He tells me it’s more difficult than he’d thought. It’s not that he has trouble remembering or that his history has been uneventful. Death has met everybody and can talk at length about Napoleon on Saint Helena, the entire Borgia family, or Savonarola, whom he resembles, or what really happened to the Romanovs. Executions, though, give him an upset stomach. He prefers the more peaceful moments and is sad that no one conducts vigils anymore—children, friends, even business associates gathered around the one soon to be gone, waiting for Death’s arrival. It was very theatrical, he says, the 19^thcentury. He and the dying were co-stars, the mourners the supporting cast. I ask him to start over, to begin with his childhood, but he sighs and says he never had one. This is not something he regrets though. He’s never been fond of children and doesn’t know how to talk to them. He finds himself asking the usual questions about where they are in school and what class they like most. Death says children embarrass him somehow; it’s the way they stare. Perhaps if he’d had a childhood and parents, it would be different. He changes the subject and asks if he should write about palaces in Italy during the plague. I try, tactfully, to suggest that his own story would interest readers most, but he protests. His own story is intolerably boring.