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the same affectation that had struck me in Pigalle. On the contrary, the cigarette holder now had something military about it. He was surrounded by his officers and was issuing his latest orders. The blonde girl was standing so close to him their shoulders were touching. Her face became more and more severe, as if she wanted to keep the others at a distance and demonstrate her pride of place.
    He got into the car with the girl, who slammed the door shut. He leaned out of the window and waved goodbyeto the group, but at that moment he stared directly at me, so that I imagined the gesture was intended just for me. I was on the edge of the pavement and I leaned towards him. The girl looked at me with a sulky expression. He was getting ready to start the engine. I was gripped by vertigo. The phrase had so intrigued me the other night in Pigalle that I wanted to knock on the window and say to Bouvière, ‘You haven’t forgotten the refills?’ I was saddened by the thought that this phrase would remain a mystery, one among so many other words and faces captured in a moment and which continue to shine in your memory with the glimmer of a distant star, before being erased forever, on the day of your death, without ever revealing their secrets.
    I stayed there on the pavement, in the middle of the group. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say to them. I ended up smiling at the fellow with the hawkish face. Perhaps he knew more than the others. I asked him, a little abruptly, the name of the girl who had just left in the car with Bouvière. He replied, nonplussed, in a soft, deep voice, that her name was Geneviève. Geneviève Dalame.

I’M TRYING TO remember what I could have been doing so late, on the night of the accident, around Place des Pyramides. I should explain that, during that period, every time I crossed over from the Left Bank I was happy, as if all I needed was to cross the Seine to be lifted out of my stupor. Suddenly there would be electricity in the air. Something was finally going to happen to me.
    I probably attach too much importance to topography. I had often wondered why, in the space of a few years, the places where I would meet my father gradually moved from the area around the Champs-Élysées towards Porte d’Orléans. I even remember unfolding a map of Paris in my hotel room on Rue de la Voie-Verte. With a red ballpoint pen, I marked crosses that I used as reference points. It hadall started in an area with L’ÉTOILE at the centre of gravity, with exit routes running away to the east in the direction of Bois de Boulogne. Then Avenue des Champs-Élysées. We had slipped imperceptibly past the Madeleine and the Grands Boulevards towards the Opéra neighbourhood. Then further south, near the Palais-Royal for a few months—long enough for me to think that he had finally found somewhere to settle—where I would meet my father at the Ruc Univers. We were getting closer to a border that I tried to mark off on my map. From the Ruc we moved to the Corona café, on the corner of Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and Quai du Louvre. Yes, I think that’s where the border lay.
    He always arranged to meet at around nine o’clock at night. The café was about to close. We were the only customers left in the back room. The traffic along the quays had died down by then and we could hear the Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois clock strike the quarter hours. It was there that I first noticed his threadbare suit and the missing buttons from his navy-blue overcoat. But his shoes were immaculately polished. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he looked like an out-of-work musician, more like an adventurist after a stint in prison. Business was getting worse and worse. The spark and agility of youth had gone. FromSaint-Germain-l’Auxerrois we finished up around Porte d’Orléans. And then, one last time, I watched his silhouette disappear