after. I had by then a huge bouquet of extremely delicate flowers, no one the same, and these I put in a vase of water for him and set on his study table.
“He made me recount everything I had seen and done. I described every street in Miletus in which I’d wandered, how I’d been tempted to try to pass through solid objects but stayed with his prohibition, and how I had watched the ships in the harbor for the longest time, and listened to the languages being spoken along the shore. I told him I felt thirst at times, and drank from a fountain not sure of what would happen, and that the water filled my body, not through internal organs which I did not possess, but every fiber of it over all.
“He listened to all this and he said: ‘What is your estimation of all you saw, or each thing, however you wish to tell me?’
“ ‘Splendid,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Temples of incredible beauty. Marble, such marble. The people here are from all nations. I never saw so many Greeks before; I stood listening to a group of Athenians arguing about philosophy, which was very funny to me but I enjoyed watching it, and of course I wandered near the Persian court and was allowed entrance both to the temple and the palace, apparently because of my clothing and demeanor and I wandered in these newly constructed citadels of my old world, and then back out to the temples of the Greek gods, and rather liked their openness and the whiteness, and the whole stamina of the Greek people, which I think is more different from the Babylonians than I ever supposed.’
“ ‘But,’ he asked, ‘is there anything you are burning to tell me, anything that made you angry or sorrowful?’
“ ‘I don’t want to disappoint you but I can’t think of a thing. Everywhere I beheld splendor. Ah, the colors of the flowers, look at them. Every now and then I’d see the spirits, but all I had to do was close my eyes to them, so to speak, and again there was the bright, living world. I coveted things. I coveted jewelry, and I knew I
“ ‘I put it there,’ he said. ‘Anything else? Did you notice or feel anything else?’
“ ‘The Greeks, you know,’ I said. ‘They are as practical as our people were…whoever the hell my people were…but they believe in ethics in a way that is not connected to divine worship; it is not merely a question of do not oppress the poor, uphold the weak, and all for the glory of the gods, but some further confirmation of much that is…is…’
“ ‘Abstract,’ he said. ‘Invisible and detached from the self-serving.’
“ ‘Yes, precisely. They speak of laws that pertain to behavior in a manner that is not religious, that’s it. They don’t possess more conscience, however. They can be cruel. Can’t all people?’
“ ‘That’s enough for now. You’ve told me what I want to know.’
“ ‘Which is what?’ I asked.
“ ‘You don’t envy living people.’
“ ‘Good heavens, why should I? I’ve wandered all day and I feel no fatigue, nothing, only a little thirst. No one can harm me. Why would I envy people who are still alive? I feel sorry for them if all that lies ahead is to be a stumbling spirit or a demon. I wish all of them could be born again as I have, but then I know that all I see is, how did you put it, only what is of the earth. Besides…’
“ ‘Yes…’
“ ‘I don’t remember ever being alive. I know you said that I was, or I myself said it, or it seems to be something we both know, and we spoke of that cursed tablet and bungling, but I don’t remember being alive. I don’t remember aching or being burnt or falling or bleeding. By the way, you are right. I have no need of internal organs. And when I cut myself I can bleed or not bleed as I choose.’
“ ‘You realize, of course,’ he said, ‘that many of the dead you see hate the living! They hate them.’
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘Because their own existence is shadowy and weak and full of longing for things which they can’t have. They cannot be visible, they cannot move objects, they can but buzz like invisible bees through the world.’
“ ‘What would happen if I became invisible,’ I asked, ‘and I went up with the more joyous creatures, the ones who are so busy and seem to range so high?’
“ ‘Do it and come back safe to me, unless you find Paradise,’ he said.
“ ‘You think I might?’
“ ‘No, but I would never deny you Paradise or Heaven; would you deny such a thing to anyone?’
I immediately obeyed, throwing off for the first time the weight of the body and the clothes yet commanding them to be at hand.
“I went out into the courtyard, looked for the spirits and found them surrounding me, thickly, and now that my eyes were focused on them, the demonic among them became ferocious, and I had many a struggle on my hands. Over and over the meandering dead detained me with pathetic questions, questions pertaining to those they’d left behind in the living world.
“And I found these meandering dead were in the higher levels as well as the very low, only they had grown lighter and stronger apparently, or at least they were better off than the shuffling blinded anguished dead that roamed the very earth itself.
“I came into the upper air of the joyous creatures and at once they turned to me, their faces filled with amazement, and with gentle gestures they ordered me down. In an instant I was surrounded by them, many of them having vague yet sparkling shapes, some even wings, and some long, white robes, but to a one, they ordered me down, they pointed, and they gestured, and they urged me as if I were a child blundering into a sanctuary. There was no wrath or contempt in them, they simply pointed downward and told me I must go.
“ ‘No, I won’t go,’ I said, but when I tried to go higher, I saw the way was wholly covered over with them and their bodies, and it seemed for one instant I perceived, far beyond the layers of them, a light shining but it hurt my eyes, and I fell, plummeted, crashed right back down to the earth.
“I lay in some dark place and the demons closed in on me, tearing at my invisible hair and body so that I dissolved and defeated them simply by slipping away and up, and then I made a right arm and a left arm and swept them aside, cursing them in their own tongues until they had fled.
“I tried to get my bearings; was I below the surface of the real earth? I didn’t know. I had fallen into an ashy gloom, a fog, through which I could see nothing material. The spirits that fled from me or hovered near me were part of the pollution and density of this place.
“Then striding out of the fog there came a mighty spirit, shaped like a man as I was, smiling at me in cunning fashion, and immediately I sensed danger. He flew at me with both hands, fastening onto my neck, and then the demons closed in again. I fought him furiously, cursing him, and declaring him powerless, rattling off incantations galore to send him hence, and finally throttling him and shaking him until he was screaming for mercy; he lost his human shape; then he flew away, turned into a wisp of a veil as it were, and the demons fled.
“ ‘I have to get back to my Master,’ I said. I closed my eyes. I called to my Master, and to my body that waited, and my clothes that waited, and then I woke up, sitting in the Greek chair in my Master’s study, and he was at his desk, one knee raised with his foot on a footstool, tapping his fingers, and watching all.
“ ‘Did you see where I went and what I did?’ I asked.
“ ‘Some of it. I saw you rise, but then you could go no higher, the spirits of the upper air wouldn’t permit it.’
“ ‘No, they wouldn’t, but they were kind. Did you see the light, way beyond them?’
“ ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said.
“ ‘That must be the light of Heaven,’ I said, ‘and down must come a ladder, a stairway, yes, to the earth, but why not for all the dead, why not for all the muddled and angry?’
“ ‘No one knows. You don’t require an answer from me. You can reason it out for yourself. But what makes you so sure there will be a ladder, a stairway for anyone? Is it the promise of the ziggurats, the pyramids? The legend of Mount Meru?’
“I thought a long time before answering. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Though those are proofs of course, no, not proofs but indications. I know because of the faces of the higher spirits…as they directed me to go down. There was no meanness in them; no evil; no wrath. They didn’t shout like gatekeepers of a palace; they simply made it impossible for me to pass, and over and over they offered by gesture the way I was to go…back to the earth.’
“He pondered that one in silence. I was too excited to be silent.
