In his good suit, he stretched out on the damp, old leaves. Alaska lay down next to him. The optician crossed his arms under his head, looked at the sky etched with branches and treetops, and blinked in the drizzle.

Again the optician thought of the sentence he’d been ruminating on alone and with others for so long: When we look at something, it can disappear from our sight, but if we do not try to see this something, it cannot disappear. His inner voices had never tried to explain it to him. Why should they? “Since you’re already lying here,” they now told him, “you might as well die, too. It won’t make any difference.”

The optician sat bolt upright, so abruptly and orthopedically wrong that he felt a stab of pain in his lower back.

“I’ve got it,” he shouted.

And Alaska stood up, probably because he noticed it was a solemn moment.

“It’s about differentiating,” the optician said. “To look means to differentiate.” He patted Alaska’s head. “I could have figured it out earlier, Alaska, given my profession. Listen: if we don’t try to differentiate something from everything else around us, then it can’t disappear. Because it’s not separate. Because it hasn’t been detached from everything else, it’s still there.” Because he was so excited, he asked Alaska, “Do you understand?” and was surprised that Alaska didn’t reply, “Of course, I understand perfectly. Please go on.”

Selma doesn’t disappear if I don’t try to see her, the optician thought. And what he wanted most was to run to Selma and explain it to her.

THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE

“Can I do anything for you?” my mother asked after we’d left the community center. “Maybe you’d like an ice cream?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just go for a walk.”

I walked to the edge of the village, to Marlies’s house. She hadn’t come to the funeral. I was worried something might have happened to her, because nothing could stop her from coming to Selma’s funeral—not even she herself. Of that I was certain.

I walked through her garden gate, past her soggy mail, and made a circle around the bee nest. I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, but went straight to the kitchen window at the back of the house. As always, it was ajar. I peeked inside. My heart immediately started racing. I looked away and put a hand over my heart. Calm down, I thought, she can’t be serious, and then I looked inside again.

Marlies, in her Norwegian sweater and underpants, sat on a kitchen chair. She was holding Palm’s shotgun under her chin.

“Marlies,” I said through the opening in the window, “you can’t be serious.”

She wasn’t at all surprised to hear my voice, as if I’d already been standing there for hours.