In the building opposite us there are three young Arab men on the balcony. This is the third night that they’ve been carousing until morning. They have two hookahs on the table in front of them, they talk loudly, laughing and singing. They must just have arrived in this country and don’t know nighttime rules, there’s no loud singing on balconies here. I was listening not to them, but to Sanja’s breathing; if they woke her, I was thinking of calling the police. Although I hoped someone else would do that for me, because when the police came and took their names, they would no doubt arrest them as terrorists. And then this evening I heard a police car under their balcony and now they’ve settled down. I’ve just been watching them through the window: bare to the waist, they smoke and converse quite quietly, maybe they sing in a whisper, while their gestures suggest that they’re rappers . . .

There’s always an excess of bread in the house, she makes it into croutons for my salad, but there’s still more than we need. That’s because of our wartime hunger. There has to be enough food in the house, just in case. When I take the leftover bread toward the rubbish bin, she objects: “You mustn’t throw bread away!” She never throws it away, she crumbles it and gives it to the birds. And now I’m tossing them crumbs instead of her. This evening, I say, I didn’t see any birds gathering to eat them, just squirrels and dogs being walked by their owners. And she says: “That’s fine, all animals are birds when they eat crumbs.”

She sleeps, and when she wakes, she gets up and goes to the fridge. This hunger dates from her hospital days. And it already shows on her body, she’s put on weight. I made a short video lasting ten seconds on my phone, I showed it to her cautiously and she waved me away: “Cameras add eight kilos.” When was the last time I heard that! People used to say it in the 1960s and ’70s, when the only cameras were for television. Through them, the human body weighed eight kilos more than in reality, I don’t know according to what scales. If I suggest she’s eating something she shouldn’t, it distresses her, and she says: “You’re torturing me with hunger.” And then I haven’t the heart . . .

“Do you remember when you fed the birds at the pond in the garden of the building where you worked?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know they were migratory birds. They got fat and they couldn’t fly south.”