Life was dull and uneventful before the war. Only now do I appreciate the bliss of that calm. Dad lived in a small two-room flat in a nine-story building on the northern outskirts of the city. After Grandma died, I would go see him every morning before work. I remember that chore so fondly now.

It’s funny how our lives and memories have all become “before the war” and “after the war started.”

Before the war, he’d always leave the door of his flat unlocked, a breeze would blow through the rooms. Sometimes I would arrive to find it wide open, imagining the faces of the neighbours peering inside. There was no furniture in the corridor, the wallpaper sagged, the worn hat he’d always carry with him when going out and stuff into the bicycle pannier, but never wear, would appear and disappear from its place on the hook. Until a few years ago, he would diligently tint his close-cut hair black, but then it turned completely white. He’s an old man. He was old, that is to say. I can’t get used to him being dead. I was a late child. I always tried to imagine how he was when he was young, or at least the way he was when Mum fell in love with him. Dry, almost translucent, he became a shadow of his old self and his old apartment. He was a crumpled hat on a hook; a black cat dashing between his apartment and the stairs (I don’t understand why she kept coming back, he never had any food in the fridge); he was all those wide-open doors and those empty rooms with their outlines of discarded cupboards still visible on the walls. He was wallpaper covered with undecipherable, random scribbles and diagrams; the smell of my Chloe perfume, alcohol, and cigarette smoke.

When I still owned perfume, I’d splash it on the wallpaper to try and mask the smell of cigarettes and old age. That’s who my dad was. In the autumn, he became very sick. He sunk into a deep melancholy, alternating between outbursts of anger and meek apologies. I hope he loved me a little at least. But it’s more likely that having taken my care for granted, he worried it might run out. There was never a word of feeling. It was never the custom in our family to speak about love for anybody, except for Grandma—his mother. Like all the thwarted talents disappointed by their lot, he hated and loved his own life to oblivion, and to everything else he was indifferent.

Leaving a trail of spilled water on the tired linoleum—nobody but me washed the floor here anyway—I hastened to the kitchen as I entered the flat, putting food on the table, setting the water to boil and waiting for the kettle to whistle loudly—all so I could delay going into his room a few moments longer. Then he would appear at the kitchen doorway, thin, haggard and listlessly leaning against the frame, and ask how my day had gone. The pointless morning query.