“You’re being ridiculous,” Mira said, pushing the basket back into the Saks bag and kicking it under her chair. Brodman knew it and didn’t care. He wouldn’t give up. “A Moses basket? Why, Mira? Explain it to me.”

No, he couldn’t sleep. Somewhere in the wide world there must be children who were born and raised without precedent—the idea of it sent a shiver of awe down his spine. Who might he have been, had it been given to him to choose? But his chance had passed. He had allowed himself to be crushed by duty. He had failed to fully become himself, had instead given in to ancient pressures. And now he saw how foolish it had all been, what a waste! Burned brilliant by fever, he had understood everything. The arguments of the dead had been laid out for him, the irreducible proofs of those who knew from the other side. He had died and been called back so that he might instruct the child, and set him on a different path.

In the morning, Mira arrived with buttered rolls sweating in a Ziploc bag. He ate his breakfast and listened to her stories of the child’s victorious homecoming, of his powerful pissing and great thirst. Brodman, too, was pissing and drinking volumes, and when the doctor came by on his rounds he joked with Mira that her holiday was almost over. Tomorrow or the next day they would be sending Brodman home. Home—Brodman suddenly remembered it. The endless hours in the dark back room, trying to ignite a broken fuse. Day after day, year after year, the blank legal pad had reproached him with its fine lines. All that was finished now. He hadn’t been brought back to life for the sake of absurdity.

The ambulance that drove him home did not use its siren.

Too small by half, the child had not been circumcised at eight days. In the hospital, they had fattened him like Hansel, and at home he continued to enlarge himself. Now the news came that the doctor had given the all-clear. The event would be held in Ruthie’s apartment. Bagels and lox would be served. A female mohel who broke with custom to allow for a topical anesthetic had been found in Riverdale. All of this Brodman overheard from the bedroom. When Mira came in to tell him the news, he pretended to be asleep. He was too tired to explain to her the nature of his revelations. The incandescence of his fever had dimmed. The days were clotted with boredom now. Had he not once been a man of action? He had always thought of himself as such, but what proof did he have? The evidence—a meager output of books, themselves commentaries on commentaries on other books—suggested otherwise. Bolstered by foam pillows, he looked up at the thin patch of sky between buildings. Carol was a person of action. Carol had lost her mind and become a person of action. A person who stood up to tanks and bulldozers, who fought for the things she believed in. But he, her father, had kept his mind, and closed himself up in it as a man closes himself up in a faultless argument.