“You must think I’m crazy,” the optician said. “I’m sure you think I urgently need a doctor.”

He wiped the windshield with his sleeve.

“I’ve already seen a doctor. He gave me an electroencephalography.”

The optician looked over at Frederik, at the silent gladiolas.

“I’m sure you think I should go to a doctor who doesn’t use machines or instruments. I’m sure you think I should see a psychologist. But I don’t want to see a psychologist,” he said, and blinked. We had almost arrived. “Psychologists creak and send their patients out into the world. I don’t want that. I’m too old for the world.”

You’re as old as the world, I thought on the back seat.

“I’ve never told anyone all this,” the optician said to the windshield wipers, to the rain, to the cellophane, to Frederik. “I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable.”

He stopped in front of my building and Frederik finally spoke. “Are we there already?” he asked.

“Come in for a bit,” Frederik said at my front door. The optician looked at me. I nodded.

“But only for a minute,” he said.

In my apartment the optician walked around the opened fold-out bed and took the framed carnival photograph from the wall.

“There we all are,” he said. “I think I look good as a flower bed.”

Frederik lingered in the doorway.

“That bookshelf is impossible,” he said before disappearing into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with the bookshelf?” the optician asked in a whisper.

“He says it’s crooked,” I replied.

The optician took a step back and looked at the bookshelf for a long time.

“It’s true, now that you mention it.”

“Could you both come here for a second?” Frederik called from the kitchen.

He was sitting on one of my chairs and pointed at the other. My father’s otorhinolaryngological instruments were spread out on the table.

“What do you have in mind?” the optician asked.

Frederik said, “Please take a seat.”

The optician gave me a questioning look. I shrugged, and the optician sat down. Frederik was wearing my father’s head mirror. My father’s head was bigger than Frederik’s because he had hair, so Frederik had to hold the mirror with one hand. With the other he picked up the silver nasal speculum. The optician looked at Frederik.

“I’m going to examine the voices,” Frederik said.

“Please,” the optician objected, “that’s not even possible.”

“Yes, it is. It’s a new method. From Japan.”

The optician looked at Frederik as if he were the one who urgently needed a psychologist.

“Please look straight ahead and keep still,” Frederik said. He leaned forward and looked into the optician’s ear with the speculum.

“That’s actually an instrument for the nose,” I pointed out.