Bit by bit, D started to construct his own epistemology. And the first thing he did was separate life events into two groups: the probable and the improbable.
It was probable that he would visit seventeen clients that week. It was probable that ten of them would make a purchase. And it was probable that it would rain, because it was winter.
It was improbable, and D repeated this as he looked at himself in the mirror, that a house constructed from 80 percent Kramp products would collapse in the event of an earthquake or a tornado.
And it was improbable that, due to a bus workers’ strike, a woman would be hitchhiking to university on the very same corner that D’s Renault passed.
That was exactly what happened on 13 November 1973.
D thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. And the woman, who hadn’t laughed for a long time, thought D was talkative and entertaining.
A year later, on 13 November 1974, they got married.
On leaving the Civil Registry, D asked the woman to wait a second and went to find a serviette, where he jotted down what had just happened (their wedding) in a subcategory of his classification of things that he baptized “truly improbable things” (“those phenomena that make us think that some kind of god exists”).