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« Three characters, seven, twenty? How many simultaneous stories would a reader agree to follow? »

« Guy, well, wore the tie. On the face of it, this is done to reassure any reader, we cannot deduce anything from this. Especially since it was a simple tie in silk, all-rounder, neither slim, too casual, nor knit, too risky because he would not have known with what to wear it. It was almost always united, in deep blues, but sometimes a very fine stripe brightened it. I had offered him ties of other colors, or fancy patterns, to no avail. They had failed at the bottom of a drawer at best. The others, about 50, were hanging from a long double metal rod in his closet and I would have been unable to distinguish them between them. He was too short of bust and not strong enough collar, and he chose these ties too long. He had the end of it in the pants, but it always ended up escaping, only to float uncontrolkily on the belt buckle. I don't know where his taste for this strip of decorative fabric came from. Teaching English in high school did not require war that he would wear one. I imagine that unconsciously it was for him to establish with his students an impassable Maginot line of clothing. Unless the English tradition, "Tie," which also means "link," "attache," is a key to analysis. Anyway, once he got home he didn't take it off, he wouldn't even loosen the collar. For a long time I blamed this on fatigue. Retirement age came. He did not abandon her. He knotted his knot every morning, in all weathers, under all circumstances. He wore it indifferently under a jacket, under a sweater, a jacket, an anorak, all converging to give him the look of a security guard of a guarding company. In winter sports, his bad knees prevented him from skiing, but he sometimes took my son there, he wore the tie to the bottom of the ski slopes, and he could even eat a fondue, cravat, in high-altitude restaurants. I've got the picture. Removing it to sleep where to swim must have been a tear. His conformism was so extreme that he confined him to originality. »