“I have been thinking, cher Docteur.”
All faces turned towards him.
“About what you once said to me regarding consistency.”
Molineu looked surprised, but also delighted. He put his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers.
“And I have been thinking,” said Midhat, “that there is always a cause of inconsistency, since nothing is without cause. I have been studying Newton.” He laughed, anticipating smiles of condescension from the older men. But Nolin and Molineu merely continued to look expectant. “Docteur Molineu and I were discussing what it means to be consistent. Whether it is in our nature or—but I have come to understand it all as a puzzle of two,” he wobbled his upturned palms like scales, “that covers more than a few questions about human beings. It stayed in my mind, this conversation we had, and I have concluded that it has to do with causes. There is a lovely phrase by one of our philosophers in Islam, Ibn Rushd, who believed in a beginning and an end …” At once, his point about Ibn Rushd didn’t seem relevant. “I mean, if something appears to be without cause it is usually an aberration … with regard to the body, at the least. And even if there doesn’t appear to be a cause there is always a cause, only that cause might be obscured, and being obscured, we may deduce from its obscurity that almost certainly something is seriously wrong with the body internally, the apparently causeless aberration … say a rash, or great fatigue, or a strange pain … being therefore a symptom of something invisible. And similarly I think that if we look at the mind and character of man, aberrations in behaviour will always have a cause. That is if we could map mind onto body—but if we could, and if we looked at motives and experience and we still cannot find the cause of the inconsistency, it would tend to mean that there is something quite seriously wrong, something that is causing aberrant behaviour. Madness, for example.”
These were thoughts he had begun to play with on the days he walked alone to and from the Faculty, and they were not ready to be shared with others. Though he had not decided whether as a whole they held water, he liked to return to the various themes, and derived from them a private confidence in his own mind, as he had once derived confidence in his body through daydreaming. But as his words about the invisible left his mouth he suddenly saw their flaws, how they didn’t address other invisible causes. Crucial among the invisible being, of course, God.
“That sounds interesting,” said Nolin. “Invisible causes as a sign of pathology. But it could be sophistical. Let me think.”
Midhat was flattered by Nolin’s tone, though he knew he had spoken with the accidental definiteness of a person using a second language. He looked at Jeannette, hoping to be admired. Instead he saw a pair of outraged eyes.
“Wait a minute,” said Nolin. “Are you saying that madness is a discrete invisible cause? Or that it has one? I mean, are you calling madness an aberration, or is it the cause of aberrant symptoms? For one thing, it’s often not particularly invisible, and for another, it is most often extremely difficult to ascertain causes. Unless you are of the modern camp. Other than neurological, you know.”
“I think I meant to say that madness was a cause. But I suppose it’s not so invisible, no …”
“Yes, it’s a little vague. In the end,” Patrice Nolin addressed the table, “one must ask of a speculative paradigm first and foremost whether or not it is of use when we are going about our daily business of trying to understand phenomena. I admire your originality Monsieur Midhat but your thinking is caught in a kind of tautology … or system of infinite regress.”
“Thank you, Patrice, for that lesson,” said Frédéric, with a jolly smile.
The damage was done. Midhat wished he had not spoken.
“I think,” said Sylvain, after a pause, “the Muhammadan speaks very good French, however.”
“Sylvain,” said Jeannette, harshly.
“Jeannette,” said her father.
“Are we all going to say each other’s names?” said Carole.
“Carole,” ventured Marie-Thérèse, but nobody smiled, and she blushed a painful shade of red that leaked onto her forehead and nose.
“In addition to which,” said Nolin, “I can’t believe your world is so perfectly consistent with itself, Monsieur Midhat, pardon me. There are several things I can name right now as serious aberrations in this world, behavioural or otherwise, and we know exactly what the causes are.”
“I am sorry,” said Midhat, enunciating with some force.
“That’s enough Nolin,” said Sylvain.
Midhat looked at his unlikely defender, and remembered in a flash that it was at the party—that was where Sylvain had upset Jeannette, and he, Midhat, had followed her into the hall.
“Pardon me,” said Nolin in a haughty voice, though it was followed swiftly by an earnest “Ah,” as Georgine took his plate. “Thank you.”
Georgine squeaked the trolley around the table.
“Why don’t you sit with us for dessert?” said Molineu.
Georgine hesitated a fraction too long. Already Molineu was suggesting that Jeannette might shuffle down towards Patrice, and slip a chair in there, three on each side is perfect, first perhaps bring in the soufflé and dessert spoons, if you might Georgine. Midhat caught a raised eyebrow from Jeannette to Carole. Not out of unkindness towards Georgine, he understood, nor out of disrespect for her father; it was just a necessary concession that something was out of the ordinary, to avert gossip that the Molineus always dined with their servants. Molineu’s face was quickly showing signs of embarrassment as his whimsy took effect. Georgine seated herself between Jeannette and Sylvain and whispered, “Good evening.”
Midhat looked at Sylvain and Georgine right-angled on the corner of the table. Her head was bowed, and he was swigging from his glass. The embrace Midhat had stumbled on at the party presented itself vaporously to his mind. He watched them in amazement, side by side, ignoring each other. For the first time it occurred to him to question whether Georgine had been willing. He felt a wave of confused disgust.
“Yes, that’s better. Isn’t it.” Docteur Molineu pushed his spoon into the soufflé.
Midhat returned his attention to Jeannette, who was staring at her bowl. He was always watching her distress from afar, across a room, a garden; he blinked as the image recurred of water falling off her thighs. The anger he felt on the terrace was already cooling, deposed by her apparently worthier annoyance at his mention of madness. That hardly seemed much of an indiscretion, especially given that the speech in its entirety had drawn enough embarrassing attention to himself that no one would be thinking of her mother. All the same, he had forfeited his high ground. Was it a game of one-upmanship, of who could be more annoyed with whom? At least, if it was, then she could not be indifferent to him. At this thought he was surprised to feel a hot little glow of hope.
“I think we ought to change the subject,” said Nolin.
“Which subject?” said Marie-Thérèse.
“Somebody pass Georgine a spoon,” said Molineu.
“Thank you.”
“And how are your studies, Monsieur Midhat?” said Carole.