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our footsteps. Outside it was nearly dark and raining a little. I pulled on my gloves and Lionel headed for the parking lot without even waiting for me. I said, wait for me, my own. He turned around, squinting through the raindrops, and I saw how very small his head looked and how thin his hair was in the light of the streetlamp. I thought, we have to return to our normal life, Lionel has to go back to his office, we have to stay cheerful. After we got in the car, I said I felt like going to the Russian Canteen and drinking vodka and eating piroshki. And then I asked him, who do you suppose Barbra is? Barbra Streisand, Lionel said. —Yes, but in the clinic. Do you think she’s the head nurse with the long nose?

Paola Suares
    I’m very sensitive to light. I mean psychologically. I wonder if everybody’s sensitive to light this way or if I’m particularly vulnerable. I can put up with exterior light. I can put up with dismal weather. The sky’s there for everyone. All men and women go through the same fog. Interiors return you to yourself. Light in enclosed spaces attacks me personally. It strikes objects, it strikes my soul. Certain lights deprive me of all sense of the future. When I was a child, I ate in a kitchen that looked out onto a closed courtyard. The illumination that came from the ceiling made everything gloomy and gave me the feeling of having been forgotten by the world. When we got to the central hospital of the Tenth Arrondissement, where Caroline had just had her baby, it was around eight in the evening. I suggested to Luc that he should go up with me, but he declined and said he preferred to wait in the car. He wanted to know if I was going to be long, and I said, no, no, even though the question seemed a bit out of place, not to mention uncouth. It was raining. The street was empty, likewise the lobby of the maternity ward. I went to the room and knocked on the door. Joel opened it. Pale and happy, Caroline was sitting on the bed in a dressing gown and holding a tiny infant, a little girl, in her arms. I bent over her. She was pretty. Very delicate, really very pretty. I had no problem saying so and congratulating them. The room was exceedingly warm. I requested a vasefor the anemones I’d brought. Joel told me flowers were forbidden in the rooms. I’d have to keep my bouquet. I removed my coat. Caroline handed the baby to her husband and got into bed. Joel took the little bundle in his arms and sat down on the imitation leather armchair, nodding his head, puffed up with papahood. Caroline took out a Jacadi catalog and showed me a foldable baby travel bed. I made a note of the item. On a Formica shelf, there were some packages, still half-wrapped, and several bottles of hydroalcoholic gel. I asked if there was an intensive care unit in the building, because I was on the verge of a heat stroke. Caroline said they couldn’t open the windows because of the infant and offered me some discolored fruit paste candies. A disposable baby bottle and a crumpled baby blanket lay in the transparent crib. The strange ceiling light made all the cloths, sheets, napkins, and bibs look yellow. A life was beginning in this confined, indescribably dreary world. I stroked the sleeping baby’s forehead, I kissed Joel and Caroline. Before leaving the building, I put the anemones, which were drooping from the heat, on a counter in the lobby. In the car, I told Luc that my friend’s new daughter was really pretty. He asked, what are we doing? Shall we go to your place? And I said, no. Luc looked surprised. I said, I feel like a change. He turned on the ignition and started driving at random. I could tell he was miffed. —We always go to my place, I’m tired of being the easy option. Luc didn’t reply. I shouldn’t have said it that way. I regretted using the words
easy option
, but you can’t control everything. Rain was still falling. We rolled along without speaking. He parked the car just ahead of the Place de la