Indian Summer was late but violent. It had been very cold these past few weeks and everybody was sure that autumn had arrived for good, with no transition, when suddenly, overnight, an amazing heat swooped down on Montreal, uncomfortably humid, reminiscent of August, even though now that it was late October we’d given up hope of it.

But you had the feeling it could change at any moment. A threat hovered over these last fine days: the wind could come up when you least expected it and in a few hours strip the trees. An endless downpour of red, yellow and orange leaves swirling before they land on the sidewalk, one huge cloud, one icy rain, and it would all be over until April. The leaves would turn brown on the ground overnight and in the morning children would be wading through them, ­kicking them along the road to school. The creaking sound would delight them for five minutes, then they’d realize the implications and shuffle into their schoolrooms, cursing winter.

There are years like that, when the leaves don’t even have time to dry on the branches. In the late afternoon Montreal is aflame in a frenzy of blazing colours, then the next ­morning everything’s brown, dead and dry, like a fire that’s been allowed to go out. You’re overwhelmed by sorrow when you get out of bed and say for the thousandth time, what a shitty country, this doesn’t make sense, what the hell am I doing here, buried for six months of the year in dirty snow, slush, salt, cold, overheated houses, head colds, bronchitis, dammit to hell! I calculated recently that there are leaves on our trees only five months of the year and the absurdity of it appalled me. No wonder we’re a defeatist nation!

All that to explain why I was taking advantage of one of those fine afternoons to sit out on the balcony and wait for Mathieu and Sébastien. I’d brought my papers with me but it was impossible to concentrate. The mild temperature, the beauty of the sun as it played in the leaves of the maple ­outside my house, along with my incredible nervousness about the appearance of this little creature in my life, made me feel at once exalted and depressed, if that’s possible. A large part of me was enjoying the breathtaking spectacle of nature in its final convulsions, while the other was awaiting with terror the fast-approaching moment when I’d have to bend over the face of a child I hadn’t chosen to know, who risked disturbing all my confirmed bachelor’s little ways.