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piled one on top of the other discouraged him from the start. And then, in the end, he had identified him, this Torstel. On the way back from Le Tremblay that Sunday in autumn, the man wanted to drop each of them home. But Chantal and Paul had got out at Montparnasse. From there, the métro was direct to where they lived. He stayed in the car because the man had told him that he lived not far from square du Graisivaudan, where he, Daragane, had this room.
    They kept silent throughout most of the journey. The man had eventually said to him:
    â€œI must have been to this house near Paris two or three times . . . It was your mother who took me there . . .”
    Daragane had not replied. He really did try to avoid thinking about this distant period of his life. And his mother, he did not even know whether she was still alive.
    The man had stopped the car by square du Graisivaudan. “Give my best wishes to your mother . . . We haven’t seen one another for a very long time . . . We were part of a kind of club, with some friends . . . the Chrysalis Club . . . Listen, if by any chance she wants to get in touch with me . . .”
    He handed him a visiting card on which were written “Guy Torstel” and—as far as he could remember—the address where he worked—a bookshop in the Palais-Royal. And a phone number. Later on, Daragane had lost the visiting card. But he had nevertheless copied out the name and the phone number—why?—in the address book he had at the time.
    He sat at his desk. Beneath the pages of the “dossier”, he discovered the photocopy of page 47 of his novel,
Le Noir de l’été
, where there was a mention, apparently, of this Torstel. The name was underlined, by Gilles Ottolini no doubt. He read:
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In the Galerie de Beaujolais, there was indeed a bookshop behind whose window some art books were displayed. He went in. A dark-haired woman was sitting at her desk.
“I should like to talk to Monsieur Morihien.”
“Monsieur Morihien is away,” she told him. “But would you like to speak to Monsieur Torstel?”
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    That was all. Not much. The name was not mentioned except on page 47 of his novel. And that night he really didn’t feel like searching among the typewritten pages without double-spacing of the “Torstel” file. A needle in a haystack.
    He recalled that on the lost visiting card there had indeed been the address of a bookshop, in the Palais-Royal. And perhaps the telephone number was that of the bookshop. But after more than forty-five years, these two pathetic details were not enough to set him on the trail of a man who was now no more than a name.
    He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. He had decided to make an effort and to take himself back in time, if only for a moment. He had begun the novel,
Le Noir de l’été
, in the autumn, the same autumn when he had gone to Le Tremblay one Sunday. He remembered he had written the first page of the novel that Sunday evening in the room in square du Graisivaudan. A few hours earlier, when Torstel had been driving along the banks of the Marne and then crossed the Vincennes woods, he really had felt affected by autumn: the mist, the smell of damp earth, the paths strewn with dead leaves. The word “Tremblay” would always be associated for him now with that particular autumn.
    And so would the name Torstel which he had once used in the novel. Simply because of its resonance. That is what Torstel conjured up for him. There was no need to look any further. It was all he had to say. Gilles Ottolini would no doubt be disappointed. Too bad. After all, he was not obliged to give him any explanation. It was none of his business.
    Almost eleven o’clock in the evening. When he was at home on his own at that time, he often experienced what is known as “momentary flagging”. Then he would go into a