8:20 A.M. FOR THE THIRD WEEK IN A ROW, I FAILED TO GO into school. I got up, took a shower, got dressed, gulped down my tea, pulled on my backpack, and ran down the staircase in my mother’s building. (G. was still away.) It was fine down to the courtyard. But as soon as I went out into the street, things got bad. I was afraid of people’s glances, afraid of bumping into someone I knew, someone I might have to speak to. A neighbor, a shopkeeper, a classmate. I clung to the walls, took ridiculous detours along the least populated streets. Each time I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window, my body stiffened, and I found it almost impossible to move it again.

But today I felt resolute, determined, strong. This time I wasn’t going to give in to panic. Then that sight as I entered the school building: guards lurking in the shadows, checking all the students’ IDs, dozens of backpacks knocking into each other as the kids rushed toward the noisy, messy hive that was the central schoolyard. A teeming, hostile swarm, impossible to avoid. I turned right around and headed down the street in the other direction, toward the market, gasping, my heart thumping, sweating as if I’d committed a crime. Guilty and defenseless.

I took refuge in a local bistro, which was where I spent my time when I wasn’t at the hotel. I could spend hours there and no one would bother me. The waiter was always very discreet. He would watch me blackening my journal or reading quietly in the unlikely company of some of the regulars at the bar. He was never anything but tactful. Never asked me why I wasn’t in school. Never insisted that I consume more than a single cup of coffee and a glass of water, even if I sat there for three hours in the chilly, anonymous room, where you could sometimes hear the sound of the pinball machine over the clinking of glasses and coffee cups.

I tried to catch my breath. Forced myself to focus. Breathe. Think. Make a decision. I tried to piece together a few sentences in my notebook. But nothing came. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up—to be living with a writer and not have the slightest inspiration.

It was 8:35. Three streets away, the bell rang. The students went up the stairs, sat down in pairs, took out their schoolbooks and pencil cases. The teacher entered the classroom. Everyone stopped talking as he took attendance. When he got to the end of the alphabet, he said my name without even bothering to raise his eyes to the back of the class. “Absent, as usual,” he said, in a bored tone of voice.