I sat on the windowsill in Selma’s bedroom. I looked at the carefree shepherd boy with his shawm and wondered when exactly Selma had dreamed of an okapi the night before and how much time remained in the best-case.

Selma woke briefly and looked at me. She lay on her back with her comforter pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were more feverish than before, but also alert.

“So far everything’s going smoothly,” she said as if talking about preparations for the May Festival.

ON INTIMATE TERMS WITH THE WORLD

The optician went back to Selma’s; it was one-thirty in the morning. Just before he reached our house, he noticed, despite the darkness, a movement on the edge of his field of vision. He looked to the left at the meadow through which the Apfelbach flowed. On the far side of the meadow, a figure was standing on the bridge. The optician climbed over the fence and walked toward it.

It was Palm. The optician stepped onto the bridge and stood next to him. Palm’s eyes were glassy, his arms dangling. He held his Bible in one hand, a half-empty bottle of liquor in the other.

Palm had been sober for so many years that the optician had forgotten how he looked larger when drunk. When he hit the bottle, Palm seemed bulkier, his shoulders, his hands, his face.

The optician tentatively extended his hand. Palm flinched, dropping the Bible. It fell on the bridge, on the very edge. The optician nudged it to the center with his foot.

The stream, which usually didn’t rise above a murmur, roared in the optician’s ears. On that night, the stream was a torrent. Because of the roar, the optician couldn’t hear that Palm was weeping, but he could see it. He saw tears streaming down Palm’s face, which had turned red, bulky, and ferocious again in a mere instant.

The optician took a deep breath. Then he took a step forward, slipped his arms under Palm’s armpits. Palm staggered backward, but the optician pulled Palm to his chest with all his strength, not letting the possibility that Palm might crumble to dust at the slightest touch stop him. There and then, over the thundering Apfelbach, he had to run that risk.

Palm did not crumble, and the optician lifted him up. He let Palm’s heavy head sink onto his shoulder. Palm stank of liquor and sweat; his entire body shook with sobs, and the optician’s body trembled from the strain. Palm’s arms, which had hung along the optician’s right and left sides, lifted and embraced him. The bottle slipped from Palm’s hand onto the bridge. Palm’s sweat-matted hair brushed the optician’s neck. His shoulders pressed against the optician’s nose and pushed his glasses onto his forehead.