A letter from my parents miraculously arrived this morning. In spite of the embargo sanctioned by the United Nations, which works effectively in the other direction—judging from the fact that my letters, which I continue writing and sending to my parents once a week, as I have done since my departure from home, do not go through—the letter from so-called Yugoslavia arrived in only five days. A large part of the letter is dedicated to my mother’s experiences with my birth and early days in postwar Zagreb. Most of her recollections, prompted by Dorian’s birth, I have heard many times, but the detail has always escaped me. Put bluntly, I have heard all this, but I have never listened. She writes about the famous Dr. Durst’s sanatorium in Klaić’s Street, close to the National Theater, where I was born; about my father’s boat, one half of which had to be sold for her to get a room in a private sanatorium; about my arrival at 1:30 in the morning on Tuesday, April 17, 1946; about the profusion of flowers in her room the next day; about the period of nine days she had to stay in Dr. Durst’s sanatorium, one day for each month of pregnancy; about Dr. Scrivanelli’s private clinic where my mother got good advice on my early growth and development; about my parents’ apartment in Martić’s Street No. 18, where I spent my first two years; about how Dr. Scrivanelli told her upon weighing me two weeks in a row that I was gaining weight perfectly normally, and how she was so happy on account of this medical judgment that she practically flew with my baby carriage over Preradović’s Square, where the clinic was located; about how I was crying incessantly for the first two or three months, and about her headaches caused by sleeplessness; about my bowed legs which ultimately straightened out, just as Dr. Scrivanelli had assured her they would. I read the letter with real interest. The names of people, streets, and squares struck a magical cord for the first time.