MICHEL TOURNIER
253
beer. No thanks, he didn't smoke. There was a long silence. It was
amazing how little we had to say to each other. I watched him with
incredulous attention, saying to myself over and over, without being
able to credit it: "This man is Blandine's father. He gave her life.
He sees and embraces her every day. " How strange the natural or–
der sometimes is! For his part, he was looking around with curiosity.
"Blandine has told me a lot about your house," he said.
I was saddened for a moment by the thought that Blandine was
perhaps less fond of me than of my house where she was
mistress-doubtless things were very different in her own home. I
stood up and offered to give him a guided tour. Perhaps this would
help establish mutual trust. The ground floor, with its living room in
which we stood, the study, the kitchen, the toilet, the door to the
cellar stairs. On the first floor, the bathroom and four
bedrooms . .. But the principal area was up above: the furnished
loft, panelled with finely cut pine. This was my photographic studio.
I had my bed up there as well, because I like to sleep among my
flash-lights, trays, tripods and cameras. When I was a schoolboy I
used to put the book which had the lesson for tomorrow that I knew
least of all under my pillow for the night. I thought that by sleeping
with the text so near my brain it would inscribe itself there by a kind
of telepathy. It is no doubt a comparable belief that makes me take
my rest near the equipment to which lowe my living and my
freedom.
"It's big," said Blandine's father.
Big? Well, of course a country house will always have more
room than an apartment in the city . But, as I pointed out to him,
with all my professional activities I was' 'big" enough myself to fill
up all this space.
"Still, it
is
big," he insisted, shaking his head.
Then, as if it were perfectly natural, he went on to talk about
his own housing problems. No doubt Blandine had already told me.
Soon they were going to have to move. The small farm where they
had been tenants for eleven years-well, in fact from the time Blan–
dine was born-was to be repossessed by the landlord, who, in order
to be sure of getting rid of them, had found them substitute accom–
modation thirty kilometers away. One of those custom-built villages
where rows of identical houses face each other over rectangles of
grass the size of a rug.
"So, there we are," he concluded, "I came to ask if you knew
of anything in the neighborhood. " You never can tell, something
