Paris, November 21, 1996

Dear Jean-Claude Romand,

It has been three months now since I began writing. My problem is not, as I thought it would be in the beginning, gathering information. It’s finding my proper place with respect to your story. When I began work, I thought I could push this problem aside by stitching together everything I knew and trying to remain objective. But objectivity, in such an undertaking, is a delusion. I needed a point of view. I went to see your friend Luc and asked him to tell me how he and his family lived through the days following the discovery of the crime. That is what I tried to write, identifying myself with him all the more because he had told me he did not want to appear in my book under his real name, but I soon judged it impossible (technically and morally—the two go together) to maintain this point of view. That’s why the half-joking suggestion you made in your last letter, of adopting the viewpoint of your successive dogs, both amused me and convinced me that you were aware of this difficulty. A difficulty that is obviously much greater for you than for me and that is at stake in the psychological and spiritual work in which you are engaged: this lack of access to yourself, this void that has never stopped growing in place of the person in you who must say “I.” Clearly, I am not the one who will say “I” on your behalf, but in writing about you, I still need to say—in my own name and without hiding behind a more or less imaginary witness or a patchwork of information intended to be objective—what speaks to me in your life and resonates in mine. Well, I cannot. Words slip away from me; the “I” sounds false. So I’ve decided to set this project aside, as it is not yet ripe. But I would not like this hiatus to bring our correspondence to an end. Actually, I feel it will be easier to write, and doubtless to listen, to you once I have set aside this project in which we each had an immediate interest. Without it, we should be able to speak more freely …

Villefranche-sur-Saône, 12/10/96

Dear Emmanuel Carrère,

I well understand your situation. I appreciate the sincerity and courage of your attitude, which makes you accept the disappointment of failure after considerable work on a project rather than be satisfied with an account that would not meet your objective.

What still gives me a little strength today is, first of all, not being alone in this search for the truth, and I feel as well that I’m beginning to perceive that meaningful inner voice that until now has been unable to manifest itself except through symptoms or acting out. I feel intuitively that I must find within myself a voice that is confirmed by listening attentively to what truly speaks in another person. It also seems to me that this impossibility of saying “I” when you speak of me is partly related to my own difficulty in saying “I” for myself. Even if I manage to reach this stage, it will be too late, and it is cruel to think that if I had had access to this “I” and therefore to “you” and “we” at the appropriate time, I would have been able to tell them everything I had to say to them without violence making the rest of the dialogue impossible. In spite of everything, to despair would be to give up once again and, like you, I believe that time will permit a transformation, will bring some sense to all this. Writing these words, I think of something Claudel wrote: “Time is the sense of life,” as one would speak of the sense of a word, the sense of smell, or the direction in which a river flows…. When time makes sense out of this terrible reality, reality will become the truth and will perhaps be something quite different from the one that seemed obvious. If it really is the truth, it will contain its own remedy for everyone concerned….”

As I had predicted to him (without entirely believing it), our correspondence became easier once I abandoned the book. He began to talk about the present, his life in prison. From Bourg-en-Bresse, he had been transferred to the detention facility in Villefranche-sur-Saône. Marie-France went there to see him every week, along with another visitor, named Bernard. At first Romand feared the brutal assaults customarily inflicted on child murderers, but a gang leader soon recognized him and assured him of his protection. One day, back when they were both on the outside, Romand had picked him up hitchhiking and had given him a two-hundred-franc bill so he could buy himself a good meal. This generosity had erased the horror of his crimes and made him popular. The prize celebrity of Villefranche, Alain Carignon, a former mayor of Grenoble in jail for corruption, invited Romand to go jogging with him. Whenever a difficult prisoner arrived, the authorities placed him in Romand’s cell, counting on his calming influence. He took care of the library, attended computer classes, participated in comic-strip and writing workshops. Eager to become absorbed in some long-term project, he began to study Japanese. And when I spoke to him about the long-term project I myself was embarking on, a new translation of the Bible, a collaboration among scholars and writers, he was immediately enthusiastic. Since I was assigned the Gospel According to Saint Mark, he read that with particular devotion, comparing the five translations available to him in the library, and took pleasure in informing me that Marie-France’s great-uncle was none other than Father Lagrange, who had overseen the translation of the Jerusalem Bible. There was discussion of my coming to Villefranche to lead a workshop on my project sponsored by the chaplain, but Romand was transferred before the plan could be realized.

I went to see him only once. That visit, which I had dreaded, went well, almost too well. I was relieved and a little shocked. What was I expecting? That having done what he had done and survived it, he would go around in sackcloth and ashes, beating his breast, rolling on the ground every five minutes wailing in agony? He had gained back some weight since the trial, and aside from the sloppy uniform that is standard prison garb, he looked as he must have when he was the affable Dr. Romand. Obviously happy to see me, he did the honors and showed me around the visiting room, apologizing for its lack of comforts. He smiled a bit too much, as did I. There were no lengthy silences or Dostoyevskian effusions. We spoke of this and that, like people who have met on vacation (in our case, it had been in the criminal court in Bourg-en-Bresse) and, without knowing one another well, have discovered some mutual interests. Not a word about the past.

In his next letter, he asked me the name of my cologne.

“This probably seems absurd to you, but I think I know the scent, and maybe by identifying it I will recover the memories attached to it. You are perhaps aware that Florence had a passion for perfume; she prized her collection of samples, several hundred little bottles she’d been acquiring since adolescence. I had occasion to experience, during the reconstruction of the tragedy, the close links between the nerve centers of olfaction and memory when I recognized a familiar perfume….”

I was touched by the unaffected, friendly aspect of his request, but even more by this: in the almost three years that we had been corresponding, it was the first time that—instead of talking about “my family,” “those who loved me,” or “my dear ones”—he had written his wife’s first name.