"I am coming out of seven years of a life that I truly believed was meant to be. I had room and board. I grew seven years older. For the rest, it's absolutely as I'd always dreamed it. There was not an object we bought together. Not a neighborhood where we lived together. No house, rent, bed by the wall, concierge. Not a line, a note, a word in his writings about me. Did I exist? If he were to leave tomorrow. I'd have nothing (September 1939)." Brive, Hotel Terminus. The two ghosts I am pursuing slept here a few nights... Sixty years later, I wanted to sleep here too. Room 15 another room, another hotel... in November 1942, they came through here without leaving any more of a trace than I will her whole life in a suitcase. The suitcase in which the paper woman slept then exchanged hands until it virtually became mine for a few months."
