Perhaps inevitably, I developed a particular interest in the fugue state, which in those days went by several names: traveling fugue, psychogenic fugue, ambulatory automatism, dromomania. The fugue state is extremely rare, so rare it is at best a medical curiosity, hardly the kind of condition upon which a psychoanalyst might build a career. But over time, having published several articles on the disorder, I came to be recognized as its pre-eminent specialist. My interest was, of course, more than merely professional. I had witnessed a fugue state of sorts several times, after each of my blind crossings. On each occasion, I had been its cause. I was haunted by the faces of the bodies I’d just vacated, the physiological mark of the bewilderment that follows an unforeseen crossing. But there was also a practical dimension to my interest: it was a way of looking out for Mathilde. I hoped that, if she was still alive, Mathilde would remember what I’d told her, decades ago before I had gone into exile. If she did make a crossing, if her body was left flailing with bewilderment, and if some doctor somewhere diagnosed it as a fugue state, there was every chance that I, as the only specialist in the field, would be called upon to treat it. As schemes go, it may have been far-fetched, but it was my only hope of finding you.

Only I didn’t find you. Rather, it was you who found me. I was looking out of a window at the Baudelaire Society one morning in the winter of 1911 when I saw a hunchbacked old woman laboring across the Pont Louis-Philippe and then up the Quai d’Anjou. She was dressed in rags, her face obscured by a hood, and was pushing a cart laden with old books. It was a remarkable sight, for she was bent over in two, and getting the wooden wheels over the cobbles of the street was no easy feat. As she neared the entrance to the Society, she was overtaken by the valet, Renand, carrying several loaves of bread that would be served at lunch. As he passed her, the old woman said something to him that I could not hear. He answered her briefly, shaking his head, and then entered the building. I made my way to the kitchen, where the valet had set about helping the cook, Carlotta. I asked Renand what the old woman had said to him.

“Which old woman?” he said.

“The book peddler you just spoke to outside on the street.”

“Oh, her! She’s a lunatic, not a book peddler. Her books are worthless. I often see her loitering about. She’s always asking me the same thing.”

“Are you talking about the old Belgian woman?” said Carlotta.

“Yes,” Renand and I both said at once.

“She does the same thing with me! She’s been asking me for years, the pet. I feel so sorry for her.”

“What does she ask you?”