Rummaging in the front closet for some extra protection, he had pulled out, with a smile he couldn't have interpreted for himself, a long - forgotten item, the tricolor scarf that his ex-wife, Pascale, had learned to knit for him during the four months when she was
recovering from
aphasia, four months that had produced, among other shockers, an excessively long French flag of a wool scarf, which he wound seven and a half times around his neck before heading out into the dark to deal with the rush in his head.