“He’s fantastic,” Elsbeth said. “He’s not as handsome as you said, but he is incredibly smart.”

They said these things as if I had invented him. Palm nodded without a word, and the optician said in a solemn tone: “Bioluminescence.”

“What on earth is that?” Elsbeth asked.

“It’s a substance that makes animals glow from inside,” he explained.

Selma said nothing and stroked my hair.

Frederik and I went to the Uhlheck with Alaska. Frederik wore the optician’s yellow raincoat over his robe and I was still wearing Selma’s dress with her yellow raincoat over it.

“We’re a symphony in yellow,” Frederik said. We wore rubber boots. Selma had rubber boots from every era and in every size. He held Selma’s umbrella over both of us. Rain pattered down on it.

“Werner Palm doesn’t say much,” Frederik said, and I explained that he said next to nothing unless he was explaining verses from the Bible. He was always there and that was exactly the point, that Palm was there, that he was sitting at the table with us and not at home alone.

“You don’t say much, either, Luisa,” Frederik observed.

I didn’t tell him that I had my hands full just with him suddenly sitting at the table, with the world that had been let in, and with the world in the form of Selma, the optician, the shopkeeper, Elsbeth, and Palm. I didn’t mention the list in my pocket, with items that not a single one of them respected, and that under these circumstances it’s hard to say much and far better just to watch.

“Rudi Carrell,” I said.

Frederik looked around. “Where?”

“Selma,” I replied. “She looks like Rudi Carrell.”

“Exactly,” Frederik cried, “exactly like him, that’s what I was thinking.”

The rain was so heavy, you could hardly see a thing. The path and the fields had long become indistinguishable, and the rain had diluted the beauty of the landscape, which today, for once, I wouldn’t have walked past without noticing, and which I would have liked to show to Frederik as if it were my own invention. I held tightly to the edge of the umbrella, which threatened to collapse under the mass of water.

Frederik shut the worn-out umbrella and took my hand as if there’d been a time shift, as if many years had passed since he held my hand for the first time last night, and as if it were completely natural for us to hold hands.

We ran home, as I had run only as a child, only with Martin, when we were convinced that a hellhound or a death that didn’t exist was chasing us. Alaska ran alongside us, laboriously, because all the rain had made his fur even heavier than it usually was.