It was there that I was lucky enough to meet some of Carax’s translators, who had traveled to the city for a symposium on translation at the Sorbonne. An English novelist called Lucia Hargreaves, who had grown up in Mallorca and returned to London for love, told me she hadn’t heard about Carax for ages. His German translator, Herr Peter Schwarzenbeld, a gentleman from Zurich who preferred warmer regions and moved around Paris on a folding bicycle, explained that he had a feeling that Carax now devoted his time exclusively to composing piano sonatas and had adopted a new name. His Italian translator, Signor Bruno Arpaiani, confessed that for years he’d been picking up rumors that a new novel by Carax was about to appear, but he didn’t believe them. All in all, nobody knew anything tangible concerning Julián Carax’s whereabouts, or what had become of him.

At one of those café gatherings I happened to meet a remarkably clever gentleman called François Maspero, who had been a bookseller and a publisher and was now translating novels to great acclaim. Maspero had been Pascale’s mentor when she first arrived in Paris, and he agreed to invite me to a coffee at Les Deux Magots, where I was able to give him a rough idea of my plan.

“A very ambitious plan, young man, and very complicated too, but . . .”

A few days later, I bumped into Monsieur Maspero in the neighborhood. He told me he wanted to introduce me to a young German lady with steely composure and a quick brain who divided her time between Paris and Berlin and spoke more languages than I could name. She devoted herself to discovering literary marvels and secrets, which she then placed with different European publishers. Her name was Michi Strausmann.

“She might know something about Carax . . .”

Pascale, who admitted that she wanted to be like Fräulein Strausmann when she was older, warned me that she was not a tender little flower and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Monsieur Maspero very kindly set up a meeting with the four of us around a café table in the Marais area, not far from what had once been Victor Hugo’s home.

“Fräulein Strausmann is an expert on Carax’s work,” he said by way of introduction. “Tell her what you told me.”

So I did. She replied with a look that would have made the best soufflé collapse. “Are you an idiot?” she asked, in perfect Spanish.

“I’m in training,” I admitted.

After a while the Valkyrie softened her heart and admitted she’d been too severe with me. She confirmed that, like everyone else, she’d had no news of Carax for quite a while, much as she would have wanted to.

“Julián hasn’t written anything for a long time,” she told me. “Nor does he answer letters. I wish you luck with your proposal, but . . .”

“Have you any address where I could write to him?”

Fräulein Strausmann shook her head. “Try Currygan and Coliccio. That’s where I used to send my letters to him, and where I lost track of him years ago.”