“My life is flashing before my eyes,” Selma murmured as she read, and we were alarmed. Her time is up, we thought, but Selma said, “No, no, I just mean in these letters. It’s flashing before my eyes in these letters.”

She read until she could not read any longer. Then she rested her head on her pillow, looked at the optician, and said, “Read them aloud to me.”

The optician read to Selma until well after midnight, then he grew hoarse.

“I need a rest, Selma,” he said.

She looked at the optician with glittering eyes. She pulled him to her and held her mouth close to his ear. “Thank you for bringing me so many new beginnings at the end,” she whispered, “and thank you for not ever telling me. Otherwise we might not have spent as much time together as we did. Imagine.”

“I’d rather not imagine that, Selma,” the optician replied. His eyes were glittering, too, and he also had a fever, but not one that could be measured.

“I’d also rather not, not at all.” At that moment the photography book couldn’t hold the window any longer. The window flew open and the wind raged in, pulling at the curtains and rifling through all the piles of paper next to the suitcases. All the new beginnings flew away.

“I need some fresh air,” the optician said an hour later while Selma slept. But before he went outside, he stopped in the kitchen.

Frederik’s number still hung above Selma’s refrigerator. The optician examined it as if the numbers signified more than just a telephone connection. He took the paper with the number down, folded it, and put it in his breast pocket.

On the way home, the optician felt much lighter than he had on the way to Selma’s; instead of lugging two suitcases full of papers and a commune of panicked voices, he now carried a single piece of paper, and even the wind that had whipped at him earlier had calmed down.

At home he picked up the telephone and the number and sat down with them on his bed, the bed that was just the right size for one person. He counted forward eight hours. He dialed the nearly interminable string of numbers, then waited an even more interminable period of time until the first monk picked up the receiver. Only six monks later did the optician reach the monk he wanted.

“Hello?” Frederik said.

“Hello, Frederik, this is Dietrich Hahnberg.”

There was a short silence on the other end of the line. “Excuse me, but who am I speaking to?” Frederik finally asked.

“The optician.”

“I see,” Frederik exclaimed. “I beg your pardon. This is a surprise. How are you?”

“Could you please come by?” the optician asked, as if Frederik were in the neighboring village and not at the other end of the world.

“Of course,” he replied.