With hatred for everything. His life. Cambridge. His studies, which Thome had hoped would mark the emergence of his personality from the chrysalis—caterpillar, butterfly, and so on—were a flop. His expectations lagged behind. Same with his intellectual aptitude. Nearly every day Thome ran up against the limits of his comprehension. He watched fellow students pass him by intellectually, he remained seated behind a sign in his mind that read: “Done.” Sometimes he beat his head against the wall to loosen the synapses. Success continued to elude him. He got up to the sign, pushed and pressed against it as if constipated, but he could get no further. This is what it’s like to grasp one’s mediocrity, realized Thome, a destiny he shared with millions of scientists, engineers, artists, and athletes around the world, who all knew that for them it would never come to anything phenomenal but who nonetheless pressed on and kept up hope despite all reason. That a miracle could still occur, a valve would burst, some mental eruption would set their creativity free. Even setting aside his mental failure, Cambridge was also a social disaster. Rumors of his father’s misalliance had made their way around the Empire within days. There was barely anything society wouldn’t forgive. The love of children, dogs, including sexually, cheating, homosexuality, the loss of wealth, drug addiction, everything seemed pardonable and would be stylishly hushed up—but not fraternization. If there was one thing the upper class disdained more than poverty it was new money. Arabs, Russians. To screw someone from this strata was acceptable, as long as it took place discreetly. But one did not marry such people. Everyone still remembered the last scandal, with Lady Diana Spencer and her Arab. As well as how this problem had been taken care of. It was the ruling class’s worst catastrophe since Edward VIII wanted to marry a divorced American in 1936. Moments that put into question the future of the monarchy were more traumatic than the attacks of 2005. For Thome, his father’s late lasciviousness had horrible consequences. He was socially

Dead.