He was very concerned, though he tried not to show it. Blank-outs or not, she had no trouble recognizing the moods of Monsieur Duval. He said that her little jamais vu was perhaps a small epileptic fit or a tiny stroke, but he could not be sure, and even tests might not tell them. jamais vu was poorly understood; a variation on déjà vu, essentially its reverse: “It seems to be a kind of temporary interference in the brain’s wave patterns. They go from alpha waves to delta waves, in a little dip. If you’ll wear a monitor we could find out next time it happens, if it does. It’s somewhat like a waking sleep, in which a lot of cognition shuts down.”

“Do people ever get stuck there?”

“No. I don’t know of any cases like that. It’s rare, and always temporary.”

“So far.”

He tried to act as if that were a baseless fear.

Maya knew better, and went into the kitchen to start a meal. Bang the pots, open the refrigerator, pull out vegetables, chop them and throw them in the pan. Chop chop chop chop. Stop to cry, stop to stop crying; even this had happened ten thousand times before. The disasters one couldn’t avoid, the habit of hunger. In the kitchen, trying to ignore everything and make a meal; how many times. Well, here we are.

After that she avoided the row of rosebushes, fearful of another incident. But of course they were visible from anywhere on that stretch of the corniche, right out to the seawall. And they were in bloom almost all the time, roses were amazing that way. And once, in that same afternoon light, pouring over the Hellespontus and making everything to the west somewhat washed out, darkened to pastel opacities, her eye caught the pinprick reds of the roses in the hedge, even though she was walking the seawall— and seeing the tapestry of foam on the black water to one side of her, and the roses and Odessa rising up to the other side, she stopped, stilled by something in the double vision, by a realization— or almost— the edge of an epiphany— she felt some vast truth pushing at her, just outside her— or inside her body, even, inside her skull but outside her thoughts, pushing at the dura that encased the brain— everything explained, everything come clear at last, for once. . . . “Presque vu.” Almost seen. “I get that one a lot,” he said. With a characteristic look of secret sorrow.