In Tante Thea’s apartment, after making love for the first time, they share a cigarette, an unfiltered Gauloise. They hand it back and forth to each other as they lie on their backs, naked, on the lumpy single bed—the ashtray perched on her stomach. And later when they begin to kiss again, she remembers how Philip licks off a piece of cigarette paper stuck to her lip, and, then, how he swallows it. At the time, it seems a most intimate gesture.
As if she is exhaling smoke, Nina lets out a long deep breath.
Are you a spy? she asks. Are you employed by the CIA?
At the beginning, she makes a point to be difficult. She does not intend to be an easy conquest. She does not want to fall in love yet.
No. Yes. If that is what you want to believe.
Philip has a Fulbright scholarship and is teaching undergraduate math for a year at the École Polytechnique.
And do all the girls have a crush on you?
Alas, there aren’t many girls in my class. The few are the grinds. Philip makes a face of distaste.
There’s Mlle. Voiturier and Mlle. Epinay. They sit together and don’t say a word. They have terrible B.O.
In spite of herself, Nina laughs.
Do I? Nina makes as if to smell her underarm.
No. What perfume do you wear?
L’Heure Bleue.
Philip smells faintly of ironed shirts.
He still does.
Spring. The weather is warm, the chestnut trees are in flower, brilliant tulips bloom in the Luxembourg Garden. In the evenings, they stroll along the quays bordering the darkening Seine, watching the tourist boats go by. On one such evening, a boat shines its light on them, illuminating them as they kiss. On board, everyone claps and Philip and Nina, only slightly embarrassed, wave back.
What I was saying about whether God exists or not, Philip continues as they resume walking hand in hand, is that, according to Pascal, we are forced to gamble that He exists.
I’m not forced to gamble, Nina says, and believing in God and trying to believe in Him are not the same thing.
Right but Pascal uses the notion of expected gain to argue that one should try to lead a pious life instead of a worldly one, because if God exists one will be rewarded with eternal life.
In other words, the bet is all about personal gain, Nina says.
Yes.
On the way home, as Nina crosses the Pont Neuf, the heel of her shoe catches, breaks off. She nearly falls.
Damn, she says, I’ve ruined my shoe.
Holding on to Philip’s arm, she limps across the street.
A sign, she says.
A sign of what?
That I lead a worldly life.
Shaking his head, Philip laughs.
On a holiday weekend, they drive to the coast of Normandy. They walk the landing beaches and collect stones—in her studio, they are lined up on the windowsill along with stones from other beaches. At Colleville-sur-Mer, they make their respectful way among the rows and rows of tidy, white graves in the American cemetery.
How many?
9,387 dead.
On the way to La Cambe, the German military cemetery, it begins to rain.
Black Maltese crosses and simple dark stones with the names of the soldiers engraved on them mark the wet graves.
More than twice as many dead—according to the sign.
Why did we come here? Nina asks. And it’s raining, she says.
Instead of answering, Philip points. Look, he says.
In the distance, to the west, there is clear sky and a faint rainbow.
Make a wish, Nina says.
I have, Philip answers.
Always, on their trips, they stay in cheap hotels—neither one of them has much money. Closing her eyes, she can still visualize the rooms with the worn and faded flowered wallpaper, the sagging double bed with its stiff cotton sheets and uncomfortable bolster pillows; often there is a sink in the room and Philip pees in it; the toilet and tub are down the hall or down another flight of stairs. Invariably, too, the rooms are on the top floor, under the eaves, and if Philip stands up too quickly and forgets, he hits his head. The single window in the room looks out onto a courtyard with hanging laundry, a few pots of geranium, and a child’s old bicycle left lying on its side. The hotels smell of either cabbage or cauliflower—chou-fleur.
Chou-fleur, she repeats to herself. She likes the sound of the word.
Always, in her mind, she and Philip are in bed.
Or they are eating.
During dinner at a local restaurant, over their entrecôtes—saignante for him, à point for her—their frites, and a carafe of red wine, Philip talks about his class at the École Polytechnique, about what he is teaching—nombres premiers, nombres parfaits, nombres amiables.
Tell me what they are, she says, in between mouthfuls. She is always hungry. Starving, nearly.
I’ve told you already, he says, pouring her some wine. You weren’t listening.
Tell me again about the ones I like, the amiable ones.
Amiable numbers are a pair of numbers where the sum of the proper divisors of one number is equal to the other. 220 and 284 are the smallest pair of amiable numbers and the proper divisors of 220 are—Philip shuts his eyes—1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55, and 110, which add up to 284, and the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, and 142, which add up to 220—do you see?
Imagine figuring that out, she says, waving a forkful of frites in the air.
Who did?
Thabit ibn Qurrah, a ninth-century Arab mathematician.
How many amiable numbers are there?
No one knows.
Then there are the perfect numbers—6 is a perfect number. The divisors of 6 are 1, 2, and 3, which add up to 6.
But she has stopped listening to him. Perfection interests her less.
Do you want dessert? she asks. The crème caramel or the tarte aux poires?
She talks to him about how, more than anything, she wants to paint. Paint like her favorite artist, Richard Diebenkorn.
His still life and figure drawings. Do you know his work?
Philip shakes his head.
I’ll show them to you one day.
They argue, but without rancor, discussing and exchanging ideas. Both are attracted by abstractions. Sometimes she forgets that she has not known Philip all her life or not known him for years.
It was a happy time and they are married in the fall.
More than 10 percent of a person’s daily thought is about the future, or so she has heard say. Out of an average of eight hours a day, a person spends at least one hour thinking about things that have not yet happened. This will not be true for her. She has no desire to think about the future. For her, the future does not exist; it is an absurd concept.
She prefers to think about the past. Yesterday, for instance? She tries to remember what she and Philip did yesterday. What they said. What they ate.
When did she last speak to Louise? On the