“You've not changed at all, Marie-Thérèse,” he says, himself surprised at the truth of the statement.
“I'm better now. I looked like a country bumpkin.”
“You looked like a country bumpkin but your face hasn't changed.”
“Neither has yours, very much, apart from your hair.”
He has black, curly hair, he's slim, he's wearing a checked shirt. He thinks it's clever in the photo to be a rebel. He has a phony look about him. He's not very different from Serge Gautheron, of whom he has no recollection, but who has the same build, wears the same colors, and displays the same ridiculous arrogance. Quite the opposite of Tristan Mateo, he sees, who's a head taller than everyone else with a strikingly detached air in his flowing white California-style shirt. Tristan Mateo is reading Jim Morrison's The Lords and the New Creatures, he reads Herbert Marcuse and Jerry Rubin, smokes and imbibes all the substances of the period without ever feeling any the worse for it or flagging on the rugby field. Tristan Mateo owns Alice Canella. Alice Canella no longer exists, not for any of us, Adam tells himself, and the idea has a bitter and soothing savor. A barely perceptible savor, he observes, the tang of a fleeting mist instantly dissipated. Marie-Thérèse has gone to turn over the potatoes. Adam wonders where they will eat their supper. It must be possible for the two of them to sit together in the kitchen. Or else here, he supposes, at the low table. Adam can see no other table and concludes that Marie-Thérèse doesn't entertain her friends, or at least only one friend, or else friends who eat off their laps, sitting politely side by side, with their napkins and their plates on their tightly clenched knees. And he wonders who these friends are that come to eat dinner off their laps in Viry-Châtillon, in Marie-Thérèse Lyoc's neat and tidy apartment. And he concludes how lucky it is that such living room friends exist, whether in Orly now or Suresnes then, coming in at the main door, making their way into people's rooms with loud voices, instantly creating a good atmosphere, squeezing onto the sofa without any fuss, squabbling happily, laughing and knocking back the drinks. I could write about these Saturday friends, he thinks, after all, I know them, I see them flocking together like birds, I combine periods, I combine emotions, I shuffle lives like playing cards. Do you entertain friends here? he says. “It depends,” she replies from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the dishcloth. “Not all that much, in fact.”