Children, unlike adults, adapt to everything. So little by little, despite my mother’s disgust, I began to see that fungus as an everyday presence in my family life. It didn’t inspire the same aversion in me as it did my mother; just the opposite. I felt a protective sympathy for that iodine-painted toenail, which seemed vulnerable to me, similar to what I would have felt for a crippled pet that had trouble moving around. Time went on and my mother stopped making such a fuss over her affliction. For my part, I grew up and completely forgot about it and never again thought about fungi until I met Philippe Laval.

At that time I had just turned thirty-five. I was married to a patient and generous man who was ten years my senior and the director of the National School of Music, where I had completed the first part of my training as a violinist. We didn’t have children. We had tried for a while, but rather than agonizing over it, I felt fortunate to be able to focus on my career. I had completed my training at Juilliard and had garnered certain international prestige, enough to be invited to Europe and the United States to give concerts two or three times a year. I’d just recorded a CD in Denmark and was about to return to Copenhagen to teach a six-week course in a palace that every summer hosted the best students in the world.