But that’s because of Sanja’s need to put everything around her in order. There mustn’t be any rubbish on the floor. That’s why we have a rubbish bin in our old Ford Taurus.

She listens to music so as to remember her youth, on the whole songs from the late 1960s and ’70s (mostly Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). And she says: “Woodstock, how magical that sounded in the Balkans! But Woodstock is a store for wood! How provincial we were! Why, even those who knew what the word Woodstock meant would not be moved. It does sound mighty in English! It could not be an ordinary wood store. And if it was to do with trees, they would have been some special American trees, and not our beech or our common oak . . .”

Today we went for a doctor’s examination. The doctor (a neurologist), said several times that it was a serious question whether our medical insurance could cover the costs of the memory test (this was, allegedly, an expensive examination to determine the extent of forgetfulness). She repeated that it was “a serious question” three times, and then Sanja lost patience and said that it couldn’t possibly be a serious question. “Why does Something exist, and not Nothing? That’s a serious question!” she said.

And, it seemed to me, time had stood still. It has been two months since Renata cut her hair, but her hair doesn’t seem to be growing.

The only items of value in our apartment are books. And this bookshelf, handmade, the work of an American sculptor. It’s made of light wood and it’s easily moved from one place to another. And today, as I was vacuuming, I shifted the shelf with my shoulder and a lot of books fell onto the floor. Sanja came to help me put them back. And I remembered something: when he came by to see us the first day after we returned from the hospital, Asim used precisely that image to describe her state after the stroke. “It’s as though an earthquake had knocked books off a shelf onto the parquet,” he said. “And now each one has to be put back in its proper place.”