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took it in her hand, realizing only now that it was a passport. She hadn’t seen these new passports, with their long outer covers. She opened it.
    Stature: medium. Hair: brown. Eyebrows: brown. Eyes: green. Nose: regular. Mouth: regular. Beard: shaven ...
    The last word made her tremble. In her bathroom, on the little metal shelf over the sink, was Grig’s shaving kit. “I should hide it,” she told herself, thinking that the other man, when he returned, might go into the bathroom and find such an indiscreet object there. But after the first step she thought again ... What good was there in hiding it since he wasn’t coming back...
    She recited again the “identifying signs” from the passport page. She would have liked to rediscover in each word the features of that uncertain curve of cheek, which was sinking again into the haze from which it had broken free for only a moment.
    Hair, brown ... Mouth ... regular ... What bored bureaucrat had lifted his eyes for a second from among his papers and observed him tentatively in order to write under the pertinent rubric the colour of his eyes, the line of his forehead, the shape of his lips? ... She’d had him here, in her apartment, in broad daylight, under the full glow of a lamp, and she still wouldn’t have been able to say anything for certain about his face with its indefinite lines.
    Mouth: regular ... Nora closed her eyes and forced herself to remember that mouth, about which the passport said with indifference that it was regular, as though it weren’t possible to hide an infinity of lines behind that single word. She would have liked to be able to walk her forefinger over his lips and surprise in the slight
gap between them that uncertain smile that spilled a thin, weary light over his whole face.
    It seemed to her that the passport in her hand contained an unsolved mystery, and that the bureaucratic formulas, official seals and identifying signs made up a life that waited to be understood. She felt alone, horribly alone, in the apartment with all the lights on, holding in her hand a photograph, a name, a few personal details, beneath which she would have been delighted to hear the beating of a heart, a voice.
    She was tempted to hold up the little booklet with the white cover to her ear and listen, as though in a conch shell, to the whispering of an unknown life.
    The pages “reserved for visas” were full of sundry seals and stamps. Nora read the last row: Visa sous le no. 1464 à la Legation de Belgique à Bucarest pour permettre au titulaire ...
    Two smaller, rectangular stamps at the bottom of the pages attested to his border crossings, outbound and returning: Hegenrath, 23 juillet 1934. Contrôle des passagers. And later: Hegenrath, 12 août .
    â€œWhere was I between July 23 and August 12?” Nora wondered. She saw herself again on the beach at Agigea, under blazing sunlight, thirty days of safety while Grig played cards at the Casino in Eforie by day and they danced in the taproom at night. Some days, when the sea was calm, she could hear the jazz music in her tent in Agigea ... At the same time, someone was crossing the border at Hegenrath on a July night, maybe on his way to Brussels, maybe on his way to a small provincial town, maybe alone, maybe with a woman, someone who five months later had picked her up out of the snow on a Bucharest street and looked her in the eyes with an indifferent lift of his shoulders ...
    She wished she could relive those days, July 23 to August 12, not in her tent at Agigea, but rather somewhere unseen, in the shadow of this unknown man. She would have liked to know what had happened during those nineteen days and see the small train station at the border by night, the customs officer’s manner, the stamp printing with red ink on paper the day that would not return ... Hegenrath, 23 juillet . To Nora the words felt mysterious, impenetrable.

    She plunged into the