In Selma’s television series, Melissa betrayed Matthew with his half brother and Selma would never forgive her; and even though I didn’t know where I should put Andreas, he and I became a couple. It just worked out that way. It also happened that right after I’d kissed Andreas for the first time, I wrote to Frederik that I’d met someone who was very nice and whom I’d probably marry, and I was irritated that Frederik, who otherwise reacted to everything I wrote, didn’t mention Andreas at all in his next letter. He wrote about the moss on the roof, about work in the fields, about meditation, the guests in the monastery, and only at the very bottom of the last page: “P.S.: Congratulations, by the way.”

Everyone thought Andreas was very nice. They also found that we shared the same interests, because Andreas was also a bookseller. Whenever anyone asked how things were with Frederik, I just told them that things hadn’t worked out.

“You can’t always choose which adventure you’re made for,” I said.

“That’s not how I meant it, Luisa,” the optician said.

After one of my father’s visits, Mr. Rödder looked at the wall over the travel books for a long time. There was a Buddha mounted on that wall, a Moroccan mask, a necklace with a large Greenlandite pendant, a rug from Lima, a New York license plate, a framed Hard Rock Café Peking T-shirt, the scimitar, a Celtic cross, the saddlebag, a Chilean rainstick, the poster of the Venetian gondola, and a didgeridoo. “We now have more travel decorations than travel books,” Mr. Rödder said. He asked if I could imagine taking over the bookstore someday when he was no longer around.

“But you are around,” I said, and two weeks later Frederik wrote: “That’s a nice offer, but is it what you really want? I think you’re actually made to travel the seven seas.”

I was on my way to the bookstore when I read that. I ran back to my apartment and wrote Frederik that he was in no position to judge what anyone was made for in life. After all, he had completely withdrawn from real life into a mossy-roofed monastery and from there, talk is cheap. Frederik had started in on my blurriness again in his last letter, so I also wrote that someone who is never around can’t judge visibility, either. But as I wrote, I noticed how wrong I was: Frederik and I could see each other very well across the nine thousand kilometers, maybe even better than if we were close up.

“Dear Luisa,” Frederik replied, “I’d like to know what real life is in your opinion.”