Célia still had that blankness sometimes, the look of someone colliding over and over with the enormity of what might have happened. Peter could have died, been burned, blinded. Each improvement in his sight—the gray blur, the sliver of white, the square of light from the window—could have been the last. Only someone who knew what that was like, had the right to ask me this.

“Yes, I can.”

But I did not feel that I could. I only hoped.

—

I quickly learned that he did better with small amounts of everything, not just food. A lengthy conversation, no matter how light the subject, was too much. Even, or especially, this was true with kisses and embraces. They had to be supplied like everything else, in little spoonfuls.

My father, noticing this, took down from his shelves all his archaeological and architectural works on the Middle East, laid them on the table in his study. His Bénédite, that I had told James about, his Bonfils. James’s eyes brightened at the sight. He spent a lot of the day in there while my father was out at the office and then, when he came back, they would sit there together, reading without disturbing each other beyond the occasional comment. Over the weeks, James told my father about his father, Findlay. I learned from Papa how the family had lived in Rosyth, a place in Scotland, where Findlay spent years building the dockyard and then later, after the Great War, lifting the wrecks of battleships from Scapa Flow. Then they went to Egypt: James had told me about that, I remembered, to Suez, where his father widened the canal. And then it was Singapore—a naval base to be built at Sembawang—but James was almost grown up by then. “A fascinating life,” said Papa, musing, as I imagined this Findlay as a Titan dragging warships from the water with his huge bare hands. Pushing the sides of the Suez Canal apart. James had said much more to my father than he had to me.

But I was glad he was talking.