L'École des indifférents

In a Paris that feels both familiar and oddly detached, a narrator follows the erratic wanderings of his tall, blond companion Etienne. Etienne’s world is a parade of oddities—he catalogues cats, dogs, and birds with a lyrical sarcasm, dreams of Brazil after a fleeting encounter with an exotic fruit, and obsessively measures the distance to imagined obelisks. When a mysterious green‑eyed young woman appears, she briefly satisfies his yearning for love before vanishing, leaving him to chase the moon’s reflection on the Seine in a mixture of reverence and absurdity.

The narrator watches Etienne’s theatrical soliloquies to the night sky, noting how their friendship is stitched together by shared quirks rather than deep roots. Their exchanges of trinkets and habits—trading a pen‑holder for a tobacco pot, swapping stories of distant travels—create a peculiar legend that both comforts and distances them. Through this whimsical portrait, the story invites listeners to linger in a world where indifference and intimacy coexist, all set against the backdrop of early‑twentieth‑century Paris.