surprise! she asked me if I’d had a good trip, she observed the disorder, the clothes scattered on the floor, the photographs, the books, the papers cluttering the ground and she laughed, at least you’re faithful to your mess, she was in good form, very beautiful, her hair falling loose absorbed the light, she went into the kitchen to put something in the fridge, I should have guessed, I should have but I didn’t want to, I was tired, happy to see her, but surprised and tired, I hazarded I forgot your birthday, is that it? she gave a slightly false laugh, how stupid you can be, she simpered, almost inane all of a sudden, she was at a loss, looked for a place to sit down, decided to remain standing, I had a foreboding of something despite myself, I didn’t say anything, she chatted, I handed her the little transparent crystal star from Bohemia that I had bought for her, the object carved by the slaves in Theresienstadt wrapped up in red tissue paper, I said look, this is for you, she said oh, that’s nice, thanks, thanks and she was so nervous as she tore open the wrapping that the trinket fell down, that got on my nerves, for no reason, I picked up the gleaming star saying hey, watch out, and I was holding it when Stéphanie whispered I’m expecting a baby and let herself slide into the armchair, looking at me intensely, I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t sure I’d understood, the usual phrase was I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant and not I’m expecting a baby, I handed her the little glass star, you almost broke it, her eyes misted over a little, she murmured that’s all you have to say? we were on opposite sides of a river, making incomprehensible signs to each other, I replied and you? I felt absolutely nothing at this announcement, nothing, four unreal words, I turned my head away, she said I’m such an idiot, we never keep our mouths shut at the right time, I stammered no, no, she got up, muttered I knew I shouldn’t have come, I repeated no no, she got annoyed, she shouted am I staying or leaving? we never keep our mouths shut at the right time I sighed whatever you like, she trembled and went out almost running leaving me alone with the Prague star still between my fingers — I didn’t rush over to the stairway I didn’t shout come back I sat down in the chair to look my share of fate in the face, impossible to imagine what Stéphanie’s words represented impossible to see what there was in her belly I remembered the last time we had slept together four days before but it wasn’t that coitus it was another one lost in the number of coituses of the previous weeks, during the weekend in Istanbul maybe, you can’t know did Stéphanie know, what, what was there to know, it was there in front of me have a child don’t make the choice of Achilles the sterile but that of Hector, Hector talks with Andromache his wife of the beautiful peplos, on the ramparts of Troy, Hector protector of his city, his wife begs him tenderly not to go to war, not to go, not to leave great-walled Ilion, despite the cowardice of his brother Paris the wretched fop, he sweeps her complaints away with a gesture, he says “leave the toils of war to men,” for you the children, for me the keen sword, I know that I’m going to die and that Troy will fall, that’s how it is, I will have a child, there’ll be a sparkling mobile in a colorful nursery, a male or a female, and Troy will fall, there will be an Astyanax somewhere who will look like me, who will carry his father on his shoulders the way I carry mine, outside of the city on fire, I saw myself with my father on my back, and him with his, a pyramid of fathers as high as the ladder of St. John Climacus, all of them overlapping each other laughing like demons at seeing their sons bending beneath them, so I got up and went into the kitchen, I rushed over to the bottle of champagne in the fridge, that’s what Stéphanie had put there, a bottle of champagne, and joy came over me, a powerful joy that resisted the Veuve Clicquot, that lasted despite all the drinking, in my chair, trying to understand what had just happened, I drank alone, I had forgotten Prague the trains the Czech railway fanatic the suitcase foreign criminal investigation departments I thought about rattles women contracting sweating bloody thighs, with the help of alcohol I saw myself wiping a bead of sweat off Stéphanie’s forehead in the middle of labor, changing the diapers of a hairy monkey, brown as night, a little scrap of a man, discovering the relationship between primate and its progeny, soon I was drunk, it was time to go to bed let Dream bring me the news and I accidentally crushed the crystal star, next to the armchair, I crushed it with my shoe, by mistake, I heard it crack, the glass broke into a million glittering pieces, I was drunk, I was drunk I sat down on the ground to watch my tears of sorrow set off slivers of light as they fell on the debris of the dead object — the gods are fighting, the gods are fighting among themselves they are taking back what they have given, a child, that was a very small hand to pull me out of the water, a tiny paw to drag me out of the darkness, the next day Stéphanie the proud went to the gynecology clinic on the Rue des Lilas a stone’s throw away from our boulevard, she insisted, she trotted out all her persuasion her professional cards procured straightaway a meeting with the psychologist and the anesthetist, Stéphanie decided it, in the late afternoon they put a sort of vacuum between her legs, I didn’t know, I called her without success for twenty-four hours, I was shaken, anxious and happy, I kept calling her, I was afraid I’d wounded her, frightened her like a wild animal, the wild animal was me my father was right, old Priam was right, she couldn’t have a child with a barbarian, the choice of Achilles is no choice, the Moirae decided for him, Stéphanie decided for me, so much the better, so much the worse, who knows what would have come of this offshoot, son or daughter of workers in the shadows, I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand why, the day after that I managed to speak with her for five minutes, in a café on the Place de la République, she was very pale, defeated, she said to me you are a monster, I know everything about you you are a monster, I never want to see you again, how could she have changed so quickly, two days before she arrived at my place holding a bottle of champagne and now I was a monster, maybe she’d hoped for a transformation, a change, until the very end, maybe she had imagined she could live with the monster, I said nothing, I looked at her with a great sadness, she left, I had been a father for forty-eight hours, a monstrous father who eats his children, it was 7:30 I ordered a plum brandy, a little brandy of mourning for the tiny fists of the one I would not have, then another, for the monstrous barbarian, then a third, for my own dad, a fourth, for mortals, the poor fate of mortals, a fifth, for the gods who were fighting on top of Olympus, a sixth, for revenge, for the revenge that would come one day, sweet and bloody and when the joint closed I was so drunk that the waiter had to support me by my jacket collar so I wouldn’t collapse before reaching the cold, grey, wet sidewalk