“Jean-Marc, that child’s going to spend one night here every now and then! You don’t have to turn your office into a nursery school! Or fill your apartment with Mickey Mouse!”

“Poor Mélène, you’re really behind the times! Mickey Mouse has been passé for ages. Nowadays it’s Goldorak or Transformers or He-Man . . . The department stores sell stuff you can hang on the walls—you know, pictures, posters . . .”

“You mean you’re going to redecorate your office every time he comes to visit? Hang up the He-Man, take down the He-Man, plug in the bunny rabbit night-light . . . Oh, you’ll do it at first, but after a few weeks you’ll get fed up and Sébastien’s room will be just like it is now . . .”

She was sitting at my desk, in front of the papers I’d started marking that morning. Incredibly bad compositions churned out on Sunday night or Monday morning, wherein the poverty of the style rivalled the banality of the ideas and from which any hint of inventiveness had been ­banished, as if writing a few pages on a given subject ­automatically killed off any possibility of, or desire for, ­creativity. After nearly two months I still hadn’t been able to motivate my students and the situation was profoundly depressing.

“Where will you mark your papers? Especially since you usually do it in the morning . . .”

I don’t exactly know why I reacted badly to this, but ­suddenly I wanted Mélène out of the apartment. I thought she was nagging like an old maid and, even more, acting in bad faith.

“Listen, Mélène, get off my case! I didn’t have an office in my old apartment and I still got my papers marked! I’ll sit in the dining room, on my lumpy old sofa, it’ll remind me of the early days when I still believed that teaching could be useful . . .”

Mélène got up, the way a person does who has abruptly decided that it’s time to leave.

“Okay, I have to start supper . . . I was going to invite you, but under the circumstances . . .”

As she walked past me I took her hand.

“Listen, I’m afraid of that kid! What do you say to a four-year-old? What do you do with a four-year-old? I’ve never been around a four-year-old child in my life—because I’ve never wanted to!”

Mélène smiled. I told myself, okay, here it comes, she’ll help, all is not lost . . . But her reply, amused though it was, flung me back into the abyss of uncertainty where I’d been foundering since the night before.

“Don’t ask me, I’ve never talked to a four-year-old either! I can’t even remember being one myself! Try kid’s TV shows. Talk about ‘Passe-Partout’?”