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sitting next to Sky Spider, doing my best to look like nothing’s wrong.
    I whisper: “Is there someplace where we can see the outside?”
    As he inclines his head toward me, I continue: “I’d like to talk to you alone.”
3.
    Sky Spider chooses an office near the rear cabin of the plane. Outside the porthole, it is night. But is it real night, or an imaginary stratosphere? I come straight to the point: “Won’t you come with me?”
    Sky Spider’s features sharpen.
    He looks at me abashedly, as if scolding someone who loves him, whom he does not love back. This would never change, no matter how many years passed. I pause, then continue: “I mean, wouldn’t you like to give a recital, in the world?”
    “But I …”
    “You are quite talented. I could make arrangements for a suitable venue.”
    A look of calm understanding comes over Sky Spider’s face, but then he shakes his head.
    “You understand, don’t you? We are …”
    “Mais non,” I interrupt him. And now I understand what has been gnawing at me.
    Things that were here to begin with may not be taken away.
    Why had Cerdan told me this?
    To stay, or to go, it is up to me, he had said. If that is the case, it makes no difference if I return to the world, or if I disappear. But if that is so, why had he gone to the trouble of explaining the rules to me?
    It must be there is something he does not wish to be taken away.
    What might that be?
    No, it couldn’t be. There is just one possibility I cannot get out of my mind.
    She was my best student.
    And on the forced march of a concert tour, she had suffered a miscarriage.
    Only afterward did I realize what was strange.
    The young woman flitting about.
    Caught between the near shore and the far shore, the passing of years is lonely.
    “Everyone else is just as they were when Neveu died. Only you are different.”
    This can only mean one thing.
    “You … are alive!”
    For a long spell, Sky Spider remains silent. He is in agony. Realizing, though, that he cannot hold back, he slowly opens his mouth. In broken bursts he tells this most unlikely story.
    Sky Spider was born in September 1981.
    His mother, who had wandered unwittingly onto the Ghost Ship, went into an early labor and gave birth prematurely. She had not wanted children. Realizing there would be no evidence, she left the newborn in this place, and returned to the world alone.
    The child had been raised by everyone on the plane, and Neveu had taught him to play the violin.
    The ghosts on the plane were the only family he had ever known.
    He was aware of the outside world. But all he had ever seen was the world within the fuselage of the plane. He only knew how to do one thing, and that was to play the violin.
    “These people are my family. And on top of that, I don’t think I could survive on the outside.”
    “You yourself …” I say, choosing my words carefully.
    Pushing too hard might work against me here. I know that, but I can’t help myself.
    “You’re the one who told me this, aren’t you? Torn from the world, growing old is lonely. You actually realize that you are L’Etranger. And it may be as you say, that the outside world is L’Enfer. Or it may be that we are in Purgatoire. ”
    “I know, all of this. If I exit the plane, I will have to go through immigration. And then customs. As a practical matter, one cannot just enter a country bringing along an extra person with no ID, with no records.”
    “And also …” he starts to say. “This is where I was born. It is my fate that I cannot get out of here.”
    “That’s not so,” I say. “ Things brought here from somewhere else may be taken away. I believe that that is your fate. Think back! I play the cello!”
    I would remove the cello from its case, and put Sky Spider inside.
    At the Immigration Desk, there would be no hand luggage inspection, and I would pass right though. Then, Sky Spider would get out of the case, and walk through customs on his own two feet.