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drink.
    â€œIt’s funny,” Valette said at last, “I feel like stopping someone in the street so as to say: I’m Jean Valette, and I’m still alive, I’m okay, and here I am back again for a short break; then I’d shake his hand, just like that!”
    â€œYou might as well pick a girl if you’re going to do that,” Lasteyrie said. “But where have all the pretty ones gone?” he shouted, casting his eye all the way around the café, which was empty at that time of the morning. “Seeing as we’re in Paris!”
    The three men drank their coffee; Lachaume settled the bill; the time had come for them to break up, but they were held back by some strange hesitation.
    â€œGive me your address,” Valette said to Lachaume. “If you like, you could come and have lunch one day at my parents’ place … With your wife, of course…”
    Valette blushed, unsure whether he had done the right thing by mentioning Lachaume’s wife.
    â€œThat would be a pleasure,” Lachaume said.
    It took another moment to write down the address. Then since nobody could decide to be the first to leave, Lasteyrie coughed up for a round of rum, which they drank slowly.
    â€œCome on,” Lachaume said at last. “I’m off. Cheers!”
    â€œSee you later,” Valette said.
    â€œCiao, Prof!” Lasteyrie said. “And if you find I’m not on time on the third, don’t bother to wait for me!”

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    They called him Prof because after he got his first degree in English, he’d taught at a private school near Port-Royal while studying for the agrégation , the qualifying exam for an academic career. But for him, everything that had to do with his life before call-up seemed lost in a phenomenally far-off time. His only link with the past was his wife, whom he carried on thinking of as his out of habit, though she was about to leave him. In truth, the more he thought about it, the more the breakup seemed to be in the nature of things. What miracle could have made this love last longer than all the rest?
    He was walking alongside the Seine, level with the Jardin des Plantes. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame rose up in front of him like a second-rate stage set and made him angry. He wasn’t going to play a part in that comedy. But he couldn’t say which part, or which play. His anger was abstract.
    The sun shone that day as if it were spring, making everything look slightly artificial. Passersby put on smiles as sickly sweet as the air; at pedestrian crossings affable policemen with batons under their arms spread good cheer. Lachaume strove to banish from his mind all temptation to be sentimental.
    He ended up on the rear platform of a bus he’d been in the habit of taking to go home. The route hadn’t changed, and just before his stop, he saw himself as he had been three years before, at the back of a bus just like this one, with a bunch of deep red roses in his arms, going up the same steep street beside a quiet garden—that was still there, too. It was at the start of his affair with Françoise. He’d just moved in with her with his books and six new shirts in a suitcase, and a bunch of roses with thorns that pricked him through his jacket.
    Lachaume had no mercy for the young man he had been: such futile memories just made him angrier. Leaning his elbows on the rear railing at the back of the bus, he drew on his pipe in sudden bursts, jutting out his chin as if he were giving a forceful diatribe. At such moments his face, with its strong and regular features, apart from his dented nose, really did look high and mighty. But nobody took any notice, because people do not see the face of a soldier at first glance. All they see is the uniform.
    He was lucky enough to avoid local shopkeepers who might have recognized him and asked him questions, and he evaded the concierge of his block as well. He opened his