I

— So, to sum up, says the notary, your father died on the ninth of February without a will.

Salomé interprets.

She stands slightly back from the desk, on the window side, because the light has to fall on her and not behind her. It is the first thing you are taught and the only one nobody remembers: an interpreter with the daylight behind her is an interpreter no one can see.

Opposite, Yanis Kessler looks at her and signs.

— Yes, says Salomé. The ninth of February, at the hospital. He left nothing.

She is the one who said “I”, and it was not her.

The notary writes. His name is Maître Vaugiraud, he has a cherrywood desk and files stacked in three towers, and he does what is needed: he speaks to Yanis, he looks at Yanis, he does not turn towards her every two sentences. She stopped finding that normal a long time ago. One notary in three manages it.

— The assets consist of the business, premises in Vénissieux and a flat. The liabilities are another matter. You have three options: accept outright, accept up to the value of the net assets, or renounce.

Salomé interprets. She signed “three options” by setting the three of them in the space, to her left, in the centre, to her right, because that is how you arrange three things in this language, and because the notary will come back to them.

Yanis answers. Fast, both hands, his whole upper body in it.

— How much debt? says Salomé.

— Around one hundred and eighty thousand euros, mostly trade debt and a loan on equipment.

She takes it back over. She watches the figure cross Yanis's face — no surprise, he knew, but something closes all the same.

— If I renounce, does the workshop shut?

— If you renounce, the estate is wound up. The employees are made redundant.

— Nine people.

— Nine people, yes.

He is going to accept. He decided before he came in.

That is the third voice, the one that does not come out. She knows it well, she has lived with it for nineteen years, she knows exactly where it lives: somewhere between the jaw and the breastbone, and it is not allowed anywhere else.

They taught her that at the school. Fidelity: you translate everything, you add nothing, you take nothing away. Neutrality: you have no opinion, you do not advise, you do not take sides, you do not warn. Confidentiality: what is said in this room no longer exists once you leave it.

Three words. You recite them in the first year like a times table, you find them a little solemn, and it takes ten years to understand that the third is easy, that the first is technical, and that it is the second one that wears people out.

— I'll take it, says Yanis.

Salomé says it aloud and hears her own voice say I'll take it.

— Are you certain? You have until the ninth of August to—

— I'll take it. My father started this workshop in 1979. There are nine people in it. Momo has been there thirty-one years.

The notary puts down his pen.

— Monsieur Kessler, I have to tell you something and I ask you to hear me out. I have handled estates like this one. You are not inheriting a workshop: you are inheriting a cash-flow position. If you accept up to the value of the net assets, you do not pay out of your own property. It is slower, it is uglier, and it protects you.

— I'll take all of it.

There is a silence. The notary looks at Salomé.

This is the moment. It comes every time, in every office, and it always comes the same way: a hearing person looks for an ally. He does not do it unkindly. He does it because he has in front of him somebody he believes he cannot reach, and because on this side of the room there is a woman who speaks his language.

— Could you explain to him that—

— He can hear you, says Salomé. Well — he understands you. I translate everything. Tell him yourself.

She said that while signing it at the same time, because what she has just said is part of the conversation and Yanis has the right to know that somebody has tried to go round behind him.

The notary reddens slightly. He turns back to Yanis.

— I'm sorry. Monsieur Kessler, I advise you to accept up to the value of the net assets.

Yanis smiles. It is the first time in forty minutes.

— No, he says through Salomé's mouth. But thank you for saying it to me.

The appointment runs on for another twenty-five minutes. There are papers to sign, a declaration for the registry, a four-month deadline. Salomé translates a sentence about “the succession option” and another about “the reporting of gifts”, and she translates them correctly because she spent two hours the night before revising the vocabulary of an estate, which nobody pays her for and nobody knows about.

At ten past six they come out onto the pavement of the rue Servient.

It is raining a little. Yanis pulls his hood up, then pushes it back down, because with a hood you can no longer see faces in three-quarter view.

It is over. The assignment stops at the door. Salomé will say goodbye, get on the tram, go home, and forget — not pretend to: forget for good, it is a muscle, it can be trained, she has forgotten four thousand appointments in nineteen years.

She signs:

— Have a good evening. See you Thursday.

Yanis answers something.

And there, a tiny thing happens.

He does not sign towards her the way one signs towards an interpreter. He does not place the sentence in the neutral space, halfway, where you put what is meant for the office and the notary and the hearing world.

He signs close to the body, short, his eyes in hers.

— You said “I” all afternoon. Doesn't that tire you out?

Salomé opens her mouth.

She finds nothing, which has not happened to her for a very long time, and which ought to alarm her more than it does.