Text written by artificial intelligence under the strict instructions of Côme Felx.

The ideas, characters, narrative direction, fundamental choices and universe of the work belong to Côme Felx. Artificial intelligence served as a tool for drafting, structuring and formulation, following the author’s precise instructions.

“Like a tightrope walker without a net, I wrote without a plot. I felt alone, too isolated to continue writing a series of stories. Then my soul noticed her.”

Pascal Pascal read that sentence for the twelfth time.

It was good. Perhaps even excellent. It had that slight breath of depth which gives a banality the shine of a revelation. He liked it. He liked it very much. Sentences that seemed to suffer in his place often spared him from truly suffering.

— I will never manage it, then, he murmured.

He pushed the sheet away from him and immediately pulled it back. The gesture was theatrical. He knew it. Even alone, he played a part. Especially alone.

At forty-seven, Pascal had not published a single book, but he possessed the dark elegance of men who already believe themselves betrayed by posterity. He had no readers, or so few, but he had the attitudes of an author. The silence of an author. The anger of an author. Even the poverty of an author, which he wore as others wear a military decoration.

That morning, however, nothing was moving forward.

He had a few ideas. Fragments of dialogue. Images. Two or three surprising endings that seemed brilliant enough to him to justify the whole novel. But he lacked momentum. The fire. The pretext. Perhaps the victim.

Since daybreak, he had been circling around that sentence: “Like a tightrope walker without a net…”

It came from a dream.

In that dream, he saw himself in an extravagant circus costume. A costume somewhere between Fellini, a Venetian carnival and an old theatre curtain forgotten in a damp cellar. On his head, a huge hat. On his feet, shoes far too pointed. In his hand, no balancing pole, but an immense wooden pencil, long as a ship’s mast, which he used to keep his balance on a plumb line drawn across the air.

Beneath him, there was nothing.

Around him, flakes were falling. At first, he had thought it was snow. Then he had understood that they were white sheets. Blank pages. Thousands of pages. They descended slowly and silently, as if the sky were emptying itself of all the books that had never been written.

No, they were not quite white.

On some of them there was a face.

The face of a woman.

Upon waking, Pascal had decided that this dream was a sign. He loved signs very much, especially when they proved him right. He had therefore concluded that he must plan nothing. Build nothing. Organise nothing. This time, he would write without a plot. He would move forward on the wire, above the void, with his pencil as his only weapon.

But since it was Sunday morning and literary courage sits poorly with lukewarm coffee in a poor apartment, he decided to go and play the poet in his little regular restaurant.

Five minutes from his apartment, on Rue Saint-Denis, there was a modest café, somewhat old-fashioned, almost warm despite the tables placed too close together, the tired plants and the yellowed reproductions on the walls. Out of habit, people still called it Mr Prahallis’s restaurant, even though he spent more time watching the till than greeting customers.

Pascal had his habits there.

More precisely, he had conquered a territory there.

Table fifteen.

A small round table, near the emergency exit, between two mirrors that allowed him to watch himself enter his own character. It was a ridiculous table, uncomfortable, almost isolated, but Pascal had adopted it. Since then, he could no longer bear to see anyone sit there before him.

He said that table was his workshop.

In truth, it was his throne.

That morning, he prepared himself carefully. He chose black trousers, too worn to be elegant, a white shirt that had seen better days, and a dark cape, which he wore only on the day after a full moon, on the pretext that nocturnal influences deserved an appropriate garment. Finally, he put on the wide felt hat, the one with a long goose feather, which gave his silhouette something of a fallen musketeer.

He looked at himself in the entrance mirror.

— Ridiculous, he said.

Then he went out satisfied.

Outside, Montréal looked as though it had not yet decided whether it wanted to be a city or a stage set. The sky was bright. A soft wind slipped down Rue Saint-Denis. The shop windows shone with that cold politeness of Sunday mornings, when the shops are not yet open and passers-by seem to wonder why they already exist at all.

Pascal walked slowly, his notebook under his arm, a fountain pen behind his ear, letting his cape swing just enough to draw glances. He pretended not to notice them. That was one of his specialities: provoking attention and then behaving like a victim of attention.

