My ears were thrumming. The discovery had so many implications that I was having trouble getting my head around them. The first was also the most tragic: Maxime and I had killed an innocent man. I could still hear Alexis Clément’s screams as I shattered his ribs and his knee. The whole scene came back to me in flashes that were crystal clear. His vacant expression as I lashed out with the crowbar. How dare you touch her, you fucking creep? His face had been a mask of surprise and incomprehension. He had not defended himself simply because he didn’t know what he was being accused of. Seeing his bewilderment at the time, I had heard a small voice inside my head, felt a force that made me drop my weapon. And it was at this point that Maxime arrived on the scene.

Tears in my eyes, I buried my face in my hands. It was my fault that Alexis Clément was dead. There was nothing I could do to bring him back. I spent ten minutes utterly distraught before I could even begin to think about what came next. I thought about my misunderstanding. Vinca had clearly had a lover named Alexis, but it had not been my philosophy teacher. It was scarcely believable. Too bizarre to be true. And yet it was the only possible explanation.

So who was he? After racking my brain, I dimly remembered a student named Alexis Stephanopoulos or something like that. A caricature of a rich Greek kid; the son of a shipowner who, during summer vacations, invited his friends on cruises around the Cyclades. Needless to say, I was never invited.

I picked up the 1992–1993 yearbook. It was very American in style, with photographs of all the students and teachers at Saint-Ex that year. Feverishly, I thumbed the pages. People were listed in alphabetical order, so I quickly came across the Greek boy: Antonopoulos, Alexis, born April 26, 1974, in Thessaloniki. In the photo, he was just as I remembered him; he had curly, shoulder-length hair and was wearing a white shirt and a polo sweater with an embroidered crest. The picture kindled other memories.

I remembered that he was one of the few boys studying humanities. He was an athlete of some sort, a champion rower or fencer. Not terribly intelligent but capable of reciting passages by Sappho or Theocritus. Beneath the veneer of sophistication, however, Alexis Antonopoulos was a dumb wannabe Latin lover. I had trouble imagining Vinca falling head over heels for such a moron. Of course, I was hardly the best person to hold forth on that subject.