“It is hard, not remembering,” she confided. “Anything might have happened to me. Perhaps I had a hard life. Perhaps someone was cruel to me yesterday. A good memory is the only thing that keeps the past where it is, and without that, anything might have happened. But I think it might not have been so bad. I think I was happy. I feel it. You know I had a son?”

Miranda nodded.

“I am sure he is dead. Do you know . . . is it possible . . . that someone killed him?”

Miranda swallowed but could not find the will to open her mouth and speak the words.

“You would imagine that having a murdered son in one’s past would be distressing, but I do not remember. In a way that makes my son still alive, potentially alive. Memory is the only thing that makes it so, and I do not remember him dying. Anyway, we all die eventually.”

Miranda murmured a polite agreement.

“But then I wonder if I had a son. You know what they say in my country? They say that if a willful woman cannot control herself, she must take that rebel self and birth a boy out of it. Then she must raise him and tame him before he destroys her life. Did I have a son, or was I a willful woman birthing excuses for my actions? I do not remember. Did my son die because of me? Was that the reason he was born? Heh . . . hear me talk foolishness. We are all born to die.”

Miranda noted that this was indeed the case.

“I can see the blue of the sea and the sky through the window. I can feel the breeze on my face and smell the salt it brings. Sometimes, when it is a very good day, they will put a little honey liquor in my tea, strong enough and sweet enough to wake up my taste buds. There is little to complain about. Soon I will be dead. I dream of it. One day I will dream myself awake again. It scares me—you are shocked? You think an old thing like myself should embrace death? It is not the thought of death that troubles me. It’s remembering. If I dream myself awake into a place where my memory never fails me and my past is nailed down firm with all its twists and turns, how will I be able to escape it? It will be finished. No maybes. Everyone dead, everything finished and nailed down.”

She was silent for a while. Slowly she began to frown, then laugh. “Heh-heh. I had two sons. Two, not one. But someone died.” She looked worried. “Who was it?”

—