Arcachon. In this house, she is not dead, to be sure she is not in her room, but she is not far, there are her flowers, her books, there is still more of still more, she will be on the balcony, all her things are very alive, the mess in the armoire is Ève to a T, cardboard boxes on which she wrote ‘pants’, full of socks covered with the dust that she will have respected for years, no one else but her.

I no longer know when or how the thought occurred to me that, in Maman's absence, my friend M. could spend a few days in Ève's room, the only bedroom in the house that has a small bathroom. I don't know who had this idea and suggested I adopt it. I could never have had this idea myself. But sometimes I try out the idea of another person. It may be that Ève herself, or her sister Éri, had this idea. But barely arrived, I see the impossibility. Ève is in her room. One doesn't ‘see’ her, but one sees her in another way. Diffusely. Myself, I hear her call me as soon as I pass in front of the open door, she is not the one who had this idea, Ève at ninety-five years old wearing walking shoes is, among all the èves, the oldest and the most recent, the most helpless, the smallest, the most tenuous, I hear her call me faintly, she hastens me to remember her, I could forget her, she barely moves her eyes she half-opens the wrinkled traits of her lips. –What happened to you, my beloved, I exclaimed, what destitution.

Sleep for a little while yet, I say, it is very early. I will come bring you Café-au-lait at 8 o’clock. Caféaulait is the drink that consoles her, the milk from a breast that my mother sucks, it is even the breast. I pour it by spoonful in her mouth, and each mouthful is visibly a response and a pact. Cat Philia slips into Ève's armoire as usual. The world is open.

How did I ever believe that I could cut away from my heart's flesh the room that is Maman? Did I believe?