Manhattan is the site of the September 11 attacks as they enter Loïc’s life from a distance: first as a catastrophe unfolding before him, then as the place where he imagines his cousin Roger Bolduc met his death. The city’s collapsing towers give physical form to a private uncertainty that Loïc cannot resolve through images or evidence.

The Attacks as Witnessed from Afar

Loïc watches the attacks in the United States develop for more than an hour, including the collapse of the towers in Manhattan. Reports of planes sent toward Washington, D.C., or elsewhere and of the president trying to manage the crisis from the air enlarge the event beyond the city; Loïc wonders whether a third world war has begun. Manhattan is therefore introduced not through a visit but through live catastrophe, viewed at a remove.

That distance does not make the event feel remote to him. Loïc wonders whether the powerful shock of the disaster, occurring 800 kilometers away, could have produced the horrific images in his mind. He also connects those images to a flaming stone resembling an object he has known since childhood, joining the public emergency to the novel’s uncanny family history.

Roger Bolduc and the Uncertain Death

Since September 11, Loïc has been convinced that Roger Bolduc died in the attacks, although he does not know how. He searches the Web for information about the victims, affected companies, relatives’ accounts, photographs, and final telephone communications. His research turns Manhattan into a landscape reconstructed from records and images rather than direct experience.

Loïc copies photographs and film footage so he can study them repeatedly, slowing them down or enlarging them on a computer. He considers whether Roger was crushed or burned inside a tower, or whether panic and the instinct to survive drove him through a window. He gives particular attention to photographs of people falling beside the skyscraper, but their low resolution cannot disclose a face, profile, distinctive silhouette, or clothing. The images invite identification while withholding the detail that could establish it.

Despite that lack of proof, Loïc develops a persistent inner image of Roger jumping from the North Tower shortly after the plane struck. He imagines the fall and wonders whether Roger remained conscious long enough to see the Manhattan pavement approach, or to think of the family cameo and hope, against all appearances, that it might save him. These are questions within Loïc’s imagination, not confirmed details of Roger’s death.

A City Made into an Unresolved Image

Manhattan’s narrative significance lies in the gap between public evidence and private certainty. Loïc can revisit footage and magnify photographs, but the available images never resolve Roger’s identity or final moments. The city becomes the object of an investigation driven as much by intuition as by research, with each failed attempt to identify Roger leaving the imagined fall intact.

That uncertainty also keeps the cameo bound to Manhattan in Loïc’s thoughts. Later that autumn, he believes in a waking dream that he sees the stone shining among the rubble and wonders whether it survived the explosions at the World Trade Center. Manhattan thus holds two unresolved questions for him: what happened to Roger, and whether the object linked to the family’s curse disappeared in the destruction.