Halfway there, in front of the pharmacy, he entered his stage state.

The outside became a dressing room. The windows became mirrors. The passers-by became extras. He was not going for coffee. He was going to make his entrance.

Already he imagined Claire, the waitress, raising her eyes to heaven.

Already he heard Pierrette calling to the back:

— Hey, Claire! The gentleman who throws sand in his own eyes is here!

That was how they had teased him since the day they understood that his oddities were not entirely dangerous. Or rather, since the day he had made them believe they were not.

That was his little talent.

He did not force doors open. He made the people guarding them smile. Then he slipped gently inside.

Claire and Pierrette liked him despite their sighs. He amused them. He gave them the impression that their café was more interesting than it really was. Sometimes they sang a few bars from Carmen when he entered too theatrically. Sometimes they worried when he remained silent for more than five minutes. He had managed to make himself indispensable, not through kindness, but through performance.

Pascal knew it.

He knew that people forgive a great deal in beings who distract them.

That morning, however, just as he approached the café, something broke the mechanism.

A woman was standing in front of the window.

He first saw her in profile.

A beige dress, light, floral without excess. A summer dress that seemed designed not to need permission to be beautiful. Soft hair falling over her shoulders. An upright bearing, but without stiffness. There was in her body a natural elegance, that kind of involuntary precision truly beautiful women possess without having to learn it.

She turned slightly.

Pascal slowed his step.

The eyes.

At first, he thought only of that.

Green eyes. No. Not only green. A green that moved. A green moistened by blue. A green that seemed to contain a river, or better still, a sentence he had not yet written.

— Dizzying green, he murmured.

The woman did not hear him.

Fortunately.

He watched her enter the café. She let her curious gaze drift around the room, hesitated for a second, then sat down at table fifteen.

Table fifteen.

Pascal stopped short.

Destiny had decidedly poor manners.

Inside, silence fell at the speed of a dropping curtain. Claire, behind the counter, remained still with a coffee pot in her hand. Pierrette, near the till, opened her mouth slightly. Two regulars turned their heads toward Pascal, already ready to enjoy the drama.

Table fifteen was not merely occupied.

It was occupied by an apparition.

Pascal entered.

No one made a joke. Even the teaspoons seemed to have understood that it was better not to clink.

He approached the counter.

— Pierrette. A coffee, please.

The waitress served him in silence. She knew that voice. It was Pascal’s voice when he was preparing something. A voice too calm. Too polite. Almost administrative.

— Pascal, she said softly, you are going to behave, yes?

He looked at her, surprised, like a man unjustly suspected.

— But I am always kind.

Which was false.

He took the cup.

Several scenarios immediately appeared in his mind. He could cough. He could feign a dizzy spell. He could approach the table with a hallucinated look and ask whether the chair had spoken to him. He could also, more simply, spill a little coffee beside the woman so she would have to get up. Nothing serious. A slight jolt of reality. A child’s trick.

He did not want to hurt her.

He only wanted his place back.

Or perhaps, already, to force her to notice him.

He stepped forward.

The woman looked up at him at the exact moment he reached the table. That gaze, offered without defence, threw his comedy into confusion. He had planned a manoeuvre. He received a presence.

— Excuse me, she said. Could you tell me what time it is?

Her voice completed what her eyes had begun.

Pascal did not spill the coffee on purpose.

Not entirely.

There was a hesitation, a minimal tremor, an awkward movement of the wrist. Yet deep inside him, a small clear part, a little clerk of his conscience, noted that the accident was not entirely innocent. He could have held the cup. He had not done so quickly enough.

The coffee spread over the beige dress.

The woman gave a short cry.

— Ah! Couldn’t you watch what you were doing? My dress!

Pascal remained motionless, the cup still in his hand, in the absurd posture of a guilty statue.

The coffee had splashed the fabric at the thighs and stomach. A dark stain was slowly spreading over the pale flowers, as if someone had ruined an entire morning with a single badly written sentence.

Claire and Pierrette rushed over.

— Madame! What a beautiful dress! cried Claire.

