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“Do you like that one?” asked Naohiro, walking up behind me. “It is by Hiroshige. Some say he was the greatest of all the Japanese ukiyo-e painters.” His voice changed when he pronounced the Japanese word; it became softer, I thought, and more musical.

“Ukiyo-e? What does that mean?”

“Pictures of the floating world; of the real world,” he said. Then he smiled. “Does it remind you of your visit to Père-Lachaise?”

I looked to see if he was mocking me. But there was no hint of that in his face. What I thought I saw was some kind of understanding or recognition. Of what, I wasn’t sure. I looked back at the print.

Maybe, I thought, there is something in its quiet stillness, in its indifference to change, that does remind me of Père-Lachaise. Still, I was quite puzzled as to why Naohiro had made a connection between the two things.

“These prints are very fugitive,” he said, as we walked through the house. “The color must be protected from the light or it will die.”

It was an odd choice of words, his description of the prints as fugitive and capable of dying. But Naohiro, I was starting to see, expressed himself differently than westerners; particularly western men. He spoke English in a way that was both original and direct. I liked it.

By early afternoon the inside of the house had grown crowded and warm; it seemed a good time to retreat to the cool shade of the Japanese water garden. For a long while I stood with Naohiro watching the water lilies float under a small, green, wisteria-covered bridge. The sun filtering through the trees scattered tiny dots of light, like facets of a diamond, across the water’s surface. I noticed that where the arc of the bridge met its reflection in the water, a green circle was formed: the real bridge at the top, its watery reflection at the bottom.

I wondered about my own garden. Were the daylilies blooming? Had the pots of geraniums survived? Was there new growth on the old lilac tree I’d pruned back almost to the ground? Not too many years ago I’d charted the changing seasons by my sons, by their growth and their blossoming. Now, with both of them far from home, it was azaleas and snowdrops that signaled such changes.

From a tiny island in the center of the pond, a mourning dove cried out from the hollow of his nest. As I looked down, I saw two faces reflected in the water: mine and Naohiro’s. A small gust of wind abruptly shattered the image into ripples; our faces became puzzlelike pieces that moved apart and then together again, his floating across the surface with mine.

“What do you think of?” Naohiro asked.

I pointed to our faces, moving over the water. “Ukiyo-e,” I said stumbling over the word. “The floating world.”

He laughed. “You are a quick student. I shall take care in what I teach you.” But I could tell he was pleased by my response.

I found something to like in his response, too, hinting as it did at a shared future.

We left Giverny and arrived in Paris just after six. I knew that Naohiro was staying at a hotel near the Eiffel Tower and wondered if he had friends waiting for him. It was Saturday night; I had no plans and was on the verge of asking him to have a drink with me when he asked if I had dinner plans.

We agreed to meet later at Tan Dinh, a Vietnamese restaurant that served, he said, some of the best food in Paris.

Although I’d never eaten at Tan Dinh, I knew of the restaurant. It was near my hotel on the rue de Verneuil, an old and captivating street I’d discovered the day I arrived here. I walked there often, using it as a shortcut to the Orsay Museum or just to enjoy its charm. A narrow street of small shops, a few fine restaurants, and old but expensive apartments hidden behind large wooden gates, it captured the Paris I loved best.

After leaving Naohiro, I returned to the hotel, where I found a letter waiting. It had been forwarded from the newspaper to my home in Baltimore and then to Paris. Sent by a reader in response to the last column I’d written before leaving—one in which I explained my hopes for the year—the note wished me good luck on