She stopped talking. I too remained silent. Finally, I said, “Why did you give up at the last moment? Suppose you were wrong? Maybe he was the real thing. You didn’t call him again? If it had been me, I think I would have tried to find out.”

“Find out what?” my sister asked.

“Who I was dealing with. If I’d been in your place, I think I would have gone up. I would have rung the doorbell of the apartment.”

My sister bowed her head.

The idea that she might not have told me everything briefly crossed my mind, the idea that there was a part of the story that she was keeping to herself.

Nevertheless, I insisted: “You never saw him again?”

“No,” she said with an effort. “Never. He must have telephoned several times, but I never answered. For a long time, I avoided the places where I’d met him before, I stopped going to Saint-Cloud alone. I avoided the Ponds.”

“But you still think about it.”

“It occurs to me sometimes, of course,” said my sister.

“Who’s to say that he didn’t take to driving past your house? That he’s not still doing that?”

With one and the same movement, the two of us looked at the black garden, the unlocked gate.

“No,” said my sister. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And his import-export business?”

“I looked it up in the telephone book: there was no Hermann in Saint-Cloud; I never found even one. There was one in Versailles, but it wasn’t a company, and the address didn’t match the address on his card. I called the number in the telephone book once, but the woman who answered told me her husband was dead.”

SEVERAL YEARS LATER, maybe five or six, Claire Marie went back to the cul-de-sac in Versailles. Nothing had changed; the same silence still pervaded the cul-de-sac. This time she wasn’t there on an early evening in winter, however, but on a day in spring, in broad daylight, and in gorgeous weather; birds were singing; the month was May; she saw that the big tree whose branches protruded over the wall was an enormous, magnificent chestnut.

The chestnut’s blossoms had opened; their pale color stood out against the mass of practically black leaves. The tree seemed to be spreading, over the end of the cul-de-sac and over the garden on the neighboring property, the regal and sad splendor of time.

How many years has it been already? she mused.

She walked along to the building; the plaque was still there: DR. ZHANG—MANUAL MANIPULATION, ACUPUNCTURE.

She climbed the stairs and rang the bell on the second floor. After a few minutes, the door opened. A man who she supposed was Dr. Zhang stood before her. Behind him, the apartment was just like what she’d imagined, the kind of commonplace apartment you find in those little complexes. The office on the floor above—where she’d never been—must have been laid out according to the same plan: a rectangular vestibule with an old-style parquet floor, a hall leading to one or more rooms on the street side. The door of the examination room was half-shut. She never knew whether someone was lying on a bed in there, or whether Dr. Zhang was alone in the apartment, waiting. Maybe no one had come to consult Dr. Zhang for a long time, or maybe he’d retired and the office where he’d seen his patients was also his place of residence. Maybe the room in the back, the one that overlooked the cul-de-sac shaded by the chestnut tree, was nothing but an untidy living area where he spent most of his days.

“Do you wish to make an appointment?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “I just want some information. Was there a business on the third floor, right above your office? An import-export company? It would have been five or six years ago.”

To give herself a pretext, she’d taken the card with her, and now she glanced at it: “The company was called Hermann Import-Export. Did you know Monsieur Hermann?”

Dr. Zhang looked disappointed. His face hardened.

“I don’t know,” he said as he closed the door. “I don’t see anything at all. I’m not familiar with that company. I don’t spend any time with my neighbors. You must be mistaken. Good day, Madame.”