“But it’s a good book,” I said, taking a guess.

“It’s not about how good it is… I think literature is sending me round the bend… I was hiding behind the ping-pong tables and then I just ran onto the basketball court and … do you know what I shouted out, all on my own, in the gym?”

“No.”

“I was on page thirteen and I yelled out at the top of my voice, ‘Anquetil, I love you!’. Jacques Anquetil was the first person to win the Tour de France five times, you know. I hope no one heard me. All of a sudden I understood where poor old Don Quixote was coming from.”

I was impressed. Don Quixote on wheels – it was quite an appealing idea.

He shook himself.

“Literature completely takes it out of you, there’s no question about it.”

He scratched his bristly square head.

Then the rumour started going round that the phone call had been made by a certain Darth Vader and there’d been a lot of very heavy breathing in between the threats. I checked, because I wouldn’t have put it past him, that Etienne wasn’t anywhere around watching us in his big black cape and decidely alarming mask connected to an oxygen cylinder.

I waited for Marie, and we joined the stream of people making their way out through the school’s main entrance.

“Do you think it was a miracle?” she asked.

“Must have been,” I replied.

“Yes, it must have been, a real miracle.”

She winked at me and I was bowled over.

11

We glided unstoppably towards summer. Leaves spread over the trees and huge spots spread over the boys’ faces. I got a new one every day: I tried to count them, but I gave up at seventy-two. It was like the surface of the moon. Dad had bought me a sort of whitish lotion and applied it to my face every evening. At first, it itched and after ten minutes my face was on fire. But he insisted that it had to be left on for at least half an hour, so to distract me he’d sit me down in front of some historical TV documentary. Historical events made him very anxious and I think he saw my acne as a kind of revolution that needed to be quelled. Afterwards I was allowed to go and clean up. I looked as though I’d given myself a tan with a blowtorch, but Dad thought it improved my appearance.

“You’re as handsome as a prince,” he’d say. “Now go and shave!”