A pall of plaster dust in the air. The old man at work on the statuettes whistled something sporty and out of tune. The young mouleur placed the crate on the table, opposite his companion, letting it fall a touch more heavily than necessary. The old man looked up, one red-rimmed eye squinting against the rise of swirling dust that the crate had disturbed. He very slowly scratched the side of his large nose with his crooked little finger, a finger disfigured in youth having been smashed with a hammer. The young mouleur shifted the lid from the crate and lifted out the mould, putting it on the table face down, rough-side up. It looked like something dredged from the bottom of the sea. A limpet, or an oversized oyster shell. He collected his apron from where it hung and crossed the leather straps behind his back and tied them snugly in the front, one eye on the old man, who was now concentrating again on his statuettes. From one of the shelves, the young mouleur selected a wooden bowl and set of paddle-like spoons, and carried these over to a large cask in the corner of the room. He scooped from the cask three heaping ladles of gypsum powder into the bowl, the gypsum having been mined from the quarries in Montmartre, crushed on site and dehydrated in a nearby factory. He brought the bowl back over to the table and turned the mould right-side up, and gazed into the recessed image of my face. He eyed the old man.

‘Very fresh corpse today,’ he said, rubbing his thumbs into the depressions my cheeks had made. ‘I believe I captured this one perfectly.’

‘Hm.’

The mouleur tilted the mould towards the old man. ‘Would you like to see?’

With a fine, stone-handled pick, the old man continued to scratch at a detail in the draping on a single statuette. He snorted. Eventually, he set down his tool very carefully and looked at the young mouleur. Bearing his weight with both hands on the table, he slowly, with much creaking, leaned across to peer inside the mould. His expression did not change. ‘Is she anyone?’ he asked.

‘No. But wait. This will be special.’

‘Is this what you’re meant to be doing today?’

This was not what the young mouleur was meant to be doing that day. His list of jobs was long and tedious. But nonetheless he proceeded with the mould. First, with a clean rag, he applied a thin coat of oil to the inside surface. He then added water to the gypsum powder and stirred the mixture to a thin soup, its colour a pale, pollen-yellow. Working quickly, he tipped the plaster into the mould and then, cradling it between his forearms, he rotated the mould in all directions to drive out any air bubbles and ensure that the plaster coated the mould evenly as it thickened. He continued this motion until the plaster was dry enough that it wouldn’t sag when he set the mould down. He quickly scraped the remaining plaster out of the bowl, now thick as butter, prepared another gypsum mixture, and repeated the same process. This was done three times before he propped the mould between two blocks of wood so that it would set evenly.