I see a look on Sylvie’s face that terrifies me. In the aftermath of my death, she would lean out of the window or stare down at the river with the same look and I felt a desperate clutch of fear, fleeing from these streets in order to safeguard her from myself.

But where could I hide in a city where sooner or later you cross paths unexpectedly with everyone you know? For me, the only safe distance is not spatial at all but temporal. In the distant past, I am rendered harmless; all who lived then are now on the same side of the great gulf and free from mortal danger. I can slip into and out of those lives with impunity, their ending already a fait accompli. If in the past other spirits have unwittingly harmed those they love, I shall remain entirely blameless, a mute witness, nothing more; it is only in the present that my apparition poses a threat to the living.

Every time I saw Sylvie at Pont Marie gazing fixedly at the water, my threat to her seemed frighteningly real. A strong current of agitation swept me into another century as Sylvie’s features deliquesced into Delphine’s, leaning over the same bridge staring at her reflection in the river.

Delphine! She has been dead for a hundred years, yet I see her face clearly, the inquisitive gleam in her eye, the knowing smile on her lips. Delphine often gets her ear twisted for listening at doors, for riffling through the patronne’s papers, but she is incorrigible. In the courtyard behind the laundry, washerwomen string their clotheslines from the chestnut trees; the day is fine and the sheets will dry faster outside than by the stove. Delphine pesters them for stories about the washerwomen’s ball, asks who will be crowned this year’s laundress queen. They laugh and gossip, glad to rest their aching backs and their chapped hands for a moment.

The mutilated veteran leans out of his window to ogle the girls with their skirts lifted and tucked around their waists to keep them dry. Life is sweet now, he thinks, looking at their plump limbs, not like it was barely twenty years ago, the city under siege by the Prussians and everyone starving, the poor people eating rats and cats, the rich their beloved racehorses, even the elephants from the zoo weren’t spared, what were their names again, oh, yes, Castor and Pollux, well, his memory is still sharp, even though he’s only half a man now, the rest blown away by a Prussian rifle, for all the good it did, Bismarck snatched Alsace-Lorraine all the same, and five billion francs’ indemnity on top! The veteran goes to the Place de la Concorde every year with a wreath for the statue of Strasbourg still covered in black crêpe, but you can’t go on mourning forever, and by God, look at those girls, with bottoms round and sweet as melons.

One of the girls starts singing “Plaisir d’amour,” and the others join in the chorus. The patronne seated behind her cash box shakes her head, amour, amour, that’s all these girls think about, but she goes back to counting her receipts and lets them stay out in the courtyard a little longer.

The widow Cornu’s establishment is reminiscent of the laundries of yesteryear, a true lavanderie, redolent of lavender. Modern lavoirs have sprung up all over the city now that the floating bateaux-lavoirs are being phased out, but the fine ladies of the quarter fear what all the steam and chemicals will do to their heirlooms and send their monogrammed linen and lace to Madame Cornu’s, where laundresses still wash the old-fashioned way, their arms up to the elbows in suds, using only the best soap from Marseilles and a special paste of Madame’s own devising instead of the corrosive eau de javel to bleach out stains. The widow’s reputation is impeccable, and you can be certain Madame Cornu’s girls don’t wear their customers’ dresses, or worse yet, rent them out. Their laundry comes back immaculate, the clothes scented with lavender, the linen with orris root.

From six in the morning to eight in the evening, Delphine is wanted everywhere at once, by Clémence at the washboard, Henriette at the ironing table, Madame Cornu at the caisse, and she flies around the laundry, adding wood to the stove, measuring out soap for the tub, scraping beeswax into the starch so the iron glides smoothly over the men’s shirts and ladies’ muslins. She can total the accounts quicker than the patronne, and it is Delphine who suggests they should charge extra for garniture. Madame nods approvingly, hers is a laverie de luxe, after all, not a wash house for men with only one shirt who have to wait on the premises while it’s washed and dried. Delphine is right, from tomorrow she will charge an additional thirty centimes for frills and lace, it’s a small return for the charity she has shown the foundling left on her doorstep. Clémence winks at Henriette, some charity, feeding her on scraps and letting her sleep in the laundry. But what can you expect, the patronne cast off her own daughter, and people say Delphine is the love child of that disgraced girl whom nobody has heard from since.

