G. TOOK OUT A LONG-TERM RENTAL OF A HOTEL ROOM for a year to escape further visits from the Juvenile Squad (which he called “intimidation”). The hotel he chose was modest but ideally located—not only was it across the road from my school, but it backed onto the brasserie where G. was a regular, with his own napkin ring. A generous benefactor, a great fan of his work, put up the money for this substantial investment. How else would he be able to write, with the cops on his back? Art takes precedence over everything else.

As in his tiny studio near the Luxembourg Gardens, the first thing one saw upon entering the hotel room was an enormous bed that had pride of place in the center of the room. G. spent more time lying down than sitting or standing; his life, like mine, permanently tended toward the bed. I was spending the night more and more often in this hotel room, only going back to my mother’s apartment when she insisted.

One day G. was told that he had a nasty fungal infection in his eyes. The initial hypothesis was that it was HIV. We waited a long, stressful week to get the test results. I wasn’t afraid; I rather fancied myself a tragic heroine: if it had to be this way, what an honor and a privilege to die for love! This was what I murmured to G. as I wrapped him in my arms. For his part, however, he appeared somewhat less than reassured. One of his friends was dying of the disease, which had attacked his skin and covered it in a horrible kind of leprosy. G. was only too aware of the merciless nature of the virus, the ensuing decline, the inevitability of death. And nothing filled him with more horror than the idea of physical deterioration. His anxiety was palpable in his every gesture.

G. was hospitalized for the raft of tests he needed to be prescribed the appropriate treatment. AIDS was ruled out. One day the phone rang. I was sitting by his bed in his hospital room, so I answered. A distinguished-sounding woman wished to speak to G. I asked who she was, and she replied in a solemn tone of voice, “The president of the Republic is on the line.”

Later, I found out that G. kept a letter in his wallet at all times, in which the president waxed lyrical about G.’s prose style and the immense scope of his cultural knowledge.

The letter was G.’s talisman. In case he was ever arrested, he was sure it would have the power to save him.