Lola’s departure for France ends her period of refuge with Larrazabal and begins a wandering journey in which care for others and uncertainty about Imma shape her movements. Recounted in a final letter to Amalfitano, the episode moves from the relative shelter of Larrazabal’s home to train stations and improvised sleeping places, tracing both Lola’s independence and the growing fatigue of life on the road.

Background and departure

The account reaches Amalfitano in the next and final letter he receives from his wife. It has no postmark, though its stamps are French, and Lola uses it to recount her conversation with Larrazabal. During her stay in San Sebastián, Larrazabal has offered her a place in his apartment and a daily drive to the Mondragón asylum, where the poet is studying osteology. He also gives her money without asking for anything in return, takes her to the movies, and accompanies her to the boardinghouse to ask whether there has been news of Imma.

Larrazabal’s hospitality becomes a close personal attachment. One night, after they have spent hours together, he proposes marriage. Lola reminds him that she is already married, and he accepts the reminder without taking offense. Yet when she later says she plans to leave and asks him for train money, his generosity reaches a limit: he says he will give her everything he has, but cannot finance a departure that would mean never seeing her again. Lola does not press him. She manages to scrape together enough for a ticket by means she does not explain to Amalfitano, and leaves by train at noon.

A life in transit

Lola’s route does not take her directly to a settled destination. She spends time in Bayonne, leaves for Landes, returns to Bayonne, and is also in Pau and Lourdes. The account presents travel not as a clean break followed by arrival but as a series of movements between places, with no described home or stable plan at the end of them.

At one station, Lola sees a train carrying people who are ill or disabled, alongside other travelers needing assistance. Without knowing how it begins, she finds herself helping them: directing people toward buses waiting outside the station or into queues. The work expands as trains arrive from Italy and northern France. She moves repeatedly through the station, whose rooms have been converted into first-aid and resuscitation posts, with a separate room serving as an improvised morgue for people who do not survive the journey. This brief, practical role makes Lola part of the station’s response to the travelers’ needs, even as she remains a wanderer herself.

Shelter and exhaustion

Her lodging is as precarious as her itinerary. In Lourdes she sleeps in trash compartments inside a modern building, entering them through a small door. At other times she remains at the station, including its bar, after the trains’ disruption has subsided. There, older men buy her coffee and talk with her about movies and crops. These encounters offer temporary company, but not a lasting refuge.

The strain of her days becomes increasingly apparent. Lola moves slowly, her fatigue weighing on her, and the narration describes her as going back and forth through the station like a sleepwalker. The contrast is striking: she helps direct people through an urgent and crowded transit system while her own life has no clear destination. Her care is real, but it does not resolve the instability or exhaustion of her journey.

Imma and the departure from Lourdes

In Lourdes, Lola thinks she sees Imma step off a train from Madrid, accompanied by a group of people with disabilities. The resemblance is specific: the woman is Imma’s height, wears long black skirts like her, and has a similarly mournful Castilian face. But Lola does not call out. She stays still until the woman has passed, then, five minutes later, pushes out of the station and walks out of Lourdes toward the highway. Only there does she try to hitch a ride.

The possible sighting remains uncertain; the letter does not establish that the woman is Imma. Its consequence is nevertheless concrete: Lola leaves the station and the town without confirming what she saw. The episode closes not with a reunion or a secure destination, but with Lola on the highway seeking passage onward. Her departure from Larrazabal has thus widened into an open-ended movement through France, carried forward by unresolved separation and the uncertain possibility of finding Imma.