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jewelry, two pairs of shoes, a few fashion accessories … And none of it was ever gift-wrapped.
    He phoned the number of Dr. Caillol’s practice. He was told that the psychiatrist was taking no new appointments until January 3, and that he was fully booked until December 24, but could still be contacted in an emergency. He surmised that Caillot would be staying in Aix over the festive period.
    He made a decision. It was now or never. On December 23, he went to Puyricard, parked his motorbike in the village and walked to the doctor’s house.
    It consisted of a farmhouse, a mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court, as well as a few outhouses. The mansion stood about fifty meters from the farm; the buildings were surrounded by a dozen hectares of vines, which must have produced an unpretentious little Côteaux d’Aix-en-Provence.
    After a few days’ surveillance, he knew that the doctor never came home before 9:00 p.m.; that his tenant farmer invariably went to the vineyard at about 4:00 p.m. and stayed there until at least 7:00 p.m.; and that the farmer’s wife, who ran the Puyricard playschool, never came home before 6:00 p.m.
    Which meant that between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m., he had plenty of time.
    He decided that this would be the best time to break into François Caillol’s house. If he could, he would take the Mercedes, which was always parked in the garage, and bring it back before 9:00. If the worst came to the worst, the farmer would just see his landlord’s car drive by.
    On December 23, at exactly 4:30 p.m., he observed the premises from the clump of pines and brambles beside the tennis court, and waited for the farmer to vanish, followed by his mongrel, into the vines. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, leaped up the twelve steps, opened the heavy door without any difficulty and closed it quickly behind him.
    Inside, it was dark; only a glimmer of daylight filtered through the shutters. He did not turn on the light and stood for some time in the corridor, until his eyes had become used to the gloom.
    The house oozed comfort and smelled of dust, wax and wood-smoke. Beams on the ceiling gave it that old fragrance of rustic charm.
    Walking up the corridor to the salon door, he filled his lungs with this scent which reminded him of his childhood.
    The mistral rising in the mighty branches of the plane trees carries the children’s cries far away. All day, the sun beats down. The night is heavy and dense
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    In the salon, Papa reads his paper, as he does every evening; he goes to sit next to him on the leather sofa and gently lays his cheek on his lap. In front of him is the small leather easy chair, reserved for his mother, and the Persian rug with its geometric patterns and complex arabesques—he imagines high-speed circuits for his toy cars. But he is not allowed to play in the salon
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    He looks up, glances at the knickknacks on the sideboard before lingering over the painting he likes best: a landscape of the port of Marseille in the ’30s. He imagines being a naval officer like his grandfather and his great-grandfather, like most of the men in his father’s family
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    A naval officer with a spotless uniform and beautiful, gold-stitched stripes
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    Sometimes, his grandfather takes him on cargo ships. Shyly he looks at the old sailors and shakes their gnarled hands, scared by their little laughing eyes, by the huge wrinkles surrounding them—indelible marks of long watches spent on the decks of ships, with only the dazzling gleam of the sea for scenery
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    He would have liked to have known the port of Marseille in the ’30s. To have seen the steam from the ships on their way to Indochina, the Sainte-Marie strait with its massive, black, fat-bellied tugs, strenuously pulling along the mail ships from Asia, the Far East or America; the dark coal-smoke which swathed La Major cathedral; the sailors’ sons coming to wave home a father who had been away all these