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to contain a liquid such as oil, tea, or coffee. It might even be a funeraryurn intended for the ashes of a small animal. A cat, for example. The patient has a mother who has a cat. But she really doesn’t see anything interesting about this story, she announces as she bursts into tears.
    And now you’re crying. You’re sobbing on your bench in the little square on Boulevard de la Chapelle where all action ceases. The children in their sandbox stop excavating, their red or blue plastic shovels frozen aloft, while their mothers stop gossiping and the people palavering beneath the chestnut trees stop conducting their obscure transactions. Everyone rushes over to help but you quickly give them the slip. Fleeing toward the tracks of the Gare de l’Est, you pass the post office and the railway bridge. On the boulevard, you’re running past variety and grocery stores again, sidewalks cluttered with yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, then there’s a kebab place and a café, a bank, and we’re back at the Stalingrad métro station.
    It’s ten to two; Viviane goes to pick up her daughter.

6
    There’s this child on our hands and we wonder how it happened. The babysitter handed her over without a fuss, pretending to believe that she was our legitimate property. We sneak off with her, hugging the walls all the way to the building on Rue Cail, in case the woman changes her mind. Once safely in the sixth-floor apartment, we settle into the rocking chair and observe the child for a very long time, waiting for a response, a revelation.
    Sometimes she looks at us as if she has known us since forever, and we think she’s mistaking us for someone else. Or is it that we aren’t the ones we think we are: that’s a possibility.
    We have no idea where she comes from, this being who knows more about us than we would ever suspect, and who yet expects us to take care of her in every way.To maintain the illusion of familiarity, we must respond to her warbling and she is the one who guides us, shapes our conversation, insists on building up this recalcitrant family connection. And perhaps she is also the one who, in her naked need and tenacity, will carry the day. Thus we will become mother and daughter simply through her stubbornness.
    In the middle of the desperately bare room, we reflect upon what we could do to deserve so much love. No doubt we should take decorative action, consult furniture catalogs, acquire bibelots, stir up the fire of our maternal instinct in the warmth of our home. But we do nothing, passive as usual. The child’s crying is always at the same low volume; she seems incredibly satisfied with her situation, a miracle that is frightening at first, although delightful upon reflection, leaving us with no other choice than to carry on as before, obeying the strictures of necessity. Feed, get ready, go out, come back, sleep: it’s the body alone that moves forward when we have relapsed into mutism.
    We think her satisfaction might come from her father, who perhaps bequeathed her the gene of equanimity. That’s one explanation. We know him well, though: it’s not very plausible.
    We have considered the father of Valentine Hermant from many aspects. There is the side of him we saw when we first met and for a while thereafter, when simply recalling his name sparked the desire to throw all clothing out the window and run to him. There is the perspective of recent days, when he pronounced the definitive words we know, and between these two points lie various intermediary states linked to different factors: the vagaries of his moods, the progress then decline of his affection for us. From one autumn to the next, passing through all the colors of the year.
    It was in this very season that we met. After we began seeing the doctor, unexpected events took place. We enjoy remembering those already distant times, but not the intrusion of this telephone now vibrating in our pocket. We