"I'll take a room, please."

"For how many nights?"

"I don't know yet."

"Can I have your passport, sir?"

"Here."

"Are you a foreigner? Where did you learn to speak our language so well?"

"Here. I spent my childhood in this town."

She looks at him. "It must have been a long time ago."

Claus laughs. "Do I look that old?"

The young woman blushes. "No, no, I didn't mean that. I'll give you our best room, they're almost all empty. The season hasn't started yet."

"Do you get many tourists?"

"In summer, lots. I also recommend our restaurant, sir."

Claus goes up to his room on the second floor. Its two windows look out onto the square.

Claus eats in the deserted restaurant and goes back to his room. He opens his case, puts his clothes in the dresser, pulls up a chair to one of the windows, and looks out onto the empty street. On the other side of the square, the old houses have remained intact. They have been restored, repainted pink, yellow, blue, and green. The ground floor of each is occupied by a shop: a grocer, a souvenir shop, a dairy, a bookshop, a boutique. The bookshop is in the blue house where it used to be when Claus was a child and went there to buy paper and pencils.

The next day, Claus goes back to the playing field, the castle, the cemetery, the station. When he feels tired, he goes into a bar; he sits in a park. Later in the afternoon, he comes back to the main square. He goes into the bookshop.

A man with white hair sits at the counter, reading by the light of a desk lamp. The shop is in darkness. There are no customers. The white-haired man gets up.

"Excuse me, I forgot to turn on the lights."

The room and window lights come on. The man asks, "Can I help you?"

Claus says, "Please don't bother. I'm just looking."

The man takes off his glasses. "Lucas!"

Claus smiles. "You know my brother! Where is he?"

The man repeats, "Lucas!"

"I'm Lucas's brother. I'm called Claus."

"Don't joke, Lucas, please."

Claus takes his passport from his pocket. "See for yourself."

The man examines the passport. "That doesn't prove anything."

Claus says, "I'm sorry, I have no other means of proving my identity. I am Claus T. and I've come to look for my brother, Lucas. You know him. He has certainly told you about me, his brother Claus."

"Yes, he often talked to me about you, but I must admit I never believed you really existed."

Claus laughs. "Whenever I spoke to people about Lucas, they didn't believe me either. Rather funny, don't you think?"

"No, not really. Come, let's sit down over there."

He points to a low table and some armchairs at the back of the shop, in front of the French windows opening onto the garden.

"If you're not Lucas, I had better introduce myself. I am called Peter. Peter N. But if you aren't Lucas, why did you come here, to this particular place?"

Claus says, "I arrived yesterday. First I went to Grandmother's house, but it's no longer there. There's a playing field there instead. I came in here because this used to be a book and stationery shop when I was a child. We often came here to buy paper and pencils. I can still remember the man who ran it, a pale, fat man. I was hoping to find him here."

"Victor?"

"I don't know his name. I never did."

"He was called Victor. He's dead."

"Of course. He was getting on a bit even then."

"That's right."

Peter looks at the garden disappearing in the darkness.

Claus says, "I naively expected to find Lucas in Grandmother's house after all these years. Where is he?"

Peter continues looking out into the dark. "I don't know."

"Is there anyone in this town who might know?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Did you know him well?"

Peter looks Claus straight in the eyes. "As well as you can know anyone."

Peter leans across the table, grips Claus's shoulders. "Stop it, Lucas, stop this play-acting! It's pointless! Aren't you ashamed to be doing this to me?"

Claus frees himself, gets up. "I can see you were very close, you and Lucas."

Peter falls back into his chair. "Yes, very. Forgive me, Claus. I knew Lucas when he was fifteen. At the age of thirty he disappeared."

"Disappeared? You mean he left this town?"

"The town and maybe even the country. Then he returns today with a different name. I always thought that play on words with your names was stupid."

"Our grandfather had that double name, Claus-Lucas. Our mother, who had a great deal of affection for her father, gave us these two names. It's not Lucas standing here before you, Peter, it's Claus."

Peter gets up. "Very well, Claus. In that case I must give you something that your brother Lucas left with me. Wait here."

Peter goes up to the apartment. He comes back shortly after with five large school notebooks.

"Here. These are meant for you. He had a lot more to start with, but he took them back, corrected them, erased everything that wasn't indispensable. If he'd had the time I think he would have eliminated everything."

Claus shakes his head. "No, not everything. He would have kept what was essential. For me."

He takes the notebooks, he smiles. "At last, here is the proof of Lucas's existence. Thank you, Peter. Has anyone read them?"

"Apart from me, no."

"I'm staying at the hotel across the way. I'll be back."

Claus reads all night, occasionally raising his eyes to look at the street.

Above the bookshop the light stays on for a long time in two of the three windows in the apartment. The third stays dark.

In the morning, Peter raises the metal shutter of the shop. Claus goes to bed. After noon, Claus leaves the hotel. He has a meal in one of the bars in town where they serve hot dishes all day.

The sky is overcast. Claus goes back to the playing field, sits next to the river. He stays there until night falls and it begins to rain. When Claus arrives back at the main square the bookshop is already closed. Claus rings at the front door of the apartment. Peter leans out of the window.

"The door is open. I was expecting you. Just come up."

Claus finds Peter in the kitchen. There are pans boiling on the stove.

Peter says, "The meal isn't ready yet. I've got some brandy. Would you like some?"

"Yes. I've read the notebooks. What happened afterward? After the death of the child?"

"Nothing. Lucas kept on working. He opened the shop in the morning, he closed it at night. He served his customers without saying a word. He hardly ever spoke. Some people thought he was mute. I often came to see him. We played chess in silence. He played badly. He didn't read or write anymore. I think he ate very little and hardly slept. The light was on all night in his room, but he wasn't in. He went walking in the dark streets of the town and in the cemetery. He said that the best place to sleep was the grave of someone you'd loved."

Peter is silent; he pours the drinks.

Claus says, "And then? Go on, Peter."

"Five years later, in the course of the work being done to lay out the playing field, I heard that the body of a woman had been discovered buried in the riverbank, near your grandmother's house. I told Lucas about it. He thanked me, and the next day he disappeared. No one has seen him since. On his desk he left a letter entrusting the house and the bookshop to me. The saddest thing about this story, you see, Claus, was that Yasmine's body was never identified. The authorities botched the whole affair. There are bodies in the ground everywhere in this unhappy land since the war and the revolution. This body could have been any woman who had tried to cross the border and stepped on a mine. Lucas wouldn't have been questioned."

Claus says, "He could come back now. There's the statute of limitations."