Tuesday morning we ate a breakfast of tea and toast like two polite strangers, but as soon as he left for work I went down to the brasserie full of resentment and had another orange juice. Then I walked to the library in a light rain. In my days as a student I had gone there often, but hadn’t been in a while. My office was on the Rive Gauche, and whenever some query arose that could not be answered from the Internet I would go to the National Library. Unlike that one, which was almost always empty, the library in my neighborhood was full of teenagers like the one I had been in high school: slightly older kids who spoke to each other by yelling and roared with laughter. People who ate in cafeterias and whose only concerns were passing their exams and making the money from their parents or the government last the month. Normally, or at least for the past few years, people of that age made me feel a certain condescension. So I was surprised that morning to feel envy. I was about to push open the main door when one of them, wearing a red and white scarf around his neck, bumped into my stomach.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, barely slowing down.

More than my pregnant state, it was his falsely contrite tone that made our age difference so obvious—to me anyway.

Once inside I headed toward the Natural Science section and found the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marine Animals and searched for our fish. I discovered that they belonged to the Betta splendens species, also known as “Siamese fighting fish.” They are originally from Asia, where they often inhabit stagnant waters. Experts classify them as a labyrinth fish because of a rhizome-shaped bronchial organ on the top of their head that allows them to breath a small amount of air at the surface of the water. According to the article, one of their most notorious characteristics was their trouble with cohabitation. The dictionary did not abound in details about that or about how to look after them. If I wanted advice on their care I’d have to look elsewhere. It didn’t mention anything about the stripes that had appeared on the female’s flanks, either.