Page 119 - The Midnight Library

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Hugo Lefèvre

Nora walked with her headache and obvious hangover through an

undecorated wooden passageway to a small dining hall that smelled of
pickled herring, and where a few research scientists were having breakfast.
She got herself a black coffee and some stale, dr y r ye bread and sat down.
Around her, outside the window, was the most eerily beautiful sight she
had ever seen. Islands of ice, like rocks rendered clean and pure white, were

visible amid the fog. ere were seventeen other people in the dining hall,
Nora counted. Eleven men, six women. Nora sat by herself but within five
minutes a man with short hair and stubble two days away from a full beard

sat down at her table. He was wearing a parka, like most of the room, but he
seemed ill-suited to it, as if he would be more at home on the Riviera
wearing designer shorts and a pink polo shirt. He smiled at Nora. She tried
to translate the smile, to understand the kind of relationship they had. He
watched her for a little while, then shuffled his chair along to sit opposite

her. She looked for a lanyard, but he wasn’t wearing one. She wondered if she
should know his name.
‘I’m Hugo,’ he said, to her relief. ‘Hugo Lefèvre. You are Nora, yes?’

‘Yes.’
‘I saw you around, in Svalbard, at the research centre, but we never said
hello. Anyway, I just wanted to say I read your paper on pulsating glaciers
and it blew my mind.’
‘Really?’

‘Yes. I mean, it’s always fascinated me, why they do that here and nowhere
else. It’s such a strange phenomenon.’
‘Life is full of strange phenomena.’