Marc was no longer listening. He saw the words coming out of those fat, tomato-sauce-covered lips, which reminded him of a pair of mating slugs, but he did not understand them. The hideous mouth chewed up sentences and excreted them like droppings. The brasserie was nauseatingly hot. The smell of sauerkraut, fish and cigar smoke, and the snatches of conversation, laughter and waiters shouting orders into the kitchen made the atmosphere so thick you could almost slice it. Looking out through misted, half-curtained windows, he could see umbrellas passing on the grey-blue street.

‘Could you excuse me a minute?’

The stairs leading to the toilets seemed to descend endlessly into the bowels of the restaurant. While he waited his turn, Marc washed his hands. The water was lukewarm and smelled bad. His hair was slicked to his forehead with sweat. The toilet flushed and the door opened.

‘Sorry, excuse me.’

‘It’s fine.’

He couldn’t tell if it was a man, woman or bear who had emerged from the cubicle. He went in, pushed the bolt across and sat down. His hands were shaking on his knees. Despite breathing through his mouth, he could not avoid the wafts of detergent, piss and shit seeping under his clothes and through his skin.

Get out, now!

He pulled the chain, raced back upstairs holding his breath, grabbed his anorak from the coat stand and slipped out of the brasserie like a thief. Not until he was two streets away could he breathe normally again. He didn’t know exactly what he’d just escaped from.

What would Claude think of him? You couldn’t just ditch a friend who had invited you out to lunch. Never mind. He would call him this evening, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Maybe never.

The roads seemed to be tangled together in a complex mesh, apparently leading nowhere. All that could be said of them was that they had two ends and could be navigated in either direction. Each had a more attractive side where the neon light of the shops spilled onto the wet pavement. He stopped in front of a pet shop selling dogs, cats, rats and birds. Through the window, half a dozen dishevelled-looking kittens were squirming about in straw-lined cages.

Some were scratching their ears, others licking their own arseholes, but none were smiling. He found himself drawn to a particularly fat, fluffy and sluggish cat, whose eyes remained closed and ears flat while the little ones climbed all over him and tussled on his head. Such exemplary indifference would make him the ideal travelling companion for a journey into the abyss.

The shop smelled like a circus, like hot, damp cat litter, a bit like the brasserie. The air was filled with rustling wings, cooing, yowling and yapping.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’d like that fat cat in the corner, the one sleeping under all the others.’

‘This one?’

‘Yes.’