“I have another question,” I said. “Weren’t you originally a priest who undertook certain death austerities? A priest who voluntarily was buried underground, stopped eating and drinking, and chanted the sutras until you passed away? Didn’t you die in the pit while you continued to ring the bell, and eventually turned into a mummy?” “Hmm,” the Commendatore said, and shook his head a little. “Unclear. I can’t say, really. At a certain point I became a pure Idea. But I have no linear memory of what I was before that, where I was or what I did.”
