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The waiting hall of the Antwerp central station � Salle des pas perdus � hall of lost steps � is the symbol of the past in the book�

Austerlitz commented in passing of this lady, whose peroxide-blond hair was piled up into a sort of bird’s nest, that she was the goddess of time past. And on the wall behind her, under the lion crest of the kingdom of Belgium, there was indeed a mighty clock, the dominating feature of the buffet, with a hand some six feet long traveling round a dial which had once been gilded, but was now blackened by railway soot and tobacco smoke.

Deprived of his past by the cataclysmic turns of history Jacques Austerlitz � a historian of architecture � tries desperately to regain what has gone forever� And he is morbidly obsessed with the illusory qualities of time�

…if Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time? What would be this river’s qualities, qualities perhaps corresponding to those of water, which is fluid, rather heavy, and translucent? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it? Why do we show the hours of light and darkness in the same circle? Why does time stand eternally still and motionless in one place, and rush headlong by in another?

The past is irretrievably lost and only its echo still lingers on: old things, documents, books, buildings, statues, paintings, objets d’art