“I’m going to make some hot chocolate. Would you like a cup?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Tired?”

“Not too. I’m waiting for daybreak, then I’ll sleep for a while.”

In the kitchen, he heated milk and poured a small amount into a saucer for the cat, who was rubbing against his legs. When the chocolate was ready, he brought the two cups into the living room; he set one down beside the girl, then sat facing her, at the other end of the window, with his legs folded under him.

She sipped it, then said, “It’s very good.”

“Thank you.”

She asked: “Tell me some more about Théo.”

He started to talk about his brother, and almost at once, a wave of memories swept him back to the frame house by the river, not far from the American border.

He began by describing the house, a stately square building two storeys high with three cellars, an attic and two sheds; on the second floor on the south side, there was a large glassed-in porch where the sun warmed anyone who came there to read or daydream or trade secrets.

The house, he said, was not right on the river, but about a kilo-metre away, and the most exciting way to travel that distance in winter was to slide across the frozen surface of a stream that ran near the house and flowed into the river; the stream had no name and it was underground: it ran under the garden, under the neighbour’s garage, under a vacant lot, under a tennis court and under the main road, and it was a terrifying adventure to be flat on your stomach on a sled in the dark, icy tunnel where you would quickly gather speed and, if you deviated even slightly from the route Théo had laid out, risk smashing your head against a rock or being swallowed up by one of the eddies in the stream that had no name.

Théo enjoyed risky games. One of his favourites consisted of being pulled on skis by the neighbour’s snowmobile. A huge character overflowing with energy, the neighbour was a doctor, and in winter, when the roads were closed by blizzards, he would use a snowmobile to call on patients who lived far from the village. “Doctor Noël’s got out his snowmobile,” people would say when they heard the dreadful racket the machine made as it crossed the village, sending up clouds of snow. The snowmobile, made of plywood, was shaped like a small automobile — a coupé — and was driven on two broad pairs of skis by an airplane propeller motor on the back. Whenever the doctor had some free time, Théo would don his downhill-ski equipment and have himself pulled along the river, clinging to a long cable. He could hold on for hours, indifferent to cold and fatigue, intoxicated by the frantic speed of the snowmobile that kept backfiring and giving the impression it might take off at any moment like an airplane.