39. New stories.

They returned to their falafel place and had lunch in Tompkins Square Park, as they had the day before, and dinner the night before that. Sid looked delighted at the falafel he was eating, like it was the first time he'd tasted it, like it was the first time he'd tasted anything.

Nan spoke. "Can I ask you a question?"

Sid looked up. "Food always tastes better when it's a gift. That's what I was thinking. Is this what you were going to ask?"

"No," Nan replied.

"Then what's your question?"

"I looked up some of the parables you've been referencing. The versions you've used--there are mistakes in them."

Sid's expression didn't change. "How can there be a mistake in a made-up story?"

Nan turned to a page of her binder, a print out of the parable web site that she had methodically punched holes into. "The story of the hunter and the swan."

Sid smiled. "I know it well."

Nan looked at him. "Not that well. Your version is different. In the texts, it's a poisoned arrow the hunter was shot with. That's an important part of the story. And he was obsessed with the class of the person who shot him, not just the assassin's identity."

Sid said, "I changed it. There were irrelevant details."

Non frowned. "There are lots of irrelevant details you kept in. If you were going to alter it, why didn't you modernize the whole thing? Who walks around these days with a bow and arrow?"

Sid didn't answer.

"And the story of the two scholars--the ones that the old professor tells are both correct in their opposing points of view. In the original parable they were monks."

Sid was smiling again. "Not many monks around these days, any more than people who hunt with bows and arrows."

Nan wasn't giving up. "Why the changes?"

Sid leaned back, considering what he was going to say. "The stories aren't important. It's the kernel of truth they contain. The poison wasn't needed; old Indian notions of caste are not relevant to these people, the way they were relevant in the original story."

Nan said, "Then why did you use it? Why not a different story? Why not a new one?"

"Some stories will be useful in all times, in their pure essence. And there will be new stories too. We're making some of them right now."