MADELEINE'S HANDS make her useless. But she jostles the wagon, stoops over the canisters, and squints at the bulbs, in order to create the appearance of usefulness.
Have you found him? Adrien whispers.
Not yet, Madeleine says. I'm too short.
Adrien balances a glass plate between his hands, its surface etched with a terrified face, and says, I am beginning to worry.
Have you ever, he wonders, begun a journey with a suitcase, and guarded that suitcase closely, keeping it beneath your bed at night, and watching over it at the station like a mother? Then the suitcase is lost, but you are consoled, because a lady passenger has given you a pair of eyeglasses with green-tinted lenses, and you guard them on your journey with all the care that you once bestowed upon your suitcase. Then the eyeglasses are shattered, but you hardly notice, you have become so attached to the first edition you found in a moldering bookshop. Then the first edition tumbles over the railing of the ferry, the ferry carrying you from one end of the lake to the other, and when you land, and see the pretty town on the side of the mountain, you remember: on a stiff card, tucked into the lining of your suitcase, there is written the address where you are expected.
Are you worried, Madeleine asks, that we will never find him?
I am worried, Adrien says, that I will leave the hospital, that I will travel for many days, and only upon wandering into a market and finding a stall selling figs, or meeting the eyes of a young prostitute, or stumbling over a mangy dog run out into the street, only then will I realize what I have forgotten to bring with me: M. Pujol.