No, it had killed him. He had died for the child, and then, by some miracle, he had been brought back again. For what?

They removed the respirator early one morning. The young doctor stood over him, eyes moist from the miracle he’d performed. Brodman inhaled his first breath of real air in two weeks, and it went to his head. Dizzy, he pulled the doctor close, so close that all he could see was his teeth, so white, so blindingly beautiful, and to those teeth, which were the closest thing in the room to God, he whispered, “I wasn’t Zusya.” The doctor didn’t understand. He had to say it again, pushing the words hard out of his mouth. Finally, he was heard. “Of course not,” the doctor said soothingly, freeing himself from his patient’s weak grip and gently patting the hand speared through with the IV tube. “You were Professor Brodman, and you’re still him.”

If they hadn’t cut his stomach muscles, he might have laughed. What could such a person know of regret? Probably he didn’t have children yet. By the look of him, not even a wife. Everything was before him. Soon he’d go for his coffee, filled with the promise of the day. And just that morning, he’d brought a dead man back to life! What could he know of a life misspent? Yes, Brodman had been Brodman and was still Brodman, and yet he had failed to be Brodman, just as Rabbi Zusya had failed to be the man he should have been. He had learned the tale as a boy: how after the rebbe from Hanipol died, he stood awaiting God’s judgment, ashamed that he had not been Moses or Abraham. But when God appeared at last, He asked only, “Why weren’t you Zusya?” The story ended there, but Brodman had dreamed the rest: how God concealed Himself again, and Zusya, all alone, whispered, “Because I was a Jew, and there was no room left to be anything else, not even Zusya.”

The washed morning light filed through the hospital window, and a pigeon flapped loose from the sill. The glass was frosted to hide the brick wall across the way, and what he could see of the bird was only a changing form moving upward. But he heard the scramble of wings in his thoughts as a kind of punctuation, like a comma striking the white page. It had been years since his mind was so clear or focused. Death had scoured it of the extraneous. His thoughts were of a different quality now, and bore sharply through. He had the feeling that at last he had got to the bottom of everything. He wanted to tell Mira. But where was Mira? All through the long days of illness she had sat in a chair at his bedside, leaving only for a few hours each night to sleep. In that instant, Brodman understood that his grandson had been born while he was dead. He wanted to know: Had they named the boy after him?