apparently held jewels, I wasn't sure, it felt like it, and that was all I'd brought with me, other than the casket and the letters, and he cast aside the blanket.
"To my utter amazement the blanket just drifted off, as if wafted on a draft, and then went over the walls, snarling in the breeze, and disappeared.
" 'Some poor hungry person will find it, and do something with it' he said. 'Always remember the poor and the hungry when you cast aside what you don't want.'
" 'Do you really care about the poor and the hungry?' I asked. I followed him. We went back into the great room, which was now lighted by many oil lamps. I noticed for the first time shelves of tablets and lightly built wooden racks for the scrolls which the Greeks preferred. This had all been behind my back when I'd been slouching about before.
"I set down the broken casket on the floor, and opened it. There were the bones, all right.
"He took the letters and the sacks of jewels to his desk, sat down, and at once began to read all the letters, quickly, leaning on his elbows, and only now and then reaching for a grape from a silver disk beside him. He opened the sacks, dumped out great clumps of jewelry, most of it looking Egyptian to me, some of it Greek obviously, and then he went back to reading.
" 'Ah,' he said, 'here is the Canaanite tablet with the ritual that created you. It's in four pieces, but I can put it together.' He assembled the four pieces and he made the tablet whole.
"I think I was relieved. I'd forgotten all about it. It had not been in the casket. It was small, thick, covered in tiny cuneiform writing, and seemed perfect, as if it had never been broken.
"He looked up suddenly and then he said, 'Don't just stand about. We need to work. Look, lay out all the bones in the form of a man.'
" 'I will not!' I said. My wrath came up so hot I felt it even in this shell. It didn't make me melt. But it gave me a shimmer of heat which I could almost see. 'I will not touch them.'
" 'All right, suit yourself, sit down and be quiet. Think, try to think of everything you know. Use your mind which is in your spirit, and never was in your body.'
" 'if we destroy these bones, will I die?' I asked. " 'I said for you to think, not talk,' he said. 'No, you won't die. You can't die. Do you want to end up a tottering idiot of a spirit mumbling the wind? You've seen them, haven't you? Or a stupefied angel naming the fields trying to remember heavenly hymns? You're of this arth now, forever, and you might as well forget any bright ideas of simply dispatching the bones. The bones will keep you together, literally. The bones will give you a badly needed resting place. The bones will keep your spirit formed in a manner that will allow it to use its strength. Listen to what I'm telling you. Don't be a fool.'
" 'I'm not arguing with you,' I said. 'Have you finished reading the Canaanite tablet?'
" 'Hush up.' "I sighed angrily and sat back. I looked at my fingernails. They were splended. I felt my hair, thick and the same. What was this like? Being alive in perfect health at a perfect moment of wakefulness and energy, untouched by hunger, fatigue, the remotest discomfort ... a seemingly perfect physical statue. I smacked the floor with my slippered feet. I had on my favorite embroidered robes, naturally, and velvet slippers. The slippers made a good noise.
"Finally he put all the tablets aside and said, 'All right, since you are so reluctant to touch your own bones, finicky, cowardly young spirit, I'll do the work for you.'
"He came to the center of the room. He dumped all the bones out on the floor. He stood back and he stretched out his hands and then he lowered himself slowly, bending his knees, and out of his mouth came a long series of Persian incantations, murmurings, and I saw from his hands something coming forth, like heat perhaps from a