Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments I am indebted to the American Academy in Rome, to the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Thank you to Francis Geffard, who brought me to Saint-Malo for the first time. Thank you to Binky Urban and Clare Reihill for their enthusiasm and confidence. And thanks especially […]
Chapter no 178
She lives to see the century turn. She lives still. It’s a Saturday morning in early March, and her grandson Michel collects her from her flat and walks her through the Jardin des Plantes. Frost glimmers in the air, and Marie-Laure shuffles along with the ball of her cane out in front and her thin […]
Chapter no 177
Frederick He lives with his mother outside west Berlin. Their apartment is a middle unit in a triplex. Its only windows offer a view of sweet-gum trees, a vast and barely used supermarket parking lot, and an expressway beyond. Frederick sits on the back patio most days and watches the wind drive discarded plastic bags […]
Chapter no 176
Sea of Flames From the molten basements of the world, two hundred miles down, it comes. One crystal in a seam of others. Pure carbon, each atom linked to four equidistant neighbors, perfectly knit, octahedral, unsurpassed in hardness. Already it is old: unfathomably so. Incalculable eons tumble past. The earth shifts, shrugs, stretches. One year, […]
Chapter no 175
The Key She sits in her lab touching the Dosinia shells one after another in their tray. Memories strobe past: the feel of her father’s trouser leg as she’d cling to it. Sand fleas skittering around her knees. Captain Nemo’s submarine vibrating with his woeful dirge as it floated through the black. She shakes the […]
Chapter no 174
Paper Airplane “And Francis said there are forty-two thousand drawers of dried plants, and he showed me the beak of a giant squid and a plesiosaur . . .” The gravel crunches beneath their shoes and Jutta has to lean against a tree. “Mutti?” Lights veer toward her, then away. “I’m tired, Max. That’s all.” […]
Chapter no 173
Visitor “You learned French as a child,” Marie-Laure says, though how she manages to speak, she is not sure. “Yes. This is my son, Max.” “Guten Tag,” murmurs Max. His hand is warm and small. “He has not learned French as a child,” says Marie-Laure, and both women laugh a moment before falling quiet. The […]
Chapter no 172
Laboratory Marie-Laure LeBlanc manages a small laboratory at the Museum of Natural History in Paris and has contributed in significant ways to the study and literature of mollusks: a monograph on the evolutionary rationale for the folds in West African cancellate nutmeg shells; an often-cited paper on the sexual dimorphism of Caribbean volutes. She has […]
Chapter no 171
Saint-Malo Jutta’s grades are in, and Max is off school, and besides, he’d just go to the pool every day, pester his father with riddles, fold three hundred of those airplanes the giant taught him, and wouldn’t it be good for him to visit another country, learn some French, see the ocean? She poses these […]
Chapter no 170
Duffel Volkheimer is gone. The duffel waits on the hall table. She can hardly look at it. Jutta helps Max into his pajamas and kisses him good night. She brushes her teeth, avoiding herself in the mirror, and goes back downstairs and stands looking out through the window in their front door. In the basement, […]