I brought her every possible book and photo album, but not one was right. “What would you like to read?” I asked. “I’ll get you whatever you want.”

“I don’t know,” Selma said.

The optician stood up suddenly. “I’ll just be a minute.”

I followed the optician to the front door to check on Palm, but he was gone. I watched the optician hurry down the slope and wondered if he was going to come back with a bat’s heart, but Selma wasn’t in pain.

The optician returned carrying two enormous suitcases. I opened the door for him and without a word he carried them past me, down the hall, and through the living room to Selma’s bed.

The entire way back to Selma’s, his inner voices raged as they hadn’t for a very long time, running riot inside the optician. “Are you out of your mind?” the voices screamed as the wind whipped at his hair and banged the suitcases against his shins. They shouted that repression had always worked so well, that fear is a good counselor, that it would all end tragically if the optician finally revealed, at the very last moment, his secret love, never aired for so many decades. “Don’t do it,” they shouted, panic-stricken. “Don’t do it,” they shouted again when the optician put the suitcases next to Selma’s bed and opened them.

They were full to the brim with paper. The optician smiled at Selma. “It’s all here,” he said.

Dear Selma, On the occasion of Inge and Dieter’s wedding I’d like to finally

Dear Selma, It’s amazing how fast Luisa is learning to read. When we were in the ice cream parlor just now and the small Secret Love

Dear Selma, Do you think Marlies is crazy? Like Farmer Hassel is? I mean: that she is mentally ill? I was

wondering again today. Speaking of crazy. You’ll think I’m crazy when I tell you

Dear Selma, It’s been a year today and you are right: we have to find a way to bring back Palm’s desire to live. Speaking of desire to live. The source of my desire to live

Dear Selma, The eclipse today was spectacular. Speaking of eclipses. You are the opposite of

Dear Selma, As we discussed earlier today, I also don’t believe Luisa really loves Andreas. Speaking of

Selma took one sheet of paper after another out of the suitcase. While she read them, she took hold of the optician’s hand without looking up from the papers. The optician sat next to her as if she were studying a photography book, as if he were waiting for Selma to ask him a word she didn’t understand.

“What does unconditionally mean?” Selma asked.

The optician laughed. “Unconditionally means unconditionally. ”