IT ISN’T easy to restore a house, particularly one that has been neglected for as many years as this one. Chairs and tables with snapped-off legs slump to the dollhouse floor; toys from other realms—cars, robots, extraterrestrials—desecrate the hallways; tiny wineglasses have been smashed. Much rearranging, repairing, and replacing is necessary when things are obscured by a thick layer of dust and forgetfulness, sometimes so much so that the task seems pointless, hopeless. But it can be done. Jake works his way through the house room by room, purging the alien accessories, gathering the scattered pots and books and toys, cleaning the windows, beating the dust out of the rugs, polishing the filth out of the wooden and tile floors, repairing the broken vessels.

Several hours later, after all the impurities have been removed, Jake at last brings in his own offerings. The miniature books he bought are displayed on a shelf in the study, where one of the dolls is now immersed in a reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. On the top floor, in a room that is half bedroom, half playroom, the TV and VCR have recently been installed, and another doll stands beside the new entertainment unit clutching a copy of a video in his miniature hand. Down in the dining room, two of the dolls are seated at a dinner table laden with a miniature feast. In a bedroom, another doll snuggles down into a luxurious bed, awaiting her miniature dreams.

Outside the house—the real house, that is: Leora’s parents’ house—rain pours down in vast translucent sheets, curtains of rain, drawn closed over the entire world. As Jake works, the little window near the ceiling in the basement room rattles violently now and then, battered by winds and rains pounding on the panes as if begging to enter the house. After some time, the rains become so strong that a tide of water, trapped in the gutter alongside the house, begins rising a few inches up the windowpane. Through the windowpane, Jake can see what has become a sort of tiny aquarium. Leaves, driven by the winds, dive down into its depths. The sound of the rains wraps the house like a drawn curtain.