I accept the offer. I’ll go see Julia.

As I’m getting out of the car, Bibi says, “Just a moment,” rummages around in her purse, and hands me a slip of paper. She apologizes—“I’d forgotten about this”—and pulls away.

I read:

A twenty-six-year-old man succumbs to melancholy and throws himself from the roof of his house. A brother, who was caring for him, reproaches himself for the death, makes several attempts at suicide, and dies a year later after prolonged and repeated episodes of self-starvation. Another brother of these two men, who two years earlier had declared in terrifying despair that he would not escape their fate, also kills himself. (Jean-Étienne Esquirol, cited to the best of my ability.)

What is this . . . ?

My brother killed himself at age sixty. I had never thought about it seriously, but when I reached fifty, the memory came back to me more vividly and now it never leaves me. (A patient, to Alexandre Brière de Boismont.)

What is this . . . ?

“A twenty-six-year-old man succumbs to melancholy. . .” “Esquirol, cited to the best of my ability.” Oh, right: Card Catalogue.

•

“You’ve destroyed my life. This time you truly have destroyed my life. Oh, why did I ever meet you?”

Julia’s wondering why she ever met me and I’m wondering why I ever came to see her. “I’m leaving,” I say.

Then she really loses her temper, making me suspect I haven’t destroyed her yet and she’s exaggerating, to get something out of me. But what? I ask, in a kindly tone, what it is that she wants from me, and this moment of sunshine moves her. Even so, she pretends to shut me out.

“Nothing. Not anymore.”

I point out that saying she doesn’t want anything anymore must mean she once expected something from me that I haven’t been able to give her.

She says, “I’ve given you my life.”

This seems exaggerated, too, but I go along with it. “Yes.”

Now she exclaims, “Oh! All I want is for you to love me, truly, just a little bit.”

“I do love you—”

“I know, I know, but I want you to love me a little more.”

I say all right and give her a kiss. She calms down.

“Did I really destroy your life? Did something happen today?”

“One of the kids, Clota Barbuján, went home and told her parents I made them write about death. Her father came to school to talk to the principal.”

“What did the principal say?”

“He’s afraid. He says Dr. Barbuján is very influential.”

“What will you do?”

“Defend myself. But the principal wanted to see the kids’ homework and I didn’t have it. You took it.”

“I didn’t take it. You gave it to me, you threw it at me, you forgot about it. How was I supposed to know what you intended to do with it?”