In May 1917, Oskar Serti was taken to the military hospital. Each morning, a nurse would come into his room when he was still half-asleep. She would go up to the chest of drawers and open the drawer in which he kept his toilet bag. She would leave the drawer open for a minute, while Oskar breathed in the smell of the soap, then slam it shut, then open and shut it again very quickly twelve times. Then she would open the drawer where he hid his chocolate bars, leave it open for two minutes, slam it shut, then shake it to make eight banging noises. Then she would move on to the drawer where he kept his tobacco…
This complicity with the nurse enabled Serti to imagine waking up in his own bathroom, hear himself going down the twelve stairs to his kitchen where he would smell a big bowl of hot chocolate, then noisily go back up the eight stairs to the entresol before repairing to his office and lighting his pipe…
But one morning, Serti asked for too much; he would no longer leave the memory of his house. After the kitchen he wanted to go back to the bathroom, then into the conservatory, then back to his office, then a third time into the attic. The nurse lost track of the drawers and Serti could tell she was exasperated. She nastily caught her finger in one while making a stair crack. She stiffened, held her breath, then opened a drawer she had never opened before, a drawer that reminded Serti of nothing at all. She left it wide open, then left the room without saying a word.
Oskar Serti did not know what was in that drawer. But the unfamiliar smell it gave off wafted into his house and took away all his memories, one by one.