Ian McEwan

But it was worse than that. Some of the physics that they took for granted was unfamiliar to him. When he looked it up at home, he was irritated by the length and complexity of the calculations. He liked to think he was an old hand and knew his way around string theory and its major variants. But these days there were simply too many add-ons and modifications.

His interest in technology was even weaker than his interest in climate science. He had thought it would be a matter of settling the math for the design, building three or four prototypes, and testing them in the tunnel. But more

permissions. What had seemed a simple wheeze had turned into a monster that was eating up all the attention and resources of the half-built Center. And it was too late to turn back

Many years later, Beard told this story and his conclusions to an English professor in Hong Kong, who said, “But Michael, you’ve missed the point. If you had seduced ninety girls with ninety poets, one a week in a course of three academic years, and remembered them all at the end—the poets, I mean—and synthesized your reading into some kind of aesthetic overview, then you would have earned yourself a degree in English literature. But don’t pretend that it’s easy.”

The painkillers were wearing off; the wine, this same wine, now tasted thin and sharp; the cheerfulness around him was reminding him that his marriage was over. He felt weary, and too cynical for the company. His liveliness in conversation was revealed as a fake, a product of shock, drugs, and drink

he might have said she was a little horsey in appearance.

but the moment it was made his pulse had leaped and his bleated yes had left his mouth.

Dust, old paper, the scent of soap on his hands, but nothing of her.

By his handsome cheekbones the muscles twitched with the movement, and along his forearms they fanned and shifted in complicated rearrangements under the skin.

Birth, death, and frailty in between.