Sharon smiled at me in a way I found offensive. It was one of those parental smiles suggesting a patience that was sweet but not infinite. She was wondering how much longer it was going to take me to catch her up.

‘Look, Sharon,’ I said, ‘don’t give me any more of that oriental ecstatic shit. You’re a Jewish girl. Jews don’t believe in reincarnation.’

She gave me that smile again, as if from the top of Pisgah. ‘That’s a common misconception of modern Jews, Barney. If you were more familiar with the Cabbala, in particular the theosophy of Isaac Luria, you would know how fundamental to Judaism are ideas of the re-integration and transmigration of the soul. Take the theory of tikkun, for example, which means the restoration of the Great Harmony which was shattered by the Breaking of the Vessels and later on by Adam’s Sin – I’m sure you can see how that, implying salvation through restitution, making whole again,’ she actually put her painted fingers together here, and made a perfect sphere for me with her hands, ‘leads on to gilgul, which is the Hebrew word for transmigration. Once tikkun takes place, all those who have fulfilled the commandments become integrated once more into Adam’s soul. And those souls which have not fulfilled their purpose – where do they go? Well, into stones and plants sometimes; but also into other bodies, for a second chance. Gilgul, you see, is both a humane and a retributive law.’

She paused and, I swear to God, she twinkled at me. You can imagine how I felt. I had known the girl for ten years. We had hardly been apart in that time. We had shared everything. I would have given her the food from my mouth if I had thought she wanted it. And now she was talking to me like this.

‘Get fucked, Sharon,’ I told her.

‘There’s one thing that I think will particularly interest you,’ she went on, unperturbed. ‘Some of the Cabbalists took a very special view of gilgul – they believed that reincarnation was a consequence only of offences of a sexual nature.’

I heard that, even though I’d stopped listening. But I wasn’t going to evince curiosity. ‘I’m going to bed,’ I said, and I made my way upstairs where, no doubt, Damon Wildeve was waiting to put a certain proposition to my wife.

Down below, the wife in question was still calling after me. ‘And another thing,’ she shouted. ‘If Jews don’t believe in reincarnation why do they forbid cremation?’

‘That’s a different matter entirely,’ I called back. ‘They forbid cremation because it’s an implicit denial of the resurrection.’ It was one of the things I liked best about being Jewish – if you were going to rise, it would be looking the way you had always looked.