That August was as intense as a whole childhood. Then September arrived with the parents and other people. They saw each other secretly and never told their respective circles of friends about their meetings at the entrance to La Calavera, from which came the murmured rustling of something dragging itself along the ground. She’d call up the image of the creatures Tamara had described years before—something like lizard tails—and also, above all, the fat old woman. The question still burned on her lips.

They went to different universities. Her friend chose psychology, while she studied humanities. For a while they telephoned and arranged to meet occasionally on a Sunday, until Tamara moved to another neighborhood and they lost track of one another.

Paris Périphérie

PARIS PÉRIPHÉRIE

I don’t like using maps. I’m sort of dyslexic about them and unless I really concentrate, I get the streets mixed up so that when I’m trying to find, let’s say, Ocean Square, I walk in the opposite direction, toward Island Avenue. It’s because I confuse the names, not the direction. My memory puts them in different places. So I’m surprised to find myself going the wrong way—because my intuition, which I never follow, is usually right—but even then I tell myself that Ocean Square is somewhere nearby, that I’ve seen it on the map. And so I walk on, ignoring the signs and following some crazy route.

Today is one of those days when there’s no option but to consult a map. I’ve just alighted at Carrefour Pleyel and I’m trying to find the Social and Administrative Center for the northern peripheral suburbs. Tomorrow is the deadline for the CAF, a grant that will allow me to continue living in a residency in Mairie de Saint-Ouen for another six months. I take careful note of the platform, as I always do when I get off at a station for the first time, despite the fact that they all look the same to me. The exit is on Avenue Anatole-France, which to judge by the number of the center—345—has to be very long.

I walk through an underpass to get to the odd numbers. At the level of the metro there are a few cafés, and then a hotel—number 357. The avenue is, indeed, interminable; looking south from where I stand, I can’t see its end. The buildings are ugly; Soviet era, with dismal, murky colors. When I reach a white brick house on a corner I feel a storm coming. The incredibly dry mildew on the walls, the lush vegetation of the overgrown garden, and the rain give me a sense of alienation that I’ve experienced before.