and murmurs of polite conversation.
“What truly is the difference,” Nolin broke out, “between a man making arms in a war factory under military control, and the man who dons a uniform and holds a gun?” He wiped his lips. “We are imagining these boundaries. Is it just the women and children who count as ‘civilians’? What am I, or you, Frédéric? Are we also incapable of our own defence?”
Docteur Molineu made a stretching gesture of consideration and Midhat perceived that Molineu admired Nolin and wished to impress him. In an instant, his understanding of his host was changed, and he saw him as a man who yearned. He thought of Molineu’s wife, and wondered whether he continued to suffer the way his daughter did.
Marie-Thérèse flickered a wine-stained tongue, and tittered. “Carole and I are volunteering at the Auguste Comte School. The mathematics exercises encourage the children to buy war loans.”
“My daughters have also both become marraines de guerre. Do you know what that means?” Nolin’s eyes narrowed pre-emptively, and he pursed his lips as if tasting the words before he released them.
Midhat shook his head.
“It means they are writing letters to soldiers. But they don’t know who they are writing to, they just pretend. It’s meant to give the soldiers comfort, a letter from their ‘godmother.’”
The three Frenchmen laughed.
“I think it is a very nice thought,” said Jeannette.
Nodding, Midhat tried and failed to catch her eye. Sylvain rumbled another laugh, and Jeannette turned so sharply that her hair shook around her head. A memory sprang to the surface: Jeannette distressed, talking to Sylvain, on the other side of a room. With it rose the echo of a powerful dislike, and an obscure imperative to protect her.
“But our view of war is practically picturesque,” Nolin said, ostensibly to Docteur Molineu, but loud enough for the entire table. “We continue with our cavalry charges, dashing, Napoléon, you know? These exotic escapades. I was there when Carl lost Sébastien, so I’m not being flippant. I only mean the glamour will fade.”
“Mm.”
“We were young, Frédéric, during the Prussian war. But my brother fought and I remember even as a child I knew it was a sore thing, a low thing, and this being the largest we have ever seen—it is not an escapade, at any rate.”
A sigh came from across the table. It was Jeannette.
Sylvain said: “We all know it is not an escapade, Patrice.”
How odd this was, thought Midhat. These three men too old to fight, dining with three young women left in a world of women and fathers and crippled absentees, and himself a rarity, not only as an Arab but as a young man. No one spoke for a few moments. Midhat made a decision that he would speak. His stomach flipped. He cleared his throat.
“I have been thinking, cher Docteur.”
All faces turned towards him.
“About what you once said to me regarding consistency.”
Molineu looked surprised, but also delighted. He put his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers.
“And I have been thinking,” said Midhat, “that there is always a cause of inconsistency, since nothing is without cause. I have been studying Newton.” He laughed, anticipating smiles of condescension from the older men. But Nolin and Molineu merely continued to look expectant. “Docteur Molineu and I were discussing what it means to be consistent. Whether it is in our nature or—but I have come to understand it all as a puzzle of two,” he wobbled his upturned palms like scales, “that covers more than a few questions about human beings. It stayed in my mind, this conversation we had, and I have concluded that it has to do with causes. There is a lovely phrase by one of our philosophers in Islam, Ibn Rushd, who believed in a beginning and an end …” At once, his point about Ibn Rushd didn’t seem relevant. “I mean, if something appears to be without cause it is usually an aberration … with regard to the body, at the least. And even if there doesn’t appear to be a cause there is always a cause, only that cause might be obscured, and being obscured, we may deduce from its obscurity that almost certainly something is seriously wrong with the body internally, the apparently causeless aberration … say a rash, or great fatigue, or a strange pain … being therefore a symptom of something invisible. And similarly I think that if we look at the mind and character of man, aberrations in behaviour will always have