I came to like the kid more than the adults. One time, finding me puking on the floor, he was kind and tried to kiss me better. I didn’t want him to consider me a fool. The whole thing shook me. I hadn’t expected this Newbody experience to involve falling in love with a four-year-old whose narcissism far exceeded my own. When it came to youth and beauty, he had it all, as well as his emotional volume turned right up. It hadn’t occurred to me that if I wanted to begin again as a human being, it would be as a father, or that I would have more energy with which to miss my children living at home, their voices as I entered the house, their concerns and possessions scattered everywhere. Ralph had failed to warn me of feeling “broody.” I guessed such an idea would recommend “eternal life” to no more than a few, just as you never hear anyone say that in heaven you have to do the washing-up while suffering from indigestion. I had to shut the possibility of fatherhood out of my mind, kiss the kid goodbye, and remind myself of what I had to look forward to, of what I liked and still wanted in my old life.

In my straighter moments, despite everything, I wanted to be close to my wife. I liked to watch her walk about the house, to hear her undress, to touch her things. She would lie in bed reading and I would smell her, moving up and down her body like an old dog, nose twitching. I still hadn’t been all the way around her. Her flesh creased, folded, and sagged, its color altering, but I had never desired her because she was perfect, but because she was she.

After my journey through the cities and having to leave the kid, I decided to roam around the Greek islands. My own vanity bored even me and I craved warm sun, clear water, and a fresh wind. I’d had two and a half months of ease and pleasure, and I wanted to prepare for my return—for illness and death, in fact. I began to think of what I’d tell my friends I’d been doing.

As the doctor had predicted, I wasn’t looking forward to reentering my old body. When I ate, would it still feel as though I were chewing nails and shitting screws? On some days, would I still be able to swallow only bananas and painkillers? But as my old body and its suffering stood for the life I had made, the sum total of my achievement made flesh, I believed I should reinhabit it. I was no fan of the more rigid pieties, but it did seem to be my duty. Would most deaths soon feel like suicides? It was almost funny: becoming a Newbody made living a quagmire of decision. In the meantime, I was looking forward to staying in the same place for a few weeks and finishing, or at least beginning again, Under the Volcano.