I suggested we go home a different way so we took the metro from Gaîté. We got off at Edgar Quinet and cut through the cemetery, walking in silence over a carpet of dead orange and yellow leaves. As I always did when I passed through, I examined the inscriptions on the headstones, the cities and dates carved into the stone, the occasional epithet. I thought how in the end all that is left of us besides our name is two dates and two cities, if not one city as in my case it could be. It was impossible to know where my father would die and where he would be buried, but one thing was certain: under his name would be written Beijing, 1953. I wondered if Mom was thinking the same thing, but she looked so lost in her own thoughts that I decided not to ask. A few minutes later she dispelled my doubts on her own.

“If you look closely you see that most of the women are buried next to their husbands. There are few women alone in this cemetery.”

I realized that she was scared of being buried apart from my father.

“There’s Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s grave,” she added, her tone that of someone who has just discovered something interesting. I looked at the headstone she was pointing to: dark letters carved onto a white surface. You couldn’t say they’d been an orthodox couple. For years they lived in a love triangle and had bloody fights. But still, look at them. There they are, buried like any other husband and wife.

That afternoon, after I’d already promised to destroy the snake, I swore to her that come what may, I’d bury her in the same place as my father.

“It’s fair,” I concluded. “All those years aren’t invalidated just because of some teenage girl.”

A few feet away I found two gray headstones engraved with gold lettering in Chinese and French. A very large family lay in each.

“Maybe I’ll also fit near you,” I said to her. “Why bury only two when so many bones fit inside a single grave?”

My mother never again mentioned what we’d talked about that afternoon. When we got home she made dinner like she did every night and went back to being her old self, or at least she seemed to. I on the other hand carried on my shoulders the weight of my two promises, especially the more immediate one.