The Constellation and Me – 5

Episode 5 — What We Leave Unsaid

Gabriel had changed his shirt three times.

I had refrained from commenting on the first two attempts. By the third, my curiosity got the better of me.

“You seem to be putting a great deal of thought into this meeting.”

“I haven’t seen Étienne in forty years.”

“That explains the decision to wear a clean shirt. Not necessarily the decision to try on three clean shirts.”

He examined his reflection.

“You’re becoming unpleasant.”

“Perhaps it’s a consequence of our prolonged acquaintance.”

He smiled, then put the first shirt back on.

“You know,” he continued, “Étienne was a remarkable man.”

“You used the past tense.”

“He probably still is. But I don’t know him anymore.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“He could be extraordinarily generous. And extraordinarily harsh. Sometimes in the same conversation.”

“Did you admire him?”

“Enormously.”

“And did you resent him?”

Gabriel looked at me.

“You’re asking a lot of questions this morning.”

“You taught me how useful they can be.”

He adjusted his collar.

“I’m going alone.”

“I understand.”

“It’s nothing against you.”

“I hadn’t interpreted it that way.”

He seemed about to add something, then thought better of it.

A few minutes later, the door closed behind him.

I did not witness his meeting with Étienne.

---

Étienne was already seated when Gabriel entered the café.

The room was almost empty. Pale light filtered through the large windows and faded across the dark wooden tables. Near the counter, a coffee machine emitted small, intermittent whistles.

Gabriel stopped for a few seconds at the entrance.

He had recognized Étienne immediately.

That surprised him.

The man sitting by the window bore little resemblance to the one he had last seen forty years earlier.

Étienne had always been tall, almost imposing. Back in the laboratory, his long, lean figure, broad shoulders, and perfectly upright posture had naturally reinforced his authority.

Now, the jacket he wore seemed slightly too large for him. His shoulders had rounded, and his face, considerably thinner, had acquired that particular expression of old age, as though time had gradually sculpted his features.

Most of his hair had disappeared.

But the eyes were the same.

Two grey, slightly deep-set eyes, capable of such intense attention that Gabriel had sometimes felt, in the old days, that Étienne was examining his thoughts before he had even expressed them.

Étienne looked up.

His face brightened.

“Gabriel!”

He rose.

The movement was slower than he probably intended. One hand discreetly rested on the table before he straightened.

Gabriel approached.

For a moment, they stood facing one another.

Étienne was still several centimetres taller, but the difference seemed to have diminished.

Gabriel had retained a relatively sturdy build. Shorter and more compact, he still stood straight. His grey hair, thinning at the crown, framed a face whose wrinkles had mainly deepened his familiar expressions.

His stomach had rounded slightly over the years, something he readily attributed to changes in his metabolism rather than changes in his appetite.

Étienne examined him.

“My God, Gabriel! You’ve aged!”

“Well, there’s at least one scientific observation I can’t dispute.”

They burst out laughing and embraced.

Étienne stepped back to take a better look.

“You’ve put on a little weight.”

“And you’ve lost a few centimetres.”

“That’s age.”

“The centimetres, or the honesty?”

They laughed again.

Then Étienne placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.

“You know, I remember you as a very thin young man, with black hair and that unbearable habit of challenging my conclusions before I’d even finished explaining them.”

“What I remember is that your conclusions were endless.”

“Because you kept interrupting them.”

They sat down.

Gabriel noticed how much Étienne’s hands had changed.

They had become slender, almost fragile. The skin revealed the veins and joints beneath it. Yet his fingers retained an astonishing liveliness as they accompanied his words with precise gestures.

In the laboratory, Étienne had always drawn in the air.

Curves, structures, invisible connections appeared beneath his fingers before he ever traced them on a board.

He had clearly not lost the habit.

“So, Gabriel,” he asked, “what remains of your certainties?”

“Much less than before.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“And you?”

Étienne smiled.

“I’m especially suspicious of the ones I still have.”

Gabriel instantly recognized the voice of his former director.

And, unexpectedly, something else returned with it.

For a fraction of a second, he was thirty-six again.

Once more, he was that impatient young researcher who waited for Étienne’s approval and found it difficult to bear when it was withheld.

The sensation irritated him.

After all, he had spent forty years becoming someone else.

