“Whoever penned these pages,” he decides, “can’t write for shit.”

“Is there a name on them?”

“Yes, yes, a name and an address. 74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine. I know the neighborhood. There’s a dance hall on that block, the Bal du Printemps. The owner plays the accordion with bells wrapped around his ankles. I wouldn’t ask a whore to work in that sweatbox. Not because she’d faint but because she’d starve to death. Sympathies, Michel — it was your misfortune to steal from the one poor American in this city.”

I don’t tell him that I was the one who’d noted the woman’s poverty when Raymond first spotted her entering the station. But he’d pointed out something even more important: “She’s also American. And anything American in those bags will fetch more than if it came from the Place Vendôme.” Anything, it turns out, except paper.

We sit on a bench under one of the renderings for the blue train and wait. An entire day passes as we watch the crowd, reading faces, hoping to find the one anxious face in the rush. But the droves are expressionless.

“Yes, yes, I’m afraid this is trash of the worst sort,” continues Legrand. “And ‘trash’ is likely too great a compliment. Let’s call it tripe. This man on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine will probably pay you for relieving him of this nonsense.”

I ask what the man writes about.

“What else? The war. He fancies himself a novelist, I suppose. Just what the world needs — another writer. The world needs more of them about as much as it needs more pickpockets. Graces to God, listen to this.…”

Legrand reads from one of the typed pages. The sounds mean nothing to us, of course. All Raymond and I can focus on is the rhythm. The sentences are steady and staccato, but abbreviated. They make our Valjean sound like a stutterer.

“This man was in the war, no doubt,” Legrand concludes. “It’s clear he suffers from shell shock. Every sentence echoes with the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun. If I ever met the fool, I’d rip up his folios and roll him a free smoke. At least that would relax him enough to come up with some modifiers. That’s a little-known benefit of hashish, you know: it encourages the adjectives and adverbs.”

He snaps his fingers, excitedly.

“You know what we should do? We should rewrite these pages for this writer! Yes, show him how it’s done! Of course, Michel, you write words as well as you read them, but so what? We’ll make rolling papers out of this sheaf and you two can smoke every last strip to forget your lot in life. Then when the words mingle in your mind, you can say them out loud, and I’ll translate and transcribe. The result can’t be any worse than what this jester has done.”

But we don’t smoke them because when we return to the gare the next morning, heads still groggy, we expect to be greeted with posters announcing a reward. A whole agency exists devoted to lost passenger items. Fliers are as common on corkboards as promises for the blue train. So we sidle along the walls, trying not to appear anxious or conspicuous. This isn’t easy to do, since Raymond has to read each circular to me. One is for a purse, another for a passport. By about the fifth or sixth leaflet, I begin to think he lies. Maybe all these handbills cry out for the valise, and he’s simply set on destroying this writer’s work. So I push his nose close to each to ink-smudged scrap and make him say the words slowly. Lost: One Steamer Trunk, Dark, With Silver Buckles. Lost: One Suitcase, Child-Sized, Beige. Lost: One Animal Crate, Dog Inside. Please return our darling pet… It seems as if everyone has lost something of importance — just not their words.

“Maybe she didn’t tell her husband about the valise,” suggests Raymond.

“It would’ve been the first thing he’d ask about. Probably before he even kissed her hello.”

We sit on a bench under one of the renderings for the blue train and wait. An entire day passes as we watch the crowd, reading faces, hoping to find the one anxious face in the rush. But the droves are expressionless, just footfalls following a motion. Finally, when Raymond can no longer stand the hunger, he picks the pocket of a mustachioed man in a bowler hat.

That night he dines on steak and beer, but I’m too sated with disappointment to eat.