He looked one last time at my much-slashed and -amended essay on cowardice, which was already scheduled to be published. He said that it was finished, though I guessed that it still did not seem quite right to him. Move on to something new, he said; the new thing would be better for what I had learned from him. I was sorry to see him go. I had come to depend on his reading and his friendly advice. Needing him to put his whole philosophy into a sentence, I mocked myself by thinking of the man who asked Christ, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” Christ gives him a quick summary of the essentials, beginning with “Do not kill” and ending with “Sell everything you have.” I found a way of framing the question and managed to stammer it to Vidia. Vidia’s answer was “Tell the truth.” And there was his dream, the one I had written down. It went this way. Vidia and his brother, Shiva, were staying with a family in which there were two other children, a boy and a girl.
