light from the bay window. All resources seem to fail here, he tells you, and the mind is just a filament, waiting for a current. He quotes a remark by Einstein. The problem, stated and restated interminably, harried over for months gives way suddenly, quite arbitrarily, like a shattering mirror. The mind is admitted into the realm in which scientific discovery is made. And this moment is likened by Poincare to instantaneous illumination, a step beyond the realm of the rational, through which understanding is bestowed on the mind like a gift . . .
YOU TURN AWAY from the dialogue to watch the rain falling in sheets now on the prom. You can see the snout of Bray Head nudging past your window, a thin strip of the promenade resistant to the water hopping off it and the broader band of sea which accepts the rain, mottled by the squalls. The dialogue has come round to that point you had hoped it would resist. This innocent, glowing cleric is drawn to it, independent of himself. A faint disturbance rises in you, the kind of upset that could be due to bad digestion, you want to fart and blame it on the cucumber sandwiches or the inordinate amount of tea you have drunk. His excitement has carried you with it. You sense it springs from your own perplexity. But your disturbance is more than gastronomic. You remember the stiff wax flowers of her funeral, the flowers the church was drenched in at your wedding, all Catholic flowers, a display of faith in the natural object placed at the heart of the human event, an insistence that those same objects are more than themselves, are symbols of what the human event pertains to, limiting it on both sides, the flowers that brushed soundlessly the first time and that stood stiff and waxed the second. And you wonder whether the curateâs drift towards that point, the point at which these memories emerge and sidle towards you like forgotten enemies, to be confronted or evaded, is just an extension of his pastoral duty. Though your Tuesday conversations havenât touched on these things for years, his very presence is a subtle reminder of them. Your discomfiture gives way to mild annoyance. Some unspoken agreement has been broken. You suspect he has been breaking it all along. You resent being reminded, through the theories of an obscure, possibly dilettante French mathematician, of your agnosticism, your perplexity and your deceased wife.
The curate moves from the window and places his hand on your arm. You arenât used to hands on your arm, you are made as uncomfortable by them as by opening doors. But all you feel through his hand is the depth of his liking for you. This is another subject that has never been broached. Even that, the pressure says, will fail us some day. You look for words to answer him, somewhere between affection and faint resentment, but you canât find them. He saves you again, as if saving is always his duty. His words are like your flowers, hedging round that miniature human event. He mentions the book he has brought.
âI wonder, can Dev enlighten us?â
The door opens as he smiles. Luke comes through. You smile, almost in gratitude.
I WILL HAVE Luke open doors as quietly as James, but with the added ability to do so unnoticed. Like a good waiter, unembarrassed by silence, feeling no need to explain his presence. He has a transparent complexion at the age of eight, luminous eyes that stare all the time but rarely seek attention. The grandfatherâs bluster makes way for the fatherâs reticence and for Lukeâs transparent quiet. The youth whom Lili met at eighteen implied just such a boy. You tried to imagine him, she tells me, as a boy: did he carry himself just that way when he was twelve, eight or ten? And the boy who possessed that odd intensity, that appalling certainty would, she says, have been an intimidating boy indeed. Her impatience with the boyâs father is only matched by the rapturous approval with which she remembers
YOU TURN AWAY from the dialogue to watch the rain falling in sheets now on the prom. You can see the snout of Bray Head nudging past your window, a thin strip of the promenade resistant to the water hopping off it and the broader band of sea which accepts the rain, mottled by the squalls. The dialogue has come round to that point you had hoped it would resist. This innocent, glowing cleric is drawn to it, independent of himself. A faint disturbance rises in you, the kind of upset that could be due to bad digestion, you want to fart and blame it on the cucumber sandwiches or the inordinate amount of tea you have drunk. His excitement has carried you with it. You sense it springs from your own perplexity. But your disturbance is more than gastronomic. You remember the stiff wax flowers of her funeral, the flowers the church was drenched in at your wedding, all Catholic flowers, a display of faith in the natural object placed at the heart of the human event, an insistence that those same objects are more than themselves, are symbols of what the human event pertains to, limiting it on both sides, the flowers that brushed soundlessly the first time and that stood stiff and waxed the second. And you wonder whether the curateâs drift towards that point, the point at which these memories emerge and sidle towards you like forgotten enemies, to be confronted or evaded, is just an extension of his pastoral duty. Though your Tuesday conversations havenât touched on these things for years, his very presence is a subtle reminder of them. Your discomfiture gives way to mild annoyance. Some unspoken agreement has been broken. You suspect he has been breaking it all along. You resent being reminded, through the theories of an obscure, possibly dilettante French mathematician, of your agnosticism, your perplexity and your deceased wife.
The curate moves from the window and places his hand on your arm. You arenât used to hands on your arm, you are made as uncomfortable by them as by opening doors. But all you feel through his hand is the depth of his liking for you. This is another subject that has never been broached. Even that, the pressure says, will fail us some day. You look for words to answer him, somewhere between affection and faint resentment, but you canât find them. He saves you again, as if saving is always his duty. His words are like your flowers, hedging round that miniature human event. He mentions the book he has brought.
âI wonder, can Dev enlighten us?â
The door opens as he smiles. Luke comes through. You smile, almost in gratitude.
I WILL HAVE Luke open doors as quietly as James, but with the added ability to do so unnoticed. Like a good waiter, unembarrassed by silence, feeling no need to explain his presence. He has a transparent complexion at the age of eight, luminous eyes that stare all the time but rarely seek attention. The grandfatherâs bluster makes way for the fatherâs reticence and for Lukeâs transparent quiet. The youth whom Lili met at eighteen implied just such a boy. You tried to imagine him, she tells me, as a boy: did he carry himself just that way when he was twelve, eight or ten? And the boy who possessed that odd intensity, that appalling certainty would, she says, have been an intimidating boy indeed. Her impatience with the boyâs father is only matched by the rapturous approval with which she remembers
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