— Honestly, Pascal, this time you have gone too far! Pierrette added.

The woman looked up at him again. Her gaze was no longer green and blue. It was wounded.

— You have ruined my day, she said. My boyfriend is supposed to pick me up in a few minutes. I wanted to go to brunch with him.

Pascal wanted to apologise. Truly. But he had this moral defect: even his remorse looked for a brilliant formulation.

— I am sorry, madame. Truly. It is just that… for a second, the world disappeared.

— Your coffee apparently did too.

The reply was dry, but not vulgar. Pascal almost admired it.

— I will pay for the cleaning, he said.

— Keep your money to bleach the feather in your hat. Perhaps it was the one that tickled your ego.

Pierrette suppressed a laugh. Claire nudged her with an elbow.

Pascal blushed.

He could have accepted the humiliation. He could have remained simple. He could have said: “You are right, I am clumsy.” But Pascal possessed the unfortunate gift of staining even his apologies with literature.

— I dreamed of you last night, he said.

Silence fell again.

The woman stared at him.

— Excuse me?

— I do not know your name. I had never seen you. But I dreamed of a face. Yours, I believe. Pages were falling around me. Sheets. And you were on every one of them.

Claire closed her eyes, like a woman who sees a catastrophe coming and no longer has the strength to prevent it.

The woman slowly stood up.

— You spill coffee on strange women and then tell them they were in your dreams?

— It is not a strategy.

As he said it, Pascal knew he was lying.

Not really this time, perhaps. But in his life, yes. Everything became strategy as soon as he felt threatened: his poverty, his loneliness, his sentences, his lowered glances, his way of seeming too fragile to be responsible.

But the woman was not naïve.

— Who are you?

He brought his hand to his hat, as if introducing himself to a duchess.

— Pascal Pascal. Writer.

— Published?

The question struck him harder than an insult.

— Not yet.

— Then, Pascal Pascal, not yet published, I advise you to write this down somewhere: women are not signs sent to men to feed their novels.

She took her bag.

Pascal felt something tighten inside him. He should have bowed. Let her go. But she had touched him exactly where he believed himself protected: in his imaginary greatness.

— And you, madame? he asked. Who are you, to enter people’s lives as though you already knew what they were worth?

She turned around.

— A stained customer.

— No. You are far more than that.

— And you are far less than you think.

This time, the two waitresses did not hide their satisfaction. Pascal felt it. He had just lost the room. Worse: he had just lost his own staging.

So he did what he always did when he felt exposed.

He made himself pitiful.

— I ask your forgiveness, he said more softly. I did not want to hurt you. Sometimes I am ridiculous, but I am not cruel.

He often brought out that sentence. It worked well. It forced others to choose between continuing to strike and acknowledging his sensitivity. Most chose the second option. People do not like to feel like executioners in front of a man who lowers his voice.

The woman hesitated.

One single second.

But Pascal saw the hesitation. He noted it. He put it aside.

She had pity.

So she had a weak point.

— Do not worry, she said at last. Even if I live far away, my boyfriend will make a detour. I will go and change. In any case, he does not like this dress.

She lowered her eyes to the stained fabric. Her face lost some of its hardness.

— I liked it. I thought it was magical.

— Magical?

— Yes. Every time I wear it, something unexpected happens. Often something happy. Today, I suppose one must believe the magic had bad taste.

Pascal looked at the stain.

Then at the dress.

Then at her.

— Perhaps magic is not always kind at first contact.

— What a convenient sentence for a man who has just done something stupid.

— Convenient sentences are sometimes the truest.

She shook her head, almost against her will. She did not smile. Not truly. But a shadow of a smile passed, and Pascal clung to it with the discreet greed of a thief.

Pierrette, who was still dabbing the fabric with a damp napkin, suddenly looked up at the customer.

— Madame, I have to tell you something. One must not listen to him too much when he starts like that.

— Pierrette, no, said Pascal.

— Yes, Pascal. Yes. Because now you are playing the poor martyr, and that is not honest.

The woman turned an attentive gaze toward the waitress.

