He admitted, to himself at least, that he had rushed his convalescence from that bout of illness, so impatient had he been to enjoy the normal pleasures of Christmas. But early in the new year he had been worried by pains in his chest, so sharp and localized that he was certain the trouble was with his lungs—or no, his heart. He woke another morning feeling nothing but hungry and a little tired, well enough to decide there was clearly nothing at all the matter with him.

Yet when he began to eat and drink and smoke in what was for him a normal, moderate way, he did not digest his food so very well; and when he woke now and then in the night, he discovered an arm or a thigh to be “asleep,” and even felt that something else was there, some hovering malignant spirit on watch to catch him at his weakest hour and point him toward oblivion.

His urine burned like brine first thing every morning, four days running, and then troubled him no more. One midafternoon he went suddenly deaf in one ear, and his eyes did not focus just as they should. Another day he felt brief nausea, followed by a pounding pain in his lower gut when he rose in court to make a standard plea.

In short, Felix was concerned about his body for the first time in his life. He had taken it for granted, but now, of a sudden, it seemed a miracle that one heartbeat followed another with measurable frequency, that he drew breath in and blew it out, that his bowels moved, that he sweated, felt heat and cold, knew hunger and satiety, sneezed, farted, had hiccups, and that his hair and nails grew in a perceptible enough way to need trimming now and then.

The days he felt all right he was aware of feeling all right, instead of merely accepting it as his natural state of being. Feeling well, he dared his body, forced it to drink and smoke a little more than was usual for him, fucked twice in one day as a test—and then was gloomy when his body reprimanded him with tiredness, or odd aches and pains.

Was he merely getting old? he asked himself. He was not far from sixty; many men were dead before this time of life. He told himself to be careful. Nell did not notice any difference in him, for which he was thankful, but then he was quiet about his ailments when he could be, and she was long conditioned to a peaceful contemplation of her own state of health to the exclusion of anyone else’s, although she could be kind and solicitous when her attention was focused on a genuine need.