I’d been looking forward to reading my book—to escaping for a while into someone else’s concerns. But after several minutes, I was forced to return to the beginning of the chapter and start it again. I read more slowly this time, concentrating on putting the words together carefully, and yet the sentences refused to reveal any of their meaning to me, and I found myself going over the same lines again and again, puzzling at certain banal phrases, at descriptions of the scenery and the weather. In the end I gave up, put the book down, switched off the light, and went to bed mildly dissatisfied. I still could make neither head nor tail of the plot; the only thing I’d gleaned from my efforts was that the police inquiry had moved, for a reason unintelligible to me, to a group of tiny islands north of the Arctic Circle. These islands were apparently of great personal interest to the author—he had included several pages’ worth of description of their unique landscape, industry, and inhabitants. Early in the book, I suppose, such material could have been a welcome addition to the “atmosphere,” but so late in the investigation, frankly, it was difficult to see the point.

The next morning when I arrived at the university I found myself heading in the direction not of my own building but of the medical school library, a modest building adjacent to the hospital. The attendant behind the desk at the entrance was always the same—a kindly bald man who every Monday set out cookies and a samovar of tea. I nodded to him as I descended to the basement level, where I knew there was, next to the periodicals, a gigantic globe—almost as tall as I was, illuminated from within by a mysterious light source, and set at an angle on its spindle. I gave it one gratuitous spin and watched the patchwork countries flow beneath my fingertips, and then brought it to rest. Here was Germany: a small, cracker-shaped country wedged between Poland and France. Here in little tiny writing was Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin … But Tübingen was nowhere to be seen. All I had wanted was the basic information—was it in the south? The north? And yet, I thought, deflated, what would the point of that be, exactly? Even if I did happen to encounter Mr. Reinecke again, I could not pretend to have just remembered something about Tübingen. How exactly, I thought, giving the globe a final and unfriendly push, did I imagine I would work that into the conversation? Oh, Mr. Reinecke, how funny to run into you here—I have just remembered that Tübingen is in the south.

When I opened the door to my office, I saw that the small red eye on my telephone was blinking.