He arrives with a cigarette to the side of his mouth, a ladder and a new bulb, giving her a side look across his pencil moustache. Then he wrestles her three sets of keys from her, opens the door, puts her sitting down inside and leaves Zorica or one of the others to decide what to do with her. Both of Mme F's apartments are monuments to a kind of kitsch which Susan Sontag never dreamed of. Fernande calls it untidiness, and only apologises for it vaguely, as for a crime perpetrated by someone else. The rented apartment is the most kitsch of the two, as if Mme F had made up for Georges' absence, and her descent to the first floor, by a flurry of foreign holidays and purchases.
Glassfronted cupboards overflow with dolls of every shape and size, from every ethnic grouping.
Dolls from some demented Carmen dance across chests of drawers, and, like Zorica's flowers, look as if they are about to make a getaway across the ceiling and walls and back to some eternal rave or other. In the upstairs apartment, squatters would be comfortable if in a sort of time warp. Lace doilies cover a small early-model TV set and radio. A well-worn carpet occupies the middle space. Old post office calendars block up missing window-panes.