THE FOLLOWING DAY, THÉO CONTINUED to complain of a stomachache. He was hot, his head lay like a stone among the cushions. Ania decided to keep him home. Around eleven, Jean-Louis called to tell Ania in his somewhat atonal voice that the funeral was going to be moved up to the following day. “That’s what they recommended to us.” This “us” included them, them and Clara, in a new kind of bond. Ania could detect, beneath the sententious tone of voice, the disarming pride he felt at being included in their decisions. That was all part of the foreseeable cruelty of things. Clara provided them with greater satisfaction and proofs of friendship than the secretive and deceitful young girl who had frustrated so many of their expectations.

WHEN JACQUELINE WAS NO LONGER ABLE to help her with her homework, for an entire year Gabriel had paid a young man to assist her—he was available and very meticulous. Every other day he would come to go over her lessons. He had never shown the least sign of impatience or pleasure in being there, moving his finger like a caterpillar from one line to the next, then waiting, staring at the table in front of him, for her to reread the passage or reply. Sometimes, when he was home, Gabriel came to see if everything was going as it should. Resting with his arms on the table over the open notebooks, he expressed surprise at the useless things they were forced to ingest and made light of the homework they had been given. He had never hoped for much from these classes, had, in fact, never really taken his role as a father very seriously. The slow, heavy little girl she had become, his little country girl, as he now referred to her, could become whatever she wished. Yet his presence in the room left her feeling empty, floating in the fog of what she was supposed to understand. She had never managed to adopt the rhythm of learning. The urgency to respond held her back, her mind resisted, floundered beneath the pressure of a hand that sought to push her forward too quickly.

The school had called shortly before the start of vacation to say that Ania would be left back next year as well. Gabriel wasn’t there, so it was Jean-Louis who had come to wait in front of the gates of the playground. “You’ll have to tell your father tomorrow night,” he noted mournfully, frozen by the profound lack of harmony, the annoying lack of understanding that her refusal to give satisfaction, in spite of the effort and the money that had been spent, had caused them, Jacqueline and him. Nothing more was said during the trip back, and she had assumed that Jean-Louis was far too preoccupied with what she would become. A scorching sun warmed the fetid dust on the seats. Ania was sick to her stomach and, from that moment on, she had had the impression of falling ever deeper into a pit of neglect.

Gabriel had called that evening; he was abroad but his voice felt close, as if he were speaking directly into her ear. He had been told about her grades, of the faked reports, of the days spent with Chloé. He hadn’t been angered by the news; in fact, it had made him strangely giddy. “You’re aware that we’ll have to find a private school in town. Turning you over to the priests, that should be a barrel of laughs, don’t you think?” he joked. Ania didn’t understand what he was talking about or why he was joking. She hadn’t said a word, only waited stoically for him to hang up. While she was waiting, when there was nothing and no one to comfort her, her heart had felt empty. And it was then that the request formulated itself, unexpected, salutary: she wanted to go to boarding school.

Whenever Gabriel traveled for extended periods of time, Jacqueline would spend the night in his house. After she had served Ania dinner in the kitchen, seated a short distance from the table like the servant that she had never entirely ceased being, she ate her own dinner with Jean-Louis. That evening, Ania had heard her come back around ten o’clock and slip discreetly from the bedroom to the bathroom, ill at ease at being in her nightgown between those walls. The afternoon heat clung to the rooms. Thirst and the feeling of injustice that so unsettled Ania created a stifling mixture. She had spent part of the night at her window. Jacqueline couldn’t sleep either and, from time to time, her profile appeared at the neighboring window. They were so close they could hear one another breathe. Ania had let herself cry then, although she knew that it was still too soon to expect any sympathy.

In the morning she had found Jacqueline busy rinsing a bucket of cherries in the sink. Slices of buttered bread were ready on the table. The butter had melted into the cracks and crevices. The sun, which for days now had made the tile floors blisteringly hot from early morning, would make the summer a prison of boredom and solitude. Jacqueline finally turned around, waiting for Ania to sit down at the table. Her reddened hands resting on the edge of the sink and her head arched slightly back, she appeared to be contemplating an inscrutable vision. “Isn’t your father lonely enough already? And you want to go away to boarding school?” she exclaimed, her voice broken by sorrow.

Nothing had been explained or forgiven at the time, and later it had been too late. Ania returned only for vacation; most often it was Jean-Louis who came to get her at the station. They could find little to say to each other; Jean-Louis didn’t have much to tell and Ania preferred to keep her new life to herself. She had no reproaches to make, however, for it would only have led to misunderstandings and regret. Hearing Jean-Louis on the phone that morning, so overwhelmed by the circumstance that forced them to hasten the burial, conscientious and sincere as well in his desire that she be present, Ania thought they might never see each other again and that the idea must seem as inconceivable to him as it was to her. “I’ll come tonight if I can find someone to look after Théo,” she promised. “If only to pick up my things, if there are any left,” she added with almost mechanical bitterness, but Jean-Louis had already hung up.

SITTING UP IN HIS BED, Théo hadn’t taken his eyes off her throughout that brief conversation. His bushy head, having sweated during the night, bobbed up and down with fatigue and despondency. Ania could deceive him about what was going on but not about what she felt; he deciphered her moods with nearly perfect intuition.

She had just put down the receiver when he lay back down, the sheet pulled up to his chin, his eyelids drooping; it was a kind of blackmail so that she might turn her attention back to him. Ania gave in to the need for tenderness in spite of herself. She caressed his damp forehead, slipped her finger over his slender nose and asked him if it was okay for Nour to watch him that evening, until the following morning. The suggestion brought a spark of joy and excitement to his eyes. The young girl lived in the building and had babysat from time to time when he was very little, stopping by to give him a kiss on his birthday. As slender as an obedient child, she dressed in tight jeans and brightly colored headscarves that wrapped around her graceful features, above which sat a mass of carefully gathered hair. There was considerable tenderness between them in spite of her obvious discomfort with his deafness.

Ania tried to call her, left a message, and returned to Théo with an orange juice that he lingered over at great length, fussing with each seed, which he spit out, one by one, into his fingers. He sat there, his head heavy and his shoulders slouched. “You’re going to the funeral,” he said, sounding offended. “They said I could go.” This was something new, this protest. Ania gathered his face between her hands, attempting to decipher what it was that was bothering him. Théo grabbed her wrists as if to prevent her from harming him. The sun ricocheting off the windowpane made him wrinkle his nose. Ania asked him to pay attention to what she was about to say. “Your grandfather made a great many people angry; we’re not too sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Your grandfather wasn’t such a nice person, you know,” she added, with the barely conscious intention of wounding him. Théo followed her lips with a sullen look, his eyes dark with anger. Ania let him go, shocked to realize that he was looking at her as if she were being intentionally cruel or deceitful. “Even the principal said that she knew him,” he grumbled after a while, trying to hurt her in turn.

NOUR ARRIVED EARLY IN THE EVENING, directly from the library, where she was going over her homework. She didn’t hide the fact that she had had difficulty getting her parents to let her stay overnight. Théo’s greeting was a mixture of excitement and uncertainty at the idea that she was going to sleep there, and perhaps he was also a little intimidated at seeing her without a scarf. Ania hadn’t been able to gain his forgiveness before leaving. He had gone back to bed, leaving her with the unresolved impression of his defiance. Walking to the station, Ania tried to reach Novak to find out what he had put into his head about Gabriel, wondering what role he was trying to play in this story. She was equally disturbed at the fact that something of him was in the process of making its appearance in Théo.