“Okay,” he said, “I’ll tell you a couple of things. At least I’ll try . . . First of all, at the age when most people really begin to live, I started to write, and I’ve been doing it ever since, and during that time life kept going on, as well. There are people who say that writing is a way of living; if you ask me, it’s also a way of not living. I mean, you shut yourself away inside a book, a story, and don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around you, and then one fine day the person you love most in the world takes off with someone else you’ve never even heard of. Second . . .”

He checked something on the map, then folded it and put it back in the glove compartment.

“Second, it’s entirely possible that I’ve never loved anybody in my whole life, It’s a sad thing to say, but I think it’s true. In fact, I don’t think I even love life and I don’t think all that much of myself.”

“Maybe you love your books?” the girl suggested.

“No.”

“Why?”

“They don’t change the world,” he said peremptorily.

“Do you think they should?” she asked.

“Obviously. Otherwise why go to all the trouble.”

He uttered a couple of oaths before resuming his exposition.

“Third,” he said, “it’s about my brother Théo. That’s a little more complicated and I’m not sure I feel like . . .”

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“I have to talk about it otherwise you’ll think I’m a real zouave. It’s been about twenty years since I’ve seen my brother, so he’s half real and half invented. And if there was another half . . .”

He laughed nervously.

“The third half would be me, I mean the part of me that’s forgotten how to live. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“No,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he laughed, “but it doesn’t matter . . . One final thing: my brother Théo and the pioneers. The relationship between them might not be very obvious, especially because I’ve only remembered some trivial details about him to tell you — a big house, a garden, a river, a snowmobile, that sort of thing. But I’m positive there’s a link and it’s likely this: my brother Théo, like the pioneers, was absolutely convinced that he could do whatever he wanted. And that’s just about everything I had to say. Now take the first exit on the right.”

The exit came up sooner than he had anticipated. The girl, who was driving in the left lane, flicked on the turn signal and switched to the middle lane. She braked abruptly and, jerking the wheel to the right, slipped between two cars and took the exit with tires squealing.

INDEPENDENCE OVERNITE TRAILER PARK.

As the name indicated, it wasn’t a genuine campground, just a parking lot with the most basic facilities: electrical outlets, toilets and showers.