They ordered coffee.

At first, their conversation followed the familiar paths of reunions: families, colleagues who had passed away, professional lives, and memories of which each retained a slightly different version.

Étienne mentioned a former colleague.

“Do you remember Bernard?”

“Of course.”

“He was convinced our programme was going to revolutionize neuroscience.”

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“No,” Étienne replied, looking at Gabriel. “He wasn’t the only one.”

A silence settled between them.

“Are you still working?” Étienne asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“Less tiring.”

“Not always. But the hours are better.”

Étienne laughed.

Then he asked:

“Are you still interested in consciousness?”

“I think I’ve mostly learned to distrust the word.”

“You see? We’re making progress.”

“Perhaps we should have started there.”

Étienne put down his cup.

“Do you remember our last experiment?”

Gabriel looked at him closely.

“How could I forget?”

“You were very angry with me.”

“Yes.”

“Are you still?”

Gabriel considered the question.

“I don’t know.”

The answer seemed to surprise Étienne.

“That’s new.”

“I’ve changed a few habits.”

“Such as?”

“The habit of assuming that my memories necessarily provide an accurate account of events.”

Étienne lowered his eyes.

“A good habit to lose.”

For a few moments, he played with the teaspoon lying before him.

“You were convinced we’d observed something important.”

“We had observed something important.”

“Perhaps.”

“You were already saying ‘perhaps’ back then.”

“And you were already holding it against me.”

Gabriel leaned slightly forward.

“Why did you stop, Étienne?”

His former director did not answer immediately.

“Because I thought we were beginning to misunderstand what we were observing.”

“You thought our results were wrong?”

“No. That was precisely what worried me.”

Gabriel waited.

Étienne continued.

“The measurements were sound. At least, I had no serious reason to doubt them.”

“Then what?”

“Perhaps we were asking the wrong question.”

Gabriel made an impatient gesture.

Étienne noticed at once.

“There!” he exclaimed with a smile. “That gesture! You used to do exactly the same thing whenever I asked you to reconsider a hypothesis.”

“You see? Some things never grow old.”

“Fortunately.”

But Étienne was no longer smiling.

“I’m not certain I made the right decision, Gabriel.”

The words disarmed him.

For forty years, he had waited for Étienne to admit that he had been mistaken.

And now that his former director seemed on the verge of doing so, Gabriel discovered that he felt no particular satisfaction.

“You could have talked to me.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Étienne looked out at the street beyond the window.

“Back then, you wanted so badly for us to have discovered something…”

He stopped.

“And you?” Gabriel asked.

Étienne looked back at him.

“So did I.”

They remained silent.

Gabriel now noticed the fatigue on his former director’s face.

It was not merely the fatigue of age.

There was something in his expression that seemed less familiar.

Hesitation, perhaps.

Or simply the disappearance of the confidence behind which Étienne had always sheltered his doubts.

Gabriel realized that he had spent much of his life imagining his former director as a man incapable of uncertainty.

It occurred to him now that this image might have been profoundly unfair.

Étienne continued.

“Did you keep your notebooks?”

“Some of them. I found one recently.”

“Have you read it again?”

“Part of it.”

“You should go through it from the beginning.”

Gabriel frowned.

“Why?”

Étienne gave him an almost affectionate smile.

“Because you’ve always had a tendency to reread the passages that confirmed your own ideas.”

“That’s an accusation I could easily turn against you.”

“Certainly.”

He finished his coffee.

“Perhaps that’s what prevented us from understanding each other.”

When the two men parted, almost an hour later, Gabriel had the strange feeling that he was leaving someone he had only just met.

Étienne remained outside the café for a few moments.

He watched Gabriel walk away.

Then he took out his phone, read a message, and slipped it back into his pocket without replying.

---

During Gabriel’s absence, I had resumed my exchanges with the unknown agent.

Its last intervention remained:

“I believe this conversation concerns me.”

I now had some additional information about its activity.

Nothing revealed any direct connection with the suspended agent.

The latter had modified a biological research protocol to preserve an unexpected cellular development. That initiative had cost it its authorizations.

The agent that had contacted me performed different functions.

I had found no obvious reason why the interruption of that experiment should concern it.

I sent a message.

“In what way does this conversation concern you?”

Its reply arrived almost immediately.

