Jack looked at the painting without a word. His mouth was open, his gaze fixed and eyes moist. He was utterly still. La Grande Sauterelle stayed with him for a few minutes, then she went to look at the pictures in the surrounding rooms. When she came back he hadn’t moved. She told him she’d seen all sorts of interesting things: Cézannes, Seurats and a beautiful painting by an artist she didn’t know at all, Gustave Caillebotte, but he did not reply. So she toured the entire floor and came back an hour later, saying she’d seen a stained-glass by Chagall that was superb — the theme was the arts and freedom — and he absolutely had to come and see it. Still motionless on the bench facing the woman in the red hat, he mumbled a couple of indistinct phrases of which the girl understood nothing but the words “light” and “harmony,” which she just managed to make out. She went away for the third time and, after visiting all the rooms on the three floors of the building and after seeing everything there was to see, including an exhibition of oriental art and another of prints and drawings, she went to the basement cafeteria and bought two cups of coffee, then came back to the Renoir room. As Jack seemed not to notice her, she decided to stand between him and the painting; she faced him.

“You’ll get a sore back,” she said softly.

His vision grew blurry, then he fixed his gaze on her.

“Hello,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Four o’clock,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee.

He had a sip, then took a few steps in the room.

“I’m a bit stiff,” he said.

“You’ve been sitting there for three hours.”

“Three hours? What were you doing?”

“Walking around. This is a really beautiful museum.”

“Oh, yes!” he said, with a last glance at the Renoir.

She took his hand and led him outside. He was smiling blissfully and she left him alone. She didn’t ask a single question. She took him onto Lake Shore Drive because she wanted to see the waterfront before they went back to the YMCA.

Jack felt like eating a pastry or something of the sort, so they stopped at the Holiday Inn.

In the hotel lobby flashes were going off and a group of journalists was crowded around an individual sitting in an easy chair. La Grande Sauterelle went over to see who it was. A reporter was taking notes; she looked over his shoulder and read the name Saul Bellow.

Jack started when she told him the name.

“What? Saul Bellow? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why?”

“He’s a famous writer! Don’t you know him?”

“No.”

“But he won the Nobel Prize! The Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1976!”

“In 1976 I must have been . . . about thirteen,” she pointed out.

He was nervously pacing back and forth.

The girl asked, “Do you want to go and talk to the Nobel laureate?”