“There will be times in your life when you’ll ask yourself if you’ve done even one thing right. That’s perfectly normal. It’s also a very heavy question. Around a hundred and eighty kilos, I’d say. But it’s one that has an answer. Mostly it comes late in life. I don’t know if Selma and I will still be around then. So I’m going to tell you now: When the time comes, when the question arises and you can’t find an answer right away, then remember that you made your grandmother and me very happy, you brought us enough happiness for an entire life from beginning to end. The older I get, the more I believe that the two of us were only invented for you. And if there ever was a good reason to be invented, then it’s you.”

I leaned against the optician’s shoulder and he rested his cheek on my head. For a while we listened to the ticking of the hazard lights.

“Now someone has to drive me to school,” I said.

The optician smiled. “That someone is me,” he said, then kissed the top of my head and got into the driver’s seat.

For a while Frederik kept trying to straighten the crackling, expansive gladiola bouquet, then he gave up. He leaned his head against the car window in order to see around the flowers. The optician glanced at him now and again, but the bouquet kept Frederik hidden.

Alaska slept. He took up almost the entire back seat. His head lay on my lap. The only sounds were the patter of raindrops outside, the windshield wipers struggling, and now and again the crackling of the cellophane.

I touched the top of the closed window where the water ran down diagonally outside. This ancient car is still waterproof, I thought.

“May I confide in you?” the optician suddenly asked without taking his eyes off the road.

“Of course,” Frederik said from behind the bouquet.

The optician gave me a quick look, cleared his throat, and then spoke softly as if hoping that the sound of the rain would cover his voice.

“You talked about blows from a stick,” the optician said. “I’ve read that you are also struck when your thoughts are straying during meditation. In my case, it’s the thoughts that pummel me. And I’m made up of much more than sixty-five percent thoughts.”

The optician told Frederik all about the voices that jostled him and made him stagger, that taunted him about everything he hadn’t done because of them. He told how he had tried to cope with the voices using inspirational quotes on postcards and Buddhism, and that he had tried to pass himself off as the sky and as a river before them. Frederik said nothing. His head rested against the window; the streetlights blurred in the downpour and formed trails of light.