“Pausing for a moment, as I routinely do when crossing one of these bridges, I gazed not down into the dark waters of the canal, but upwards into the night sky. It was those stars, I knew that now. Certain of them had been promised specific parts of my body. In the darkest hours of the night, when one is unusually sensitive to such things, I could—and still can, just barely—feel the force of these stars tugging away at various points, eager for the moment of my death when each of them might carry off that part of me which is theirs by right. Of course a child would misinterpret this experience. And how often I have found that every superstition has its basis in truth.”