And God had him die for a hundred years and then revived him and said:

‘How long have you been here?’

‘A day or part of a day,’ he answered.

We, too, associate with ‘people’; we, too, modestly don the dress in which (as which) others know us, respect us, look for us … But there are also other ways and tricks when it comes to associating with or passing among men … for example, as a ghost … One reaches out for us but gets no hold of us … Or we enter through a closed door. Or after all lights have been extinguished. Or after we have died. This is the last trick of the posthumous people par excellence … this whole subterranean, concealed, mute, undiscovered solitude that among us is called life but might just as well be called death – if only we did not know what will become of us, and that it is only after death that we shall enter our life and become alive, oh so very much alive, we ‘posthumous people’!