The raindrops pelted the ornaments on the coffin lid. Selma had insisted we buy a lavishly decorated model, given that Elsbeth had always cultivated a lavish appearance. When the funeral director had named the price and the optician asked if it wasn’t possible to reduce the price somewhat, the funeral director announced triumphantly that one shouldn’t haggle over the price of a coffin or the person being buried would never find rest. “I know because Elsbeth told me,” he said.

Strictly speaking, Elsbeth’s house had not been hers for a long time. It was owned by a bank in the county seat, and now that she was dead, the house had to lose all traces of her as quickly as possible.

My father helped us empty it. He had just returned from some desert and was about to leave for another. Alaska impeded our work because he kept jumping around my father to get him to put down the cartons he was carrying and pet him.

While packing, I found Elsbeth’s photo album with black-and-white pictures of young Elsbeth, Heinrich, and Selma. I knew these pictures by heart; Elsbeth had often shown them to Martin and me. One was of Selma and Heinrich pointing to an empty lot on which our house would be built. Martin and I were never able to understand how Elsbeth and Selma had ever been so young or how my grandfather had once been in this world and our house had not.

My mother also helped us, and it was as if my parents had decided to stage a box-carrying competition. If my mother saw my father carrying two boxes at once, she picked up three. If my father saw my mother with three boxes, he lifted four. When my mother finally tried to carry five boxes at once, the top one fell in the garden and burst open. Sunflower-yellow notebooks were scattered on Elsbeth’s lawn and one had fallen open.

The shopkeeper set down Elsbeth’s iron and picked the notebook up. “Sex with Renata blows my mind,” he read. “What on earth is this?”

The optician took the notebook from his hand and snapped it shut.

“Nothing,” he said, “it’s nothing.”

He gathered the notebooks into a pile, added some dried leaves, took his lighter from his jacket pocket, and lit it on fire. While the flames licked at the sunflower-yellow covers and the pages filled with writing, the optician looked up at the sky.

“Look, Elsbeth,” he whispered. “Renata will soon be just a dusting of ash.”

Selma came out of Elsbeth’s house. She had kept her composure all day long and, to the extent she could, had impassively helped pack things up and carry them outside. She only lost her composure when putting Elsbeth’s slippers, standing under the telephone side table as always, in a plastic bag.