drying a stack of wet plates.
“I hope you enjoyed the dessert tonight,” said Midhat, opening a cabinet.
“I did Monsieur, thank you. I hope you did too.”
“Georgine, if it’s not impolite of me to ask …”
“Yes, Monsieur?”
He selected a glass and hesitated.
“I was wondering. Could you tell me, why is Docteur Molineu a friend of Monsieur Sylvain Leclair? It is only—because they are not neighbours, I was wondering …”
“Monsieur Leclair was a good friend of Madame Molineu,” said Georgine. “Who died.”
She looked so serene, wiping her hands on the towel at her waist. He thought of Sylvain Leclair, and his heavy, impassive insults. Nolin was a pedant, but Leclair was nasty. Midhat turned the faucet on to fill the glass, and as the water rushed, his imagination began to whirr.
8
He did not sleep easily that night. He consulted an alarm clock he had borrowed from the Docteur so frequently that he barely saw the hands change their angles, but instead felt he was moving with them, pushing into the night in one continuous movement. Fatigue won out around four thirty, and he woke after a few more hours to find the room flushed with sunlight. Seconds later, the clock burst out singing.
Jeannette entered for breakfast after he did and delivered a general good morning. The tablecloth shone in the light between them and the steam twisted from the coffeepot. Docteur Molineu began to read aloud from the broadsheet.
“Fifteen hours. Bad weather continues, no event on the Front during the night … to the east of the Yser, two attempted attacks by the enemy stopped by our gunfire. And the Dardanelles …” He crackled over two pages. “Brigadier General Cox pushes an attack … serious loss of the enemy … good. Considerable progress … German general killed … Australian submarine lost in the Straits.”
Folding the paper Molineu noticed a blob of jam on the tablecloth and reached for his butter knife. The blob slid easily onto the blade but as he tipped the knife upwards it stretched and crept over the other side, falling off in three red drips.
“Jojo, pass me your napkin.”
Jeannette was replacing her letters in their envelopes, and still she had not looked at Midhat. He watched her brazenly: it was not possible that she would treat this the same as other mornings. He would not miss the moment she turned her eyes to his.
“Thank you,” said Molineu, enclosing the mess under the napkin. “Did Marian write?”
“Yes, she wrote.”
“She is well?”
“Yes, she is well.”
And still she would not turn to him. She was sealed; she made not a single unnecessary movement. Her arm reached for the coffee cup, her head remained immobile as she moved her eyes.
Her hair had grown, he realised. When he first arrived, there had been little to pin up, and the rough curls had bloomed out of the back of her head, cutting away to her thin neck. It could not have been any shorter yesterday but it was only now he noticed, perhaps because she had arranged it in a new style: with a parting on one side and a series of large coils wound and fastened on either side of her head. The sunlight throbbed over her hairline. Breakfast over, they stood to part. Jeannette was nearest the door and left the room before him as usual.
Since the blunder over Laurent, when Jeannette started avoiding him, Midhat had used the mornings to study for his examinations. Most days he remained in his bedroom until lunchtime, combing through his books subject by subject, recording any concept he had trouble with, and compiling a list of queries that he carried despondently to the afternoon class. Today the prospect of this routine was a particular strain. He dragged himself upstairs. The physics textbook already lay open on his desk. Was it possible, had he misread the look she gave him from the piano stool? As the rods of the chair hit his back he felt a thrash of anger that she should be so cruel, so intent on making him suffer.
The first section of the chapter “Motion, Velocity, Acceleration” was titled: “The Motion of a Train.” He read it through, then realised he had not absorbed anything. Had it been shock, that look she gave him, and he had taken it for love? It would not be the first time he had failed to understand her. Had she not smiled? Then again, a smile could mean several different things. He began to read aloud.
“The Motion of