Frederik glanced up at me; the mirror sat just above his eyebrows. “Not in Japan,” he said before immersing himself in the optician’s left ear.

Alaska came in and sniffed at the case that held the rest of the instruments. He looked happy; perhaps it smelled of my father.

“And?” the optician asked after a while.

“I can see them very clearly,” Frederik said.

The optician held very still. He suddenly remembered visiting a doctor in the neighboring village when he was five years old. He’d had the chicken pox. He was covered with red pustules and had a high fever and chills. The fever gave him bad dreams, day and night, and so the optician cried a lot, even after he had been awake for a long time.

He had been afraid of going to the doctor. Afraid the doctor would tell him, “Stop your crying,” afraid of the cold stethoscope. But the doctor had said in a very friendly voice, “Please have a seat, my spotted young man,” and rubbed his hands to warm them and breathed on the stethoscope so it wouldn’t be too cold. He’d explained to the optician that with the syrup and the ointment he was going to give him, countless tiny boxing champions were going to slip inside him. They were too small to be seen with the human eye, but they were very strong and were only invented to knock out the chicken pox. The optician immediately felt better because of the invisible boxing champions inside him, fighting on his side to smash the fever and the dreams, too.

Naturally the optician didn’t believe for a second that Frederik could see the voices. But the child the optician once was believed it happily.

“Really?” the optician asked. “You can see them?”

“Clear as day. There are at least three of them. They really are … they’re really very ugly.”

“They are, aren’t they?” the optician said, and smiled at Frederik.

“Please hold still,” Frederik said, and the optician quickly straightened his head.

“Very ugly,” Frederik repeated. “And it looks like you caught them a very long time ago.”

“That’s true,” the optician said, “that’s very true.”

Frederik adjusted the head mirror and clamped the speculum between his teeth. He grabbed his chair leg with his free hand and scooted to the other side of the optician.

“I’m going to look into your right ear now,” he said. “Ah, now I see them from behind.”

The optician looked straight ahead at the tiles over my sink with great concentration.

“Some people give their voices names,” Frederik said, “but that hasn’t helped me.”

The optician spun around and stared at him. “You have them, too?”

“Of course. Now please look straight ahead again.”

“Is there anything that can be done for it?” the optician asked without moving.