On mild days, the old soldier limps into the courtyard, and Madame rises from behind the caisse as a mark of respect to the veteran with his mutilated limbs and scarred face. She offers him a glass of wine and they discuss General Boulanger’s prospects for the presidency, agreeing he’s the only one with the guts to wrest Lorraine and Alsace back from Bismarck’s filthy hands. They look up as the postman comes into the courtyard and before the mutilé can ask, he shakes his head, no letter for the soldier.

After the laundry closes for the night, Delphine sweeps the soap scum from the gutter and gathers up the newspapers. Boulanger, Boulanger, his name is on every lip, he’s stoking people up with his talk of revenge, trying to ride that popular wave right into the Élysée Palace, especially now that the decorations scandal has forced President Grévy to resign, though he swears up and down he had no idea his son-in-law was selling the Legion of Honor for cash. That makes her laugh, but still she is awed by the power of public revelations, how they can bring down the president of the republic, might yet hustle the nation back to war. She throws the journals into the stove, but the warmth lasts only an instant, it’s paper after all, not wood. As she shivers under her thin blanket, she thinks of poor old scarface waiting hopefully for a letter, when everyone knows his son won’t waste a stamp on him.

But one day a letter does come. The postman, the washerwomen, and Madame herself wait expectantly in the courtyard as the veteran hobbles in with his shirt undone, rips open the envelope, and kisses the letter, wetting it with tears. Delphine observes his scarred features and feels a flare of intuition. She picks up the crumpled envelope and blurts out, “But, Monsieur, your son is in Marseille and this was posted in Paris.” And everyone recoils at the words, but it is from Delphine they turn away, not the pathetic old father who writes to himself to cover up for his son’s neglect.

The other girls are uneasy now in Delphine’s presence; there’s something sinister in her ability to ferret out secrets. Not just the ordinary secrets of the lavanderie, mind you, where people’s dirty linen is aired in public: a christening gown that follows too soon after a bridal veil; the viscount’s embroidered handkerchiefs sent in by a lady other than his wife. The girls recall certain indiscretions of their own—an affair, an abortion, a disease of a private nature—for which Madame would dismiss them on the spot, look what she did to her own daughter. To avoid those moments of unguarded friendship when secrets are bound to slip out, Henriette no longer curls Delphine’s hair, Clémence no longer brightens her drab gown with ribbons, Véronique and Mado stop taking her to admire the window displays at Au Bon Marché, or to mock Monsieur Eiffel’s monstrous tower going up for the exposition next year.

Left out by the other girls, Delphine retreats into grandiose fantasies. She has heard the rumors about her birth, and she dreams of a deathbed reconciliation between Madame and the cast-off daughter, of being restored to her rightful place, of sitting at the caisse like the patronne. She redoubles her attentions to Madame, anticipating her wishes even before the words are out of her mouth, a tisane when she is feeling poorly, a glass of mulled wine when she has a cold. But perhaps Delphine’s too-lively interest in the widow’s health alarms her, for one day Madame’s niece and her husband show up with their young son. The husband looks over the premises and the laundresses’ charms with a proprietary air. His dissipated face is handsome still, and staring at it, Delphine feels the old flare of intuition. This is the man who seduced Madame’s daughter right under her nose, and it’s amazing that others don’t notice what is so evident to Delphine, the resemblance to herself in the high forehead, in the large brown eyes, in the curve of his lips. The son sees her sitting by herself in a corner, and wants to know who she is. Oh, the foundling, his father says indifferently, she’s nobody.

This time, Delphine hugs her new secret close to her chest. Lying on her cot at night, she wonders what will happen if she drops a word in Madame’s ear about her niece’s precious husband. But will she believe the nobody? She falls asleep and dreams that her mother has come back to claim her inheritance. “Delphine,” she whispers, “Delphine,” and Delphine reaches out her arms. She is somebody now, and everywhere she goes people whisper her name. Then she wakes to find herself alone, with only rats scurrying across the floor, attracted to the bucket of starch.

