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characters, who had remained in your memory all those years.
    Before going to bed, we exchanged goodnight kisses. We hadn’t done that for a long time, not since before I’d left for America.
    In bed I considered the possibility that you’d been joking; you’d had a good time, you’d pulled a fast one on me, and now the game was over. I fell asleep with that thought.
    The following morning, I woke up suddenly. Your enraged face was very close to mine, and you said, ‘You’ve stolen my slippers!’

    Over the course of the next few weeks, I found myself cohabiting with a complete stranger. The extraterrestrials had disappeared, but their place had been taken by a persecution complex. Everything and everyone was conspiring against you.
    It was a conspiracy made up of malevolent whispers, behind-the-back mockery, constant petty theft: your slippers and your dressing gown disappeared; your handbag and your overcoat vanished into thin air; your keys and your glasses slid into the void for ever. Someone stole the pot you wanted to cook in and the lunch you had just prepared. In the refrigerator, there was no trace of the things you’d bought at the store, and the soap was missing from the bathroom. Given that the UFOs and their occupants were no longer around, the person solely responsible for all this wanton pilfering was me, always and only me. I did it just to spite you, to turn your life into a torment of infernal little searches.
    You bought a great many chains and padlocks from the hardware store and used them to bind and lock everything. In order to keep from losing the various keys, you strung them on a long red ribbon, which you wore around your neck. In my memory, the incessant jangling of your keys, coupled with the pitter-patter of your indefatigable footsteps, is the background sound of those months.
    You accused me of the most incredible things, and I didn’t know how to defend myself. The words I tried to say were like an inflammable liquid – just a few drops were enough to make you explode. You’d burst into flames of rage, your jaw clenched, your eyes narrow, your thin hands scratching the air; you’d spend hours spouting unrepeatable curses. You opened and closed all the drawers, furtively carrying off various objects to new and even more secret places. You opened and closed the armoires, the refrigerator, the oven. You went up and down the stairs. You opened and closed the windows, suddenly sticking your head out in order to catch someone in the act of lying in wait for you. You did the same thing with the front door. You were sure you’d seen someone; presences hidden behind the jambs, scrutinising you with malevolent eyes. They had to be fought ruthlessly, implacably. They had to be beaten to the punch.
    In an attempt to show some solidarity with you, I helped you organise your various defensive strategies. I bought a whistle and told you it was endowed with magical powers; it could keep malignant entities at a distance. You snatched it out of my hand, wide-eyed with amazement. ‘Really? It works?’ you kept saying, repeating the words with a sort of relieved gratitude.
    Indeed, it
did
work for a certain period of time. A new household sound joined your footfalls and the jangling of your improvised key ring: the piercing shriek of that whistle, instantly accompanied by Buck’s howling – the high frequencies disturbed him. And there I was, roaming about like a ghost in the midst of this diabolical symphony. During the rare periods when you yielded to sleep, I stood beside your bed and studied you. You were coiled up in a defensive position, with clenched fists and tense lips; your facial muscles moved and twitched ceaselessly, and so did your eyes behind the thin veil of your eyelids.
    Contemplating your features, I tried to see in them the person who had raised me. What had happened to her? Who was this old woman I was looking at? Where had she come from? How was it possible for a mild,