The Garden of Forking Paths

Like all men in Babylon, I have been a proconsul; like all, a slave. I have known absolute power, public disgrace, and imprisonment. Behold, my right forefinger is missing. Behold, beneath this rent in my cloak my flesh bears a red tattoo. It is a beth, the second letter of our alphabet. On nights when the moon is full, this symbol grants me sway over men whose sign is a gimel but, at the same time, it makes me subject to those marked with an aleph. They, on moonless nights, owe obedience to men branded with the gimel. In the twilight of dawn, before a black altar deep in a vault, I have slit the throats of sacred bulls. For the space of a lunar year, I was declared invisible. When I cried out, no one answered; when I stole bread, I was not beheaded. I have suffered that which the Greeks did not-uncertainty. In a bronze chamber, confronting the strangler's silent cord, hope did not abandon me; in the river of pleasure, neither did panic. Heraclides of Pontus relates in wonder that Pythagoras remembered having been Pyrrhus and before that Euphorbus and before that some other mortal. In order to remember similar experiences, I have no need to fall back either on death or deception.

I owe this almost hideous alternation in my fortunes to a practice that other republics do not follow or that in them works in an imperfect, secret way. I speak of our lottery. Although I have not delved into its history, I find our sages cannot agree on it. Of the lottery's mighty purpose, I know what a man unversed in astrology knows of the moon. I come from a bewildering country, where daily life revolves round the lottery. Until now, I have given this institution no more thought than I have the behaviour of the inscrutable gods or of my own heart. Here, far from Babylon and its cherished customs, I think back in amazement on the lottery and on the blasphemous speculations about it whispered by men lurking in shadows.