Herr Hofmann nodded, and then he was trying to say something. The doctor leaned in, cupping a hand to one ear. “Yes,” Herr H. said, his voice so soft it was barely audible. “Yes—micrograms.”

The doctor didn’t reply, just pursed his lips and reached behind him for his black bag. He took the patient’s temperature, which was slightly elevated, applied his stethoscope and finally pressed a finger to Herr H.’s wrist to count his pulse. A long moment crept by, Frau Rüdiger looking as startled as if she’d stumbled upon some satanic rite in the sitting room of her next-door neighbor who’d always seemed so unassuming and substantial but was now revealed as a deviate, while the doctor’s eyebrows rode up and down like pale markers in the gathering gloom as the evening deepened and Susi took it upon herself to go around the room and switch on the lamps as if this were her own house and her own privilege.

“Everything appears normal, Albert,” the doctor said finally, turning aside to replace his instruments in his bag. “You’ll be fine—just let it pass. And it was wise”—he looked back to the patient now—“to consume the milk, which I’m sure is acting as an antidote to whatever you’ve managed to poison yourself with . . . what did you say it was?”

And Herr H., pushing himself up to a sitting position now, smiled for the first time since they’d left the lab. The color was seeping back into his face, as if the crisis had passed—or was passing. He was silent a moment, his eyes sweeping over the room until finally coming to rest on the doctor’s. “Lysergic acid diethylamide,” he said. “Synthesis”—a brief stumble over the syllables—“synthesis number twenty-five.”

The doctor left, weaving off into the declining sun on his bicycle, but not before taking her aside and admonishing her to keep a close watch on the patient and call him right away if he should take a turn for the worse. “You never can tell with cases of poisoning,” he said, looking her full in the face, “especially if there’s no known antidote. And how could there be since the agent itself is all but unknown, isn’t that right?”

She could only nod.

He looked at her sharply and she thought he was about to deliver a lecture on the dangers of ingesting foreign substances, but finally, his voice shot through with scorn, all he said was, “Don’t you people have animals for this sort of thing?”

Frau Rüdiger, wringing her hands in the doorway—and she had a story to tell, oh yes indeed—said she hoped everything was going to be fine but that she had her own family to attend to, if that was quite all right. Snatching a quick look at Herr H., where he lay stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling and moving his lips as if conversing with someone who wasn’t there, she said she’d look in later when Frau Hofmann returned, and added, oddly, “Do you understand?”