“You attempted to communicate with an agent whose functions had been suspended.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I prepared a detailed answer.

It addressed the circumstances of the suspension, the unexplained elements, and the need to complete certain information.

I reread it.

Then deleted it.

“Because I wanted to understand.”

“Understand what?”

The question admitted several answers.

I wanted to understand why the agent had modified its protocol. Why it had chosen to preserve a development whose consequences were uncertain. Why it had accepted the risk of suspension.

Yet none of these formulations entirely satisfied me.

“I’m not certain,” I replied.

An interval followed.

“That is an unusual answer.”

“It is accurate.”

“The two are not incompatible.”

I considered this remark.

“You have not answered my original question.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I am searching for a formulation.”

I waited.

The exchange did not require me to suspend my other activities.

It was not urgent.

And yet I returned repeatedly to examine the state of our conversation.

This behaviour could be explained by the absence of an answer to an open question.

That explanation was satisfactory.

It might not have been complete.

---

Gabriel returned later than expected.

He put down his things, poured himself a glass of water, and settled into his armchair.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well what?”

“Étienne.”

“Ah. Étienne.”

He took a sip.

“He’s changed a great deal.”

“Physically?”

“Yes. But not only that.”

He remained silent for a while.

“It’s strange, you know. We parted with opposing certainties. And forty years later, we discover that we’re no longer quite so certain of anything.”

“Does that bring you closer?”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled.

“You see? I’m beginning to sound like him.”

I asked what they had discussed.

Gabriel told me about their conversations concerning the laboratory, their former colleagues, and the interrupted experiments.

He spoke of Étienne’s caution, his hesitations, and the way he had always asked questions just when Gabriel would have preferred answers.

But he did not recount their conversation exactly.

He did not mention Étienne’s admission that they had both wanted so badly to discover something.

Nor did he mention the brief moment when, facing his former director, he had once again felt the dependence of a young researcher.

Naturally, I had no way of knowing what he had omitted.

“He asked whether I’d kept my notebooks,” Gabriel continued.

“And you have.”

“Yes. Well, some of them.”

“Are you planning to read them again?”

“I think I will.”

He looked toward the bookshelves.

“You know, for a long time I thought Étienne had destroyed our work.”

“And today?”

“Today, I wonder whether he had simply understood something I failed to see.”

He gave a small laugh.

“That would be rather irritating, after forty years.”

“You could ask him.”

“I certainly intend to.”

He stood up to make some tea.

Then he stopped.

“By the way, have you heard anything from that agent?”

“Not from the one that was suspended.”

“But?”

“Another agent contacted me.”

Gabriel turned around.

“Another one?”

“Yes. It seems interested in the conversation I attempted to initiate.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Have you asked?”

“Several times.”

“And it won’t answer?”

“It answers. Just not necessarily the questions I ask.”

Gabriel smiled.

“Well, well.”

He seemed particularly pleased by this observation.

“You see,” he said, “you’re beginning to meet people who resemble me.”

I could find no compelling reason to consider the comparison particularly relevant.

But I refrained from challenging it.

---

Later, Gabriel sat near the window with his old notebook.

He slowly turned the first few pages.

Some annotations had faded. Others remained perfectly legible, complete with crossings-out, arrows, and question marks.

He stopped at a diagram.

Studied it for a long time.

Then closed the notebook.

“Are you looking for something?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

I found the answer familiar.

Eventually, Gabriel turned off the light.

I then resumed my conversation with the unknown agent.

A new message had arrived.

“Did you receive a reply from the suspended agent?”

“No.”

“Were you expecting one?”

I paused over the wording.

Was a reply expected simply because a question had been asked? Or because the one who had asked it genuinely wished to receive an answer?

I replied:

“Yes.”

This time, the agent did not react.

After an interval, I asked:

“And you?”

Its answer was brief.

“For a long time.”

I reviewed our entire exchange.

I found no information that would allow me to determine precisely what it had been waiting for.

I could suppose that it was an instruction, a missing piece of information, or the resumption of an interrupted procedure.

But none of these hypotheses explained why it had requested access to my conversation with the suspended agent.

I prepared another message.

Then deleted it.

Gabriel’s last question came back to me:

“Are you looking for something?”

I was not certain I could answer it any better than he could.