“I tell you what, I’m beginning to understand why you’ve gone blind. It’s like in a Formula One motor race: when a champion is so good that it spoils the excitement, well, they give him a handicap. So God has given you a handicap to make it fairer on other people.”

“So you believe in God now, do you?”

“It’s just a manner of speaking. Fate, then, if you prefer. Do you remember what the teacher said about Rimbaud being such a gifted poet? And his gangrene and his amputated leg? Well, I think that’s another example of handicap. The more gifted you are, the more you pay for it. I’m not at any great risk myself, but I’m very worried about you and Haisam.”

She looked at me, so to speak, with a strange expression. I could see that sometimes I said things which made her think deeply, and I found that flattering. In life, it’s important to have self-esteem.

The bell rang for lunch and we headed to the canteen. It was always a tricky moment. For a start there was invariably a terrible crush on the staircase, which was dangerous for Marie. I bared my teeth and lashed out with my fists, twisting in all directions to create a protection zone around her – a kind of nature reserve for the preservation of rare species. Since everyone remembered the episode with Van Gogh, nobody tried to trespass in our territorial waters.

When we got to the counter we had to choose our meals and the pantomime that ensued was beyond a joke. It was the luck of the draw: Marie went in front of me and I watched her pile her tray high with prize-winning combinations like paté + egg mayonnaise + stew + sauerkraut. Or it was the opposite and you’d think from her selections that she was fasting as penance for something.

Sometimes she groped around, hesitated and ended up sticking her finger into a serving dish of stewed fruit, mashed potato or custard. When she got to the end of the line she looked as though she’d painted her fingers.

“Is this some special diet you’re on, young lady?” teased Didier, the cook, with a smile. He watched over his canteen like an air traffic controller.

“Studying gives you an appetite,” Marie said simply.

It was up to me to compensate and to restore a nutritional balance. So I adjusted my choices accordingly and my tray would either be a carbohydrate overload with mountains of mashed potato bristling with sausages or a crash diet with nothing but green, pale and stringy things. The great Didier ribbed me in his gentle way.

“So you’re turning into a vegetarian?” he would ask, his hands on his hips. “You’re just eating seeds and leaves these days?”

“Green things free your spirit, with all due respect.”