AMONG MY VERY SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, THE REACTIONS to G. were confusing. The boys felt a visceral disgust for him, which suited G., because he had no desire whatsoever to get to know them. He preferred hairless prepubescent boys, no older than twelve, as I was soon to find out. Any older and they were no longer objects of pleasure; they were rivals.

Conversely, all the girls dreamed of meeting him. One day a girl asked me if he would read a story she’d written. Nothing could be more valuable than a “professional” writer’s opinion. The adolescent girls of my era were a lot more brazen than their parents imagined. A fact that obviously delighted G.

One day I turned up late to school as usual. The music lesson had already begun, and everyone was standing and singing in unison. A scrap of paper, folded in four, landed on my desk next to my pencil case. I unfolded it and read: “He’s cheating on you.” Two grinning heads, fingers raised above their skulls, mimed two twisting horns. At the end of the lesson, as the students rushed all together to the door, I tried to flee, but one of the jokers caught up with me and whispered in my ear: “I saw the old man you’re going out with on the bus, kissing another girl.” I started to shake and tried to hide it. The boy threw me with one last comment: “My dad told me he’s a stinking pedophile.” I’d heard the word before, of course, without ever wondering whether it was true or not. Now, for the first time, it stabbed me through the heart. First, because it referred to the man I loved, and labeled him a criminal. And then, from the boy’s tone of voice, oozing with contempt, I realized he had spontaneously placed me not in the camp of the victims, but in that of the accessories to the crime.