come up Louise wins, and in only one of the possible tosses does the other player win. Louise then has a 3 to 1 advantage and the pot should be divided 3 to 4 to her and 1 to 4 to the other player. Are you following me?”
Silence.
“The point I want to make to you,” Philip says after a pause, “is that Pascal and Fermat’s letters first showed us how to predict the future by calculating the numerical likelihood of an event occurring and, more important, how to manage risk.”
In her
chambre de bonne,
the narrow bed covered in an Indian fabric is pressed up against one wall and doubles as a couch; across from the bed, there is a scarred wooden bureau; on top of that, an electric hot plate, a few dishes, two china cups, and a radio. A wooden armchair stands by the window and stacks of books are piled on the floor; on the shelf over the sink are her toiletries, soap, a packet of brown toilet paper, a few bottles of water, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, a half-empty jar of Nescafé, and a hand mirror. Several posters from the art gallery where she works, advertising upcoming shows, are thumbtacked to the wall. From the hooks nailed to the door dangle some hangers with skirts, dresses, her leather jacket; also, a man’s hat.
Picking up the hat, Philip asks, Who does this belong to?
From her window, she looks out on to mansard roofs and, craning her neck, she can also look down at a private interior gardenthat, except for a small white dog who occasionally runs maniacally around it, is always deserted. In the building directly across from her she can see into a dining room where, in the evening, a family—mother, father, and three children—eat their dinner. She watches as they talk, laugh, pass their plates, and refill their glasses.
In the morning, often late, she takes the métro to work, then, afterward, if it is not raining or cold, she walks home. That spring, she takes to wearing a man’s hat—it makes her, she thinks, look modish.
Except for those he wrote her long ago, she has received few letters from Philip. From time to time, a postcard from some far-flung place where he is attending a conference, which she does not always keep. One of these postcards—a postcard with a picture of a junk sailboat on it—arrived long after Philip himself gets home.
Last night I had dinner on the Peak in the house of a wealthy Chinese lawyer who is a trustee at the university here and his Eurasian wife. They have a fabulous collection of jade; also of Ming china. We ate off some of it. Dinner consisted of all kinds of exotic dishes including rooster testicles! The weather is glorious. I suggest we move to Hong Kong immediately. All my love to you and Lulu, Philip
Sofia, again.
A slender, dark-haired woman, in a tight-fitting silk
qipao,
eating rooster testicles with her slippery ivory chopsticks.
What do they taste like?
The rooster testicles? I don’t know. Rubber bands.
Does she speak English? Nina also asks.
Of course. She studied at Oxford and speaks several languages—English, French, Spanish, I think she said. To say nothing of Cantonese and Mandarin.
And the Ming china. What does it look like? Nina presses.
Blue and white. Philip frowns slightly, then says, which reminds me of how, once, according to Sofia, a guest at one of their dinner parties picked up a Ming bowl to look underneath for the mark and he dropped it. The bowl broke and, according to Chinese custom—so that the guest does not feel embarrassed and to show that he is not overly attached to his possessions—the host is supposed to break his own bowl.
And did she?
Philip shrugs. Yes, I suppose.
The poor guest. He must have felt terrible.
And what would you do under those circumstances? she asks.
I would go to an antique store and try to replace the Ming bowls.
Like turning the other cheek.
Would she have? No, probably not. She is too easily angered, too quick to take offense. A true redhead, her parents were always quick
Silence.
“The point I want to make to you,” Philip says after a pause, “is that Pascal and Fermat’s letters first showed us how to predict the future by calculating the numerical likelihood of an event occurring and, more important, how to manage risk.”
In her
chambre de bonne,
the narrow bed covered in an Indian fabric is pressed up against one wall and doubles as a couch; across from the bed, there is a scarred wooden bureau; on top of that, an electric hot plate, a few dishes, two china cups, and a radio. A wooden armchair stands by the window and stacks of books are piled on the floor; on the shelf over the sink are her toiletries, soap, a packet of brown toilet paper, a few bottles of water, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, a half-empty jar of Nescafé, and a hand mirror. Several posters from the art gallery where she works, advertising upcoming shows, are thumbtacked to the wall. From the hooks nailed to the door dangle some hangers with skirts, dresses, her leather jacket; also, a man’s hat.
Picking up the hat, Philip asks, Who does this belong to?
From her window, she looks out on to mansard roofs and, craning her neck, she can also look down at a private interior gardenthat, except for a small white dog who occasionally runs maniacally around it, is always deserted. In the building directly across from her she can see into a dining room where, in the evening, a family—mother, father, and three children—eat their dinner. She watches as they talk, laugh, pass their plates, and refill their glasses.
In the morning, often late, she takes the métro to work, then, afterward, if it is not raining or cold, she walks home. That spring, she takes to wearing a man’s hat—it makes her, she thinks, look modish.
Except for those he wrote her long ago, she has received few letters from Philip. From time to time, a postcard from some far-flung place where he is attending a conference, which she does not always keep. One of these postcards—a postcard with a picture of a junk sailboat on it—arrived long after Philip himself gets home.
Last night I had dinner on the Peak in the house of a wealthy Chinese lawyer who is a trustee at the university here and his Eurasian wife. They have a fabulous collection of jade; also of Ming china. We ate off some of it. Dinner consisted of all kinds of exotic dishes including rooster testicles! The weather is glorious. I suggest we move to Hong Kong immediately. All my love to you and Lulu, Philip
Sofia, again.
A slender, dark-haired woman, in a tight-fitting silk
qipao,
eating rooster testicles with her slippery ivory chopsticks.
What do they taste like?
The rooster testicles? I don’t know. Rubber bands.
Does she speak English? Nina also asks.
Of course. She studied at Oxford and speaks several languages—English, French, Spanish, I think she said. To say nothing of Cantonese and Mandarin.
And the Ming china. What does it look like? Nina presses.
Blue and white. Philip frowns slightly, then says, which reminds me of how, once, according to Sofia, a guest at one of their dinner parties picked up a Ming bowl to look underneath for the mark and he dropped it. The bowl broke and, according to Chinese custom—so that the guest does not feel embarrassed and to show that he is not overly attached to his possessions—the host is supposed to break his own bowl.
And did she?
Philip shrugs. Yes, I suppose.
The poor guest. He must have felt terrible.
And what would you do under those circumstances? she asks.
I would go to an antique store and try to replace the Ming bowls.
Like turning the other cheek.
Would she have? No, probably not. She is too easily angered, too quick to take offense. A true redhead, her parents were always quick
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