Ina once wrote out a text for me on a sheet of paper so that her writing could only be read in a mirror. As a child in her first year at school she wrote with her left hand; later she was taught to write with her right, but she could never be dissuaded from mirror writing. The left and right sides of her brain are in perfect harmony.

I look at the clock that Sanja has drawn on a sheet of white paper and think: If these notes about her should ever be published in a book, then the text should be printed so that the words can be read in a mirror placed next to the open pages.

How long will our process of recovery last? A telephone call from Vermont. Among all the other health advice, D. says that Sanja ought to eat walnuts—“They are good for the brain,” D. says. “It’s no coincidence that the kernel of a walnut looks so like a brain!”

I brush her hair and dress her. To start with, I chose my own T-shirts and shirts, because they’re roomier than her tops, which made it easier for me, and I confess that I like seeing her in my clothes. But I soon discovered she has quite a rich collection of light summer dresses. I choose a new one for going out in every day. I brush her hair the way I think her hairdo should be arranged, and she doesn’t object, she accepts my choice of dress for the day, she is slowly being transformed into a little girl and I into her older brother. An inversion of our ages. When we met, we were serious and old beyond our years, but then we began to grow backward and now we are two weary, frightened children.

After an absence of three weeks, I went back to work: she stayed alone in the apartment and that worried me. She began writing a diary, in which she noted small domestic events, so as not to forget them in the course of the day. And I want to believe that this is one of the ways that her new memory can begin to be formed. She’s alone at home, and I’m anxious and keep going out to get a coffee. Over the entrance to our building, the one where I work, they’ve installed a closed-circuit camera. Inside, in the corridor, they had put up a small flat monitor so that the screen shows the pavement outside the entrance from a bird’s-eye perspective. As I come back from the café, I open the door and take a few steps toward the screen and always see myself in front of the building, opening the door and coming in. That’s because, in relation to reality, the image is delayed by a full eight seconds. We don’t know why. But always when I come back in, I hurry to the screen so as to observe my entrance into the building more carefully. And I see it with a child’s interest, because it’s pleasing to see oneself in a past that’s only eight seconds old but hasn’t yet become a memory.