The days were fine, but I struggled with the nights. I couldn’t sleep in the dark. Once, I felt afraid. A noise had woken me, and I sensed that I was no longer alone in the room. I was sure I could hear someone breathing in the dark. I crept out of bed and sat on the chair by the window, but I didn’t open the curtains. It was quiet again. I rested my head and arms on the window ledge. I sat like that for a while, listening, and then something inside me began to crumble. I slid off the chair and broke apart like a clod of dry earth.

Susan Tessler

‘You dice the potatoes, chop the onions and brown them in butter in a hot frying pan with a pinch or two of coarse-­grained flour,’ said Henriette. ‘But use waxy potatoes. And they have to be diced,’ she added, firmly.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Why’s it so important to dice them?’

‘It looks better,’ she said.

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

Henriette was a little, grumpy old woman who always knew best, and whose propensity for angry outbursts and sudden foul temper was prevented from achieving its full expression only by her frailty. She herself saw this differently. She described herself as a part-­time enthusiast. And it was true that, depending on her frame of mind, she was also capable of seeing something good and beautiful in everything. She even speculated that there was hidden beauty in the faded wallpaper, presumably once lime-­green, on the wall in our ward doctor’s waiting room, where we spent so many hours sitting next to each other. ‘Do you see the vine tendrils up there?’ she asked me, the first time we met. ‘They are tendrils, aren’t they? Or do you just say vines?’

‘They’re neither tendrils nor vines,’ I replied. ‘They’re just cracks in the ceiling. They really ought to renovate in here.’

‘Ah, now I remember! You see the recurring up and down, that undulating movement?’ she cried, enthusiastically. ‘Of course they’re tendrils. No doubt about it. What’s your name?’

‘Tessler,’ I said. ‘Susan Tessler.’

‘My name is Henriette. Just Henriette. I’ve let go of the surname. You let go of everything in time. Shall we shake hands?’

We arrived at the sanatorium at around the same time. I think I was there first. It was spring, and lilac and laburnum were in blossom in the little park outside my window. My room was light and airy (it presumably still is), with a view of the garden, and a French balcony that I only ever used at night, to cool the chocolate I’d smuggled past the nurses. The sanatorium allowed its residents to bring their own furniture and personal items. I didn’t need anything from home. I was perfectly happy with the standard furnishings: wardrobe, bookshelf, night stand, table, two chairs, a bed. The bed was a metal apparatus, a piece of equipment with pedals that allowed it to be raised or lowered at will and tilted in all directions. The bars at the foot end creaked with every movement, but the mattress was soft. I had a floor lamp, a bedside rug, and two white porcelain vases. I made sure there were always two apples or a few nuts on the table. I never ate them, but I liked to look at them, and sometimes I would toss them out of the window and watch them roll across the lawn and come to rest in the shadow of the trees, where they lay until they were removed by one of the gardeners.