— Almost every Sunday, Pierrette continued, Monsieur Pascal comes here and sits at this table. If someone is in his place, he makes scenes until the person leaves. He had never spilled coffee before, but…

— Pierrette, said Pascal, it was an accident.

— Perhaps. But with you, accidents often look rehearsed.

That sentence remained hanging in the air.

Pascal felt a cold anger rise within him. Not against Pierrette. Not exactly. Against that accuracy. Against the way she was stripping him bare before the stranger.

The woman picked up her bag.

— I understand better.

— No, said Pascal. You do not understand. They exaggerate. They like to caricature me. It is their way of liking me.

— And you, what is your way of loving? Driving people out of their places?

He wanted to answer. He found nothing.

The woman went toward the exit. Before passing through the door, she turned one last time.

— If you see me again, Monsieur Pascal, keep your dreams to yourself. And keep out of my way.

She went out.

Pascal remained standing in the middle of the café.

Outside, the morning light immediately wrapped around her. The woman stopped on the sidewalk, as if she no longer knew quite where to put her anger. Pascal watched her through the window. He would have liked to run after her. He would have liked to apologise without figures of speech. He would have liked to be a simple man.

He was not capable of it.

A grey BMW pulled up in front of her.

Immediately, an elegant man got out. Thin moustache, immaculate coat, quick but calculated gestures. He had the haste of a man running late, but the assurance of someone who believes the world will wait anyway. He walked around the car and opened the door with such precise gallantry that it seemed learned from a manual of polite domination.

— Good morning, Louise, he said. I am sorry I am late. I had to stop by the office. A few overseas calls. Files to review. You know how it is.

Louise.

Pascal received that name like a gentle slap.

Louise.

He repeated it inwardly, already stealing it.

Jean Chauvet, however, at first saw only the dress.

— What is that stain?

— Coffee.

— You could have been more careful.

Louise froze.

Pascal, behind the window, observed the scene. This Jean was an unpleasant man. Obviously. Almost reassuringly mediocre. A classic egotist. A well-bred manipulator. One of those men who wound and believe they are merely managing.

Pascal despised him at once.

Which conveniently allowed him to forget that he too had just wounded Louise.

— We have to stop by my place, she said. I have to change.

— We really do not have time for that. William Lee is expecting us at the Ritz.

— William Lee?

— An investor. I told you about him.

— No.

— Ah. Then I must have forgotten. But it is important, Louise. Very important. For both of us.

She lowered her eyes to the dress.

Jean placed a possessive hand on the small of her back.

— Afterward, to make it up to you, we will go to the chalet. I will make you quail with tarragon.

Pascal saw that gesture. That hand. That way of guiding Louise’s body toward the car while giving an order the appearance of consideration.

Jean suddenly turned his head toward him.

Their eyes met.

— That man irritates me, said Jean.

Louise followed the direction of his gaze. She saw Pascal framed in the café doorway. He looked even more ridiculous than before, with his hat, feather, cape and poorly hidden shame.

— Do you know him? Jean asked.

— No.

She was barely lying. She did not know him. She had only encountered him, as one encounters a bad omen.

— He looks like a poor madman, Jean added. Or like a poet, which is often the same thing.

Louise got into the car.

She did not answer.

Pascal, motionless, watched them leave.

At the moment when the BMW drove away, he felt something strange. Not only regret. Not only desire. Something murkier. He had wanted his table. He had received a name. He had lost the morning, but won a beginning.

Slowly, he returned to table fifteen.

It was free now.

The coffee stain remained on the floor, near the chair. Claire wiped it up with a cloth.

— You should be ashamed, she said.

— I am ashamed.

— No. You are playing shame.

He looked at her.

This time, he found no reply.

He sat down in Louise’s place.

Before him, in one of the mirrors, he saw his own face beneath the grotesque hat. A forty-seven-year-old man, poor, vain, wounded and already in the process of turning his guilt into literary material.

He took out the notebook.

On the first line he wrote:

“Her name was Louise, and I had first stolen her dress from her before I dared to steal her heart.”

He read the sentence again.

Too pretty.

Too guilty.

Too useful.

He smiled in spite of himself.

Then he kept it.

END OF CHAPTER I