I hand him the present I have brought with me. He unwraps it eagerly. A bottle of aftershave. Embarrassed laughs, ‘What’s it for?’ Then he adds: ‘I’ll smell like a tart now!’ All the same he promises to use it. The typical scene of a badly chosen present. I feel like crying, ‘Won’t 67he ever change?’ as in the old days.

We talked about the people from our neighbourhood who had got married, died or left town. I described the flat, the Louis-Philippe writing desk, the hi-fi system and the red velvet armchairs. He soon lost interest. He had brought me up to enjoy the luxuries he himself had been denied, therefore he was happy, but the antique dresser and the Dunlopillo mattress were nothing more to him than the signs of social success. He often cut me short by saying, ‘You’re quite right to make the most of it.’

I never stayed long enough. He gave me a bottle of cognac for my husband. ‘Not to worry, we’ll see him next time around.’ He was proud not to give anything away, keeping his feelings strictly under his hat.

The first supermarket opened in Y—, attracting a working-class clientele from all parts of town. You could finally do your shopping without having to ask anyone anything. Though people still visited the local grocer for the packet of coffee forgotten about in town, a bottle of unpasteurized milk, Malabar chewing-gum on the way to school. He started thinking about selling the business. They could move into the adjoining house which they must have bought at the same time as the shop: one bedroom, with a kitchen and cellar. He would salvage some tins and a few good bottles of wine. He would keep hens for fresh eggs. They could come and see us in the Haute-Savoie. He already had the satisfaction of being on the health service at the age of sixty-five. When he got back from the pharmacy, he loved to settle at the table and arrange the stickers on his reimbursement sheet.

He enjoyed life more and more.68

Several months have passed since I started this narrative last November. It has taken me a long time because I find it is far more difficult to dig up forgotten memories than it is to invent them. Memory resists. I could not rely on personal reminiscence: the squeaky doorbell of an old grocer’s shop and the smell of overripe melons would lead me to picture only myself and my summer holidays in Y—. The colour of the sky and the poplar trees reflected in the river Oise could teach me nothing. It was in other people that I searched for the figure of my father, in the way they would call their children, sit down and look bored in waiting rooms and wave goodbye on station platforms. Anonymous figures glimpsed on a street corner or on a crowded bus, unwittingly bearing the stamp of success or failure, brought back to me the reality of his condition.