ON TWO OCCASIONS I CROSSED PATHS WITH THE YOUNG woman whose name I had come across in G.’s famous little black book. Nathalie was one of G.’s many conquests during our affair, which he always strenuously denied.

The first time I saw her was in the brasserie where G. was a regular. A table was permanently reserved for him, and he had taken me to dinner there only a few months earlier. I went in to buy a packet of cigarettes late one evening, thinking it was unlikely that G. would be there, since he was very much not a night owl. Unfortunately, on this occasion I was mistaken. I spotted him immediately, sitting opposite a very young woman. I was troubled by her youth and radiance. I felt instantly old. I wasn’t yet sixteen. I had ended the relationship almost a year earlier.

Five years later, I came out of a lecture at the Sorbonne and was walking down Boulevard Saint-Michel, when I heard a voice calling my name over and over from the opposite side of the street. I turned but didn’t immediately recognize the young woman waving at me. She ran across the street and almost got herself knocked over, reminded me that her name was Nathalie, and, slightly embarrassed, mentioned the brief, upsetting glimpse we’d had of each other that evening in the smoky interior of a Parisian brasserie where G. had been vulgar enough to greet me with a triumphant smile. She asked me if I had time for a coffee. I wasn’t sure I had any desire to talk to her about anything whatsoever, but something intrigued me; her face had lost the glow that had so upset me five years earlier and made me believe my youth had been stolen by hers. I suppose I might, narcissistically, have felt some satisfaction, savored the feeling of revenge. She had a hell of a cheek, stopping me like that in the middle of the street, when five years before she’d begun sleeping with G. while I was still in a relationship with him. But I could see she didn’t look very well. Her face was gaunt with anxiety.

I smiled at her and agreed to a brief chat, despite her slightly rambling and agitated air. We sat down and her words began to spill out. Nathalie told me about her childhood, her broken family and absent father. How could I not recognize myself in her words? The same scenario. The same suffering. She told me how G. had hurt her, manipulated her in order to alienate her from her family and friends, from everything that makes up the life of a young woman. Then she reminded me of how G. made love, so mechanical and repetitive. Another poor little girl who had mistaken sex for love. I recognized everything she said, it all came back to me, every detail, and as the words poured out, I felt feverish, desperate to relate with the same precision how painful the memory of that experience remained for me.

Nathalie kept talking, apologizing, biting her lip, laughing nervously. If G. had witnessed our encounter, he would certainly have been horrified; he had always made sure that his mistresses never met, presumably for fear of seeing them turn into a furious horde hatching some joint revenge against him.

We both felt that we had broken a taboo. What was it that linked us, brought us together, deep down? An overwhelming need to confide in someone who would understand. It was a relief as well for me to find myself in solidarity with this girl, who had once been one of my many rivals.

In the solace conferred by our newfound sisterhood, we tried to comfort each other: this episode was well and truly behind us, and now we could even laugh about it, without jealousy, pain, or despair.

“To think he thought he was a champion, such a great lover, when in reality he was completely pathetic!”

We began to laugh hysterically. All of a sudden Nathalie’s expression grew calm and radiant again. She looked like the young woman I had admired five years before.

Then we talked about the young boys, Manila.

“Do you think he’s homosexual? Or an actual pedophile?” Nathalie asked.

“I’d say more an ephebophile.” (I’d studied literature, and had come across this word, which I was very proud of, when reading some author whose name I’ve forgotten.) “He’s turned on by puberty, which is presumably the age he’s stuck at himself. However brilliant he is, his psyche is that of an adolescent. And when he’s with a young girl, he feels like a fourteen-year-old boy. That’s the reason he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.”

Nathalie burst out laughing again.

“You’re right! I prefer to think of him like that. I feel so dirty sometimes. As if I was the one who’d been sleeping with eleven-year-old boys in the Philippines.”

“No, it’s not you, Nathalie, it’s not our fault. We’re like those boys: we had no one to protect us then, we felt like he made us exist, even though he was just using us. Maybe he didn’t even mean to; it’s just his pathology.”

“At least we can sleep with whoever we like now, not just old men!” Nathalie giggled.

I had proof now: I wasn’t the only one carrying the burden of my relationship with G. And, contrary to what he recounted in his books, he did not leave his young mistresses with nothing but warm memories.

We didn’t exchange phone numbers or anything that would have allowed us to see each other again one day. We had no reason to. We embraced, holding each other tight, and wished each other well.

What became of Nathalie? I hope she met a boy her own age who loved her along with her suffering, who helped rid her of her shame. I hope she won that fight. But how many other girls are out there, clinging to the shadows, their faces, like hers that day, gaunt with defeat, desperate for someone to listen to them?