She began to hum the melody, and the old man accompanied her, crooning some of the words now and then. It was a very sweet, nostalgic country ballad, and Jack managed to catch a few phrases such as: “I’m now alone and I know I need to ramble” and “It’s the call from deep inside” and “The blues will haunt me till I die.”

When the old man and the girl stopped singing all that could be heard was the Volkswagen’s engine and the tires hissing on the pavement. They had left the Sweetwater River and route 220. They had crossed the Idaho border. They were travelling now along route 30 and driving through a town called Soda Springs, after the mineral springs the emigrants had found there. La Grande Sauterelle announced that they were just ninety kilometres from Fort Hall.

And the questions started again.

The girl asked the old man where he liked to spend the winter when he was on the Atlantic coast.

“Key West,” he replied without hesitation.

Jack looked at him again in the rearview mirror.

The old man continued. “I’ve been to Cuba a few times, but I like Key West a lot. It’s a good place to spend the winter. You’re going to ask me why. Well, there’s several reasons: the boats, the old houses and the cats. And the climate, of course.”

He said that Key West never got very cold in winter. The nights were sometimes a bit chilly — frisquet? — but as soon as the sun rose, it would start to warm up. Some fishermen he knew would let him sleep on the deck of their boats or give him a meal in return for a hand with hauling in the nets, cleaning the kitchen or any other sort of job that could be done quickly.

The old man didn’t like to work for too long. What he’d rather do, in Key West, was walk through the streets, lanes and little alleys in the centre of town and admire the old frame houses. With their big galleries trimmed with gingerbread the houses of Key West made him think of old ladies in lace gowns. They were wrapped in greenery and surrounded by gardens where stray cats would come to take shelter in the rich and secret shade. If he was unhappy the old man had only to stroll through the town and look at the old houses, and that would cheer him up.

La Grande Sauterelle wasn’t often a mother hen, and she hated herself when she was, but this time she couldn’t help it.

“You’ve never had a house?” she asked in an odd voice.

“Of course, like everybody else,” said the old man.

“Whereabouts?”

“Not far from here, in Idaho. A village by the name of Ketchum.”