“Do you know Chagall, doctor?” The doctor shook her head, and it was clear she didn’t know who I was talking about. I fell silent a moment to recall why I mentioned him. Ah, it was to make her feel my superiority, and to remind me that, no matter what my condition or illness, I remained me, and she remained her. I continued: “He has paintings that looked like us, Neda and me, at that time. One in particular, called The Promenade, where the man is holding the hand of his lover, who wears a pink dress and floats through the air like a balloon.”

I shot the doctor a furtive glance and then closed my eyes. She was using her cell phone to look up what I had mentioned. Well done! I praised myself. Out loud I added, “In our painting, I’m the flying lover, and Neda is the man holding my hand as I swim weightlessly. And to tell the truth, there are only a few times in my life that I’ve been so light and weightless, floating like a body in space, the way I was with Neda—before she quit me and I quit life.”

“Didn’t you have romantic relationships after her?”

“Many years passed before I trusted women and gave away my heart again. Then I met Shaygha … ”

“Excellent! You remember Shaygha then.”

Have I previously said that I’ve forgotten Shaygha, or was I only pretending to forget? Things are getting more and more confusing for me. I’m forgetting things I’ve said, and remembering things I haven’t. If only I were able to take notes on those sessions! But my fingers remain swollen and still hurt a little. Even if I could get them to move, they’d be clumsy, inefficient.

“Well, what about Shaygha? Do you remember what happened to her, Mr. N?”

“Shaygha from Nepal? Of course, doctor. She flew up and soared through the air like a dove. She stood on the edge of the balcony and jumped.”

“No, that was your father.”

“No, my father stepped through a window, and his spirit remains floating in the air.”

The doctor sighed. She appeared frustrated. She thought I had forgotten what happened to Shaygha, and she was afraid to tell me, so as not to give me the shock of her death. Her murder. The beasts picked her up by her arms and legs and threw her into the air. As though she were a doll, some inanimate thing. Good, enchanting Shaygha, who raised me out of the depths, cleaned off my filth, fed me, and showed me compassion.

“You never finished telling me the story of your father. Did he escape the massacre that day?”

“Do you think even the survivors ever really escape that sort of thing?”

“I’m sorry. Was he killed that day?”

“Mostly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he became like a dead man.”

“Tell me.”