So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood

Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.

In the end, we forget the details of our lives that embarrass us or are too painful. We just lie back and allow ourselves to float along calmly over the deep waters, with our eyes closed.

Why do people whose existence you are unaware of, whom you meet once and will never see again, come to play, behind the scenes, an important role in your life?

One should never expect anyone to reply to one's questions.

We discover, often too late to talk to him about it, an episode from his life that a loved one has concealed from you. Has he really hidden it from you? He has forgotten, or more likely, over time, he no longer thinks about it. Or, quite simply, he can't find the words.

When he was younger, he used the slightest opportunity to slip away from people, without his being able to understand very clearly why he did so: a longing to break free and to breathe in the fresh air?

After all, the war doesn’t alter my relationship with a blade of grass.

Someone had told him one day that you forget the voices of those whom you have been close to in the past very quickly.

Do you often wear this dress?"    He pointed to the black satin dress with the two yellow swallows.    "I found it here when I rented the room. It must have belonged to the previous lodger."    "Or perhaps to you, in an earlier life.

He had written this book only in the hope that she might get in touch with him. Writing a book, for him, was also a way of beaming a searchlight or sending out coded signals to certain people with whom he had lost touch. It was enough to scatter their names at random through the pages and wait until they finally produced news of themselves.

Yes, this man had the persistence of an insect.

In the morning, he is woken up by the rays of the sun that peep into his bedroom through the curtains and make orange patches on the wall. To begin with, it is almost nothing, the crunch of tyres on the gravel, the sound of an engine growing fainter, and you need a little more time to realise that there is no-one left in the house apart from you.

But these memories drifted away like bubbles of soap or fragments of a dream that vanished on waking.

«Siempre paso miedo cuando vuelvo a pie a casa a estas horas... No sé exactamente dónde estoy...» Y era cierto que había que cruzar por una tierra de nadie o más bien por una zona neutra en la que uno estaba aislado de todo.

What a peculiar path I've had to take in order to reach you.