Chapter Twenty-Four
Marie Estrange wondered why she was reminiscing about the novel Fermina Márquez, by Valery Larbaud. She’d read this bittersweet tale of adolescent love and ideals a few years before – in 1912 perhaps, though it seemed a world away, another life. She still remembered how rueful she’d felt when she had shut the book: a lyrical work about the decay of first love. She felt that same pervasive sadness now. Was the world really just a hall of mirrors that turned everything to ugliness and deformity? It was dusk and she was working in a gloomy store-room, emptying medical supplies from the shelves into large linen bags. She felt she was no longer welcome there. When the men helping her had carried the sacks away, she stood in the doorway and looked over her shoulder, thinking
