I insisted on seeing him. He was rehearsing. He made me go to the college canteen during his tea break and wait. When he did turn up, he seemed preoccupied, having had an argument with Ophelia. I didn’t care. I told him what had happened to me on the street.

“That shouldn’t have occurred,” he said, with some concern. “It’s never happened to me, though I guess I’ll start to get recognized when I’ve played Hamlet.”

“What is going on? Don’t they do any checks first?”

“Of course,” he said. “But the world’s a small place now. Your guy’s from L.A.”

“Mark. That’s his name. That’s what they called me.”

“So? How can anyone be expected to know he’s got friends in Kensington?”

“Suppose he’s wanted by the police somewhere?”

He shook his head. “It won’t happen again,” he said confidently. “The chances of such a repeat are low, statistically.”

“There have been other weird occurrences.”

“For example?” He didn’t want to hear, but he had to.

“Tell me, first, how did he die, my body, my man?”

Ralph hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

“Why, are you not allowed to tell me?”

“This is a new area.”

I went on, “In bed, I was aware of these twinges, or sensations. There were times in my Oldbody life, particularly as I got older, or when I was meditating, when I felt that the limits of my mind and body had been extended. I felt, almost mystically, part of others, an ‘outgrowth of the One.’”

“Really?”

“This is different. It’s as if I have a ghost or shadow soul inside me. I can feel things, perhaps memories, of the man who was here first. Perhaps the physical body has a soul. There’s a phrase of Freud’s that might apply here: the bodily ego, he calls it, I think.”

“Isn’t it a little late for this? I’m an actor, not a mystic.”

I noticed a lack of respect in Ralph. I was a puling twenty-five-yearold rather than a distinguished author. It hadn’t taken long before I was confronted with the losses involved in gaining prolonged youth.

I said, “I need to know more about my body. It was Mark’s face they were seeing when they looked at me. It was his childhood experience they were partly taking in, not yours or mine.”

“You want to know why he snuffed himself out? I’m telling you, Leo, face it, this is the truth and you know it already. Your guy’s going to have died in some grisly fashion.”

“What sort of thing are we talking about?”

“If he’s young, it’s not going to be pleasant. No young death is a relief. The whole world works by exploitation. We all know the clothes we wear, the food, it’s packed by Third World peasants.”