Alexandre Vidal Porto - Sergio Y.

Once the speech was over, and the guests began greeting him, I walked over and picked up the piece of paper he’d left on the table. I quickly shoved it in my pocket, without thinking, as if I were shoplifting. Later, locked in the bathroom, when I opened the piece of paper, I realized that the only thing Areg had written on it with his shaky handwriting was the words: “If happiness is not where we are, we must chase her. She sometimes lives far away. You must have the courage to be happy.”

I brought the sheet of paper with Areg’s message to São Paulo. I put it in my datebook in my desk drawer. I have it to this day. It’s like a talisman.

Dear friends,

In this celebration of the centennial of my birth, I would first of all like to thank family and friends. I also wish to thank our beloved Brazil, to which I owe everything I have.

I came from a town called Erzerum. There I spent my youth, but there was no joy in living. I could see there was no future. I could feel the war approaching. I needed to get out of there to be happy. Something told me it was my only chance.

Now that I’ve turned one hundred, I know that life is too short to be sad. A happy life is more happy days than sad ones. So the advice I give to the young ones is this: always try to make your days happy. The important thing is having as many happy days as possible.

We must never forget that sadness exists, because we know sadness really does exist. But you must reject sadness and unhappiness. You must also work hard, because work helps in everything.

When I was a child, I never imagined there was a country on the other side of the world called Brazil — nor that I myself would one day become a Brazilian.

I’m proud I had the courage to leave Armenia to seek my happiness, that I found it, and that I was able to ensure the continuity of my family’s name. The family I lost in Erzerum I restarted here in Bélem.

Laila, Hagopinho, Otília, Elias, Valéria, José, Salomão, Tereza and Sergio. My eternal brother, Hagop, who has already left us, who I cannot forget, friends, colleagues. You are the happiness I found in Brazil.

Had I resigned myself and stayed in my city, the place where I was born, our family name would no longer exist. There would be no Areg, there would be no Hagop, there would be no Elias, there would be no Salomão, or Sergio or José. There would be no one. Our name would have disappeared. There would be no Yacoubians here now.

So the message I want to leave the youth is that you must believe in happiness. Then go after her, even if that means you must do something new, that you never could have imagined before. Happiness comes from the courage to do something new. Happiness exists. I am proof of this.

During the time Sergio worked with me, he suspended treatment just once, for four weks, from December 15, 2006, to January 15, 2007, for vacation.

During those four weeks, Sergio went to New York with his parents. I stayed at my beach house, reading, swimming, taking long walks and supervising the repair of a leak in the guest room which forced me to redo part of the roof.

While I bought cement in Ilhabela, Sergio Y. was reinventing his destiny. I wonder now whether he was still in New York when he decided what he would do with his life, or if it was only later, when he was back in São Paulo and had returned to his daily life.

On one of those days during his vacation, Sergio decided to undertake the most radical journey of his life. I have no way of knowing if he began that journey on a subway ride, the 4 train, or if he arrived at Battery Park by taxi.

But the means of transportation he used to get from his hotel on the Upper East Side to the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island, off the southern tip of Manhattan, where his life began to change, makes no difference. Either way, he would have arrived on the island by ferry. The important thing is that when he stepped off that boat, he was leaving water for firm ground.

In the notes I took and in my recordings of the sessions leading up to that vacation, there are frequent references to New York. I could not imagine in our sessions the importance the city would acquire for Sergio. Since I had lived there once, I suggested some sightseeing options. One of them was a visit to Ellis Island.

“You like stories of courage, so you must go to the museum at Ellis Island. You might find the stories of those immigrants interesting. You’ll see their belongings, learn stories about people who, like Areg, bet everything on their own happiness,” was more or less what I told him before his trip.

I was aiming at what I saw and hit what I had never seen.

In our first session after the holidays, on the afternoon of January 16, Sergio Y. came to my office a little before his scheduled appointment. In the waiting room, he handed me a plastic bag, one of those duty-free ones. Inside was a small framed print and a hardcover book.

“Sorry, I didn’t get the chance to gift wrap it,” he said.

The book was an English translation of The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. The title was superimposed against a purple backdrop. The print was of an old ship elegantly crossing the ocean. A caption read: “SS Kursk, 1910–1936, Barclay, Curle & Co. Ltd. Glasgow, Scotland.”

“It’s a bilingual edition. I found it helpful. The picture I found on Ellis Island. I hope you like it. It’s special. I bought lots of books there. Thanks for the tip,” is what he basically said.

I remembered that, at some point, he had told me he liked Fernando Pessoa’s poetry. “His concept of heteronyms is amazing. How can one person feel like so many, and in such different ways?” he said during one session.

The fact that he had given me a bilingual edition of his favorite poet was predictable, almost clichéd. I had received exactly the same kind of gift from other patients. It seemed unusual, though, that he should give me a cheap print of a ship called the SS Kursk, which, I later learned, operated between Liepa — ja and New York at the height of the great European migration to the United States.

I confess that at the time, although grateful for the gesture and the thought, it bothered me a little that Sergio thought I would hang a picture of that quality on my wall. I could see he had bought it at the gift shop of the museum I had recommended. This was how I justified the gift.

For months, I left the SS Kursk picture floating in the office, sometimes on the desk, leaning against a wall, sometimes moored to the books. Now that it has become much more special to me, it is permanently anchored to a spot at the end of the hall, above the shelf. I have positioned it so that it is one of the first objects I see when I arrive at the office.

In his next session, Sergio chose not to lie on the couch. He asked to sit in a chair facing my desk, the same place he had sat the first time he came to see me. Calmly, looking straight into my eyes, he said he no longer wanted to continue his treatment with me. These were his words, sitting in front of me with his car keys in his hand: “Dr. Armando, I think I found a way to be happy. I had a revelation in one of our talks and I think I now know the path I need to follow in my life. I feel like I don’t need to come back anymore. I apologize for not saying anything earlier, but I didn’t know. Thanks for everything.”

That is what he said.

It was as if, after hours and hours of a long bus ride, a passenger were to get up calmly from his seat and, addressing the driver, explain that he had taken the wrong bus and that he needed to get off.

He handed me a check for the sessions he still owed me for, shook my hand and went out into the rain.