Ever since we came back from the hospital, she has been glancing suspiciously at the wooden box, unable to remember how the Cuban cigars came to be on my desk. Nor does she remember her fears. She opened the box and established that the remaining cigars were drying in the air of the room and said: “Maybe we should put a couple of cabbage leaves in the box . . . ?” (In our country dry tobacco used to be “refreshed” with a green cabbage leaf.)

I am reminded of 4 September 2012, when I was in Zagreb and met up with Kovač, who was unwell and was supposed to go the next day for some hospital tests. Over dinner in a restaurant, he tried out a new topic on his companions. He spoke about his experience of being ill and of hospitals, because his “new reality” had produced quite unique images that he would like to describe. “In the hospital,” he said, “in the oncology department I watched two amorous patients, a man and a woman, kissing passionately, while their metal oxygen bottles knocked into each other, clanging . . .”

She’s always sad when she remembers her youth. Today, we were on our way to a restaurant and the radio was playing a song from the 1980s (“Every Breath You Take”) and she burst into tears. When she calmed down, she said: “Were gramophone records at home called sound carriers?” She remembers language.

We live a lonely life, we have few friends here, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They sometimes come to see us. Today her American friend Kendra came out of the elevator at the same moment as I opened the door of our apartment to wait for her, but the distance between us was great, it’s a long way from the elevator to our door, the corridor is straight and infinite, I waved to her, but she gave no sign that she’d seen me. That’s our corridor. I was too far away for her to see me, she walked for a long time from the elevator to our door, and when she was quite close I saw that she was carrying flowers in a small pot, very elegant white calla lilies.

Sanja doesn’t like being given flowers that aren’t in pots. She calls flowers that have had their stems cut before being put into a vase “ripped.” Dead flowers. When she gives flowers, they’re always in a pot, with their roots in soil and instructions for watering them. That’s how it’s always been, as long as I’ve known her. “It’s impolite to give dead flowers to sick people. Imagine expressing care, or love, or friendship by giving one another dead birds!”