“Go down onto the earth. Take the form that you see humans have, and position yourself on top of a mountain, naked, so that I can get a good look at you. As soon as you arrive down there, go to a young woman and tell her, but very softly, ‘I want to live.’ First you will be surrounded by a small darkness and then by a greater darkness, which is known as childhood, and then you will become a man and climb up the mountain, as I have just commanded you. The whole thing will only last a moment. Fare thee well.”

The right hand said goodbye to the left hand, calling it by many nice names, and it has even been said that it suddenly bowed down to it and said, “O, thou holy spirit.” But just then Saint Paul came along and lopped off God’s right hand, and an archangel caught it and carried it off under his ample robe. God used His left hand to staunch the wound so that his blood would not stream down over the stars and fall in sad drops onto the earth.

A short time later, God, who was attentively following all the activities going on below, noticed that human beings wearing iron clothes were making a much greater fuss around one particular mountain than around any of the other mountains. And he expected to see His hand climbing up on top of it. But all that appeared was a man in what looked like a red cloak lugging something black that swayed from side to side. At the same moment, God’s left hand, which lay over His open wound, began to get restless, and all at once, before God could stop it, it quit its place and began flitting about like a mad thing among the stars, crying: “Oh, poor right hand, and I can’t do a thing to help it!” At the same time it began tugging on God’s left arm, to the lower end of which it was attached, trying to pull itself loose. But the whole of the earth was red with God’s blood, and there was no way of seeing what was going on down there. God almost died that time. With His last strength, He called His right hand back. Pale and trembling, it returned and lay down in its place like a sick animal. But even the left hand, which already knew quite a bit, since it had seen the right hand of God back there on the earth as it was scaling the mountain in the red cloak, was unable to find out from it the rest of what had taken place on that mountain. It must have been something very terrible. For God’s right hand has still not recovered from it, and it has suffered from its memories not less than from the wrath of God, who after all had yet to forgive His hands.