Frederik folded up the letter and put it in the pocket of his robe. He put the book and flyers on the kitchen table and shook out the cushions.

He washed the dishes and the cutlery. He wiped off containers of flour, sugar, and preserves, polished glasses, scrubbed pots and pans. He dried everything carefully and put it all back in the cupboards. He cleaned the windows, the window frames, and the door from all sides. Then he put the ladder back in the garage.

When he closed the garage door, he took an involuntary look at the meadow on the forest’s edge to check if the deer that had to be chased away for its own good happened to be standing there. Frederik knew exactly what had to be done or not done in and around Selma’s house. He had learned it in the letters, the more than seven hundred letters.

He went back into the house. His head had been empty the entire time, as devoid of thought as only Frederik knew how to make it. When he opened the door, he was struck by a question, namely if when you enter an old house, the old house also enters you.

In the cubby at the end of the hallway, Frederik found a vacuum cleaner leaning against the drying rack on which Selma had hung laundry exactly as laundry should be hung.

Frederik went back to the kitchen and vacuumed the floor. My mother suddenly appeared in the doorway.

He turned off the vacuum.

“Hello,” she said, “where is everybody?”

“There’s no one here right now,” Frederik said, and gestured at the ceiling: “Except your husband. He’s upstairs.”

“Once again, I’m too late,” my mother said. She leaned against the doorframe with a sigh. “Do you know the feeling? Of being too late?”

“From before, I do,” Frederik said. “Where I live now, we’re all very punctual.”

“I can believe that.” My mother looked around the kitchen. “You’re also here at exactly the right time.”

Her eyes fell on the optician’s book lying on the kitchen table. She picked it up. “I write poems now. I’ll bring you one sometime,” she said, assuming that Frederik would stay long enough that he could be brought things sometime.

She opened the optician’s book. Out of habit, the book opened to the passage the optician had often opened to because it held his favorite sentence, underlined multiple times. “Even a continual mistake can be Zen,” my mother read out loud. “My God, I think I’m a Buddhist, too.”

She looked at her watch. “If I leave now, I’ll actually get to Alberto’s on time.”

Frederik smiled. “Then go,” he said.

My mother hesitated. “Or should I check on Peter? What do you think?”