continued to develop down below, and now unsettling ideas of abuse were floating up, along with strange remembered images: Sylvain sneering across a table, Jeannette leaving a room in distress.
He looked up from the exam paper and saw a young woman ahead of him in the adjacent column of desks. She was agitated: rattling her pen on the desk, twitching the heel of one foot over the other ankle. The young man at the next desk swivelled around.
“Shh!”
She started, and the pen made a final dying movement between her fingers.
“One hour remains,” said the examiner. His chalk squeaked on the board: “ENCORE UNE HEURE.”
It was then that Midhat finally jumped into action and looked down at the paper, on which only one question had been completed. He had made a start with number 5: he turned to it again.
5. (a) Calculate the weight of sulphur in 50 g. of Cr2(SO4)3. Find the result to three significant figures. (Atomic weights Cr 52, S 32, O 16.)
When the hour was up he had answered half of the questions, and at the call, “Put your pens down now!” he rose from his chair dizzy with concentration. They were released alphabetically. Midhat found Cogolati outside, standing on the steps in exaggerated contrapposto.
“How was it for you?” he asked, as they fell in line.
“Fine, I think.”
Across the courtyard, the cypresses shushed and waved.
“Would you like to take a coffee?”
“Thank you,” said Midhat, “but you know, I’m quite exhausted. I think I should go home.”
This was their goodbye then, because Cogolati was leaving for Geneva in the morning. Midhat thanked him, and Cogolati grinned awkwardly. They embraced and parted at the gate.
Summer was in full flare. All around him trees expressed tiny pink flowers, clouding the streets with blossom. Everything was calm. He walked back to the house in slow motion, set free from the regime of academic time, the blocking of days into hours and half hours. He reached the house and climbed the stairs: the door to Docteur Molineu’s study was ajar. In the slit he saw, on the floor by the bay window, the back of Jeannette’s head. He knocked.
“Come in.”
Beside her on the floor were a stack of albums and a small pile of photographs. The first photograph showed a woman wearing a lace collar and a flower in her hair.
“How did it go? Come, kiss me.”
“It was fine. I am tired, my brain is tired. Keep reading, don’t let me disturb you.”
The last time Midhat had entered Docteur Molineu’s study was in that furtive search for inkwells. It was not a room they chose on their secret mornings; it was implicitly out of bounds. And yet standing now in the centre, the woman he loved reading before him, he experienced a new sense of entitlement. The desk was covered in a mess of papers and a few stacked books with bookmarks flopping out like tongues. Resisting the impulse to sit in the chair, he indulged a momentary vision of the future, in a room just like this one. He closed the image, and moved to join Jeannette on the floor.
It appeared in his mind before he realised he had read it. His own name. He reversed his steps.
Near the edge of the desk was an open notebook. The page was titled in large letters: “Notes Préliminaires—Midhat Kamal.” Underneath the title were a variety of illegible markings in green ink, sometimes at angles up the margins. Midhat picked up the notebook. At the bottom of the page he made out two inscriptions: “Naplouse—deux montagnes, Ebal et Gerizim,” said one, and the other, “Les Samaritains—la magie? L’Araméen & l’Arabe & l’Hébreu.” He turned the page. “Proverbes” was the next title. Three were listed: all of them proverbs Midhat had heard as a child in Nablus and had translated for Docteur Molineu in a conversation last winter by the fire, here transliterated. “Newspaper talk” said one; “Kalam jarayed—something that is hard to believe.” Another: “Kalamo waqif—his speech is standing—i.e. aggressive”; “the words of the night are coated in butter—will melt in the sun—promises not kept.” At the bottom of the page was written: “La langue peut affecter le cerveau? La traduction pure est impossible.”
“What is this?” said Midhat.
“What is what?”
“Your father …”
“My father what?”
“He has been writing about me.”
Jeannette got to her feet. “What do you mean, writing about you?”
He turned back to the desk. Among the volumes there were two translated copies of the Quran. He passed the notebook with his name in