“Hey,” Heinrich said, “is it slanted? Take a look. You can judge, as a trained optician.”

The optician tried to clean his dust-covered glasses with his dust-covered undershirt, lay down next to Heinrich, and looked across the floor.

“Now that you mention it,” he said, “yes. But if you don’t know, it’s not at all noticeable.”

They both gazed over the floor as if it were an unusual landscape. Then the optician knocked on the spot where they had just lain. “But I do think these boards are too thin.”

“Where?” Heinrich asked, as if he didn’t know, as if the optician hadn’t said again and again: “These boards are too thin.”

“Right here, where we were just lying.”

Heinrich had walked back and forth across the boards and jumped up and down. “Naw, it’s good enough,” he said, and to prove it, he kept jumping, so hard that the optician, lying on the floor, bounced up and down. “It’ll hold forever. Trust me.”

Frederik did not break through. Not into the basement, not to Japan, and certainly not into the void. He stood there, kept his balance, and felt pleasantly heavy, as if one automatically grew heavier when standing on places that had been unjustly labeled for years as dangerously weak.

He looked out the window to see Marlies, the optician, and me. We had collected the optician from his perimeter on our way back through the village and were just climbing the hill. The optician and I had each taken one of Marlies’s arms. We were moving slowly because we were trying to teach Marlies how to play Hat, Stick, Umbrella, and Marlies refused to learn. Frederik watched us again and again advance three steps, then stop and take one forward, one back, and one to the side. He heard us say, “Come on, Marlies, join in,” and Marlies answer, “Not a chance.”

I waved at Frederik and he waved back.

Now lift your feet from the floor, Frederik thought. Step away, open the door, let everyone in.

But because Frederik was so heavy, we were quicker. We came into the kitchen as Frederik was still standing with one foot on the dangerously weak section. The optician stared at him. Frederik raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong