A little wooden cupboard was thrown on its side, blocking the entrance to the small kitchen. She opened the cupboard and took out a white cloth parasol with thin wooden ribs.

“In Lyxos,” she explained gravely, “the sun is very strong.” Assaf tensed up and his lips grew pale. She’s gone crazy, he thought. The shock has thrown her completely off balance.

Theodora looked at him and divined his thoughts: “Please, my dear, don’t worry. I am not losing my mind.”

She tried to open the parasol. The wooden ribs moved quickly and silently, but the gentle white fabric disintegrated once the parasol opened and fell on her head like snowflakes.

“It seems I shall have to relinquish my shade, but where have I put my shoes?”

She spoke with a strange matter-of-factness, as if reducing her entire being into the little actions before her. She removed a tiny pair of black shoes, wrapped in yellow newspaper, small as a girl’s, from a hidden drawer. She blew on them, scattering a cloud of dust. She wiped them off, shining them with the sleeve of her gown, then sat on the edge of her bed and tried to put them on. He could see her fingers getting tangled in the laces.

“What a foolish old woman your new friend is.” She gave him an embarrassed look. “She has not tied her shoelaces in fifty years and has already forgotten how.”

He knelt before her and, with the utmost reverence, like Prince Charming with Cinderella, tied her shoelaces.