CHAPTER 23Hubert awoke to the sounds of church bells. He lay motionless in his bed, watching a colorful band of light on the wall in jittery motion: some of the early-morning beams of the sun were refracted by the beveled edge of the mirror. He remembered the first time he'd seen the unearthly brilliance of the spectrum as a little boy. It seemed then to promise the existence of another reality, much more magical than the tangible things in his room: the window with the blinds, which were pierced by a pencil of light, the wall onto which the little rainbow was projected, the chair on which his shirt and pants were neatly laid out, and his big, fresh-smelling featherbed. After he had completed his physics courses, each appearance of that band of light seemed little more than a textbook quot
