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man we had elected to the Explorers' Club at the beginning of the year, with Cavanaugh and me as sponsors, a young man who wanted to dedicate himself to searching for the wrecks of boats that had gone down in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and who Annette had said had "the face of a Greek shepherd".
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    The light went out in the bedroom, and Annette said in a hoarse voice:
    "Don't be afraid, my darling … "
    Then I shut the door gently and switched on the light in my study. I searched the drawers until I found an old darkgreen cardboard folder. I put it under my arm and left the room, abandoning my widow and Ben Smidane to their amours.
    I stood still for a moment in the middle of the corridor, listening to the hum of the conversation. I thought of Cavanaugh up there, a glass of champagne in his hand, standing at the ship's rail. With the other guests he would be gazing at the Place Blanche which looked like a little fishing port they were about to put into. Unless he had noticed Annette's prolonged absence and was wondering where on earth my widow could have got to.
    I saw myself again, twenty years earlier, with Ingrid and Rigaud, in the semi-darkness outside the bungalow. Around us, shouts and bursts of laughter similar to those now reaching me from the terrace. I was now about the same age as Ingrid and Rigaud were then, and whereas their attitude had seemed to me so strange then, I shared it this evening. I remembered what Ingrid had said: "We'll pretend to be dead."
    I went down the secret stairway, behind the Moulin Rouge, and found myself back on the boulevard. I crossed the Place Blanche and raised my head in the direction of our terrace. Up there, there was no danger of them spotting me among the crowds of tourists being disgorged from the coaches, and the people out for a stroll on the fourteenth of July. Did they still spare just a little thought for me? Deep down I was very fond of them: my widow, Cavanaugh, Ben Smidane and the other guests. One day I'll come back to you. I don't yet know the precise date of my resurrection. I shall have to have the strength and the inclination. But this evening I'm going to take the métro to the Porte Dorée. Light. So detached from everything.

WHEN I GOT BACK, around midnight, the fountains in the square were still illuminated and a few groups, among which I noticed some children, were making their way towards the entrance to the zoo. It had stayed open for the fourteenth of July, and no doubt the animals would remain in their cages and enclosures, half asleep. Why shouldn't I too pay them a nocturnal visit, and thus have the illusion of making our old dream come true: letting ourselves be locked in the zoo overnight?
    But I preferred to go back to the Dodds Hotel and lie down on the little cherry-wood bed in my room. I reread the pages contained in the dark-green folder. Notes, and even short chapters, that I'd written ten years ago, the rough draft of a project cherished at the time: to write Ingrid's biography.
    It was September, in Paris, and for the first time I had begun to have doubts about my life and profession. From then on I would have to share Annette, my wife, with Cavanaugh, my best friend. The public had lost interest in the documentaries we were bringing back from the antipodes. All those journeys, those countries where they had monsoons, earthquakes, amoebas and virgin forests, had lost their charm for me. Had they ever had any?
    Days of doubt and depression. I had five weeks' respite before dragging myself across Asia on the route followed by the 1931 car expedition across central Asia. I cursed the members of that expedition, whose tyre tracks I was obliged to discover. Never had Paris, the quais along the Seine, and the Place Blanche seemed so attractive. How stupid to leave all that once again …
    The memory of Ingrid was obsessing me, and I had spent the days before my departure in noting down everything I knew about her, which is to say not much