The next day I see Delphine strolling across the bridge and feel a pang of uneasiness. What is she doing out during working hours, has the patronne dismissed her? I draw closer as she stops to study her reflection in the river, the water wrinkling her smooth face which time will wrinkle all too soon. Ah, life is pleasant and youth is sweet, I think benevolently, dance at the laundresses’ ball, ma petite, dance while you can. Lulled by the late-autumn sunlight and my own goodwill, I suspect nothing, not even when she glances mischievously over her shoulder and clambers up on the parapet. And then, to my horror, she disappears from view. I reach out to save her, a gesture both reflexive and futile. But she is playing a dangerous game, only crouching in a niche below. She cries out in triumph as a reflection appears beside hers, like a carp swimming up from the murk.

“Don’t look,” I want to plead, “don’t look.” But it is too late, she gazes longingly at the face she sees, a face so like her own. The world spins slowly on its axis, the sun slants into the river, the water flows toward the sea, but for one long moment she freezes into immobility as she looks into the reflected visage, searching the depths for secrets not meant for the living.

When was it she first sensed her mother’s presence? During those long winter nights in the laundry when a draft fanned the dying coals into flame? On still summer days in the courtyard when a sudden breeze lifted her hair? How cleverly she has flushed her out! But only those about to join our ranks can see us; and once they have, there is no retracing one’s steps.

Delphine holds on to the coping and pulls herself back. Wrapped in her thoughts, she stands there as the sun sinks into darkness, streetlamps cast their pools of light, and windows glow with the warmth that attracts all wanderers home. But she is homeless and alone, with only her mother’s ghost for company.

Her face is pale as plaster in the lamplight and her mother bends to kiss her forehead, the first caress that lonely girl has known. Delphine turns back toward the river, her countenance transfigured by a smile of such beauty that I could weep. Then she climbs up on the parapet, closes her eyes, and leaps into the water, breaking the surface once, twice, thrice, before the undertow carries her away, leaving behind only the aftershock of ripples. And then the water is smooth again.

She has the same smile on her face when she is displayed on a slab at the morgue. Curious spectators jostle one another before her corpse, and a buzz of speculation fills the air. “They gaffed her at quai de Louvre, drowned recently I reckon, see that smooth skin, it would have peeled right off if she soaked too long.” But the voices fall silent as they look at her peaceful face. They say even the mortician, hardened to such cases, wept when he saw the unknown woman fished out from the Seine.

No one comes forward to claim the body. She is buried in a pauper’s grave, abandoned in death as she was in birth. But her death mask sells briskly. Everywhere I turn I’m confronted by a thousand Delphines, she has become a rumor dispersed around the city. No one knows her name; they call her L’Inconnue de la Seine. It becomes the fashion for young girls to copy her appearance, for young men to write sonnets to the unknown beauty. I cannot dispel the last sight of Delphine’s face, the sound of her body hitting the water, and yet the river flows as it has always done, undisturbed by one body more or less when so many thousands have been cast into its depths.

I have learned from the mistakes of the past: Sylvie must not see me. I forced myself to hide from her in uncongenial corners of the city, in obscure patches of history, condemning myself to the long ache of exile. I missed the sight of her dear face, the sound of Schubert from her window. Yet I resolved to keep away from those peaceful quays until it was safe to be in her company again.

What an effort it had cost me then to banish myself from Sylvie’s presence till the waves of madness receded; only when the danger had passed did I return to this stretch of quay. But now I wonder if I have underestimated her fragility, if I have come back too soon. I had felt a deep ambivalence about burdening Sylvie with the sorrows of my past, about drawing her into the obsessive and futile quest that my death had brought to an end. With her accidental discovery of the folder, fate had taken the decision out of my hands.

But when I see the bleakness on Sylvie’s face, I fear that finding the envelope might tip the scales of a mind still precariously balanced between life and death. Must I leave here again, so that if by chance she turns her head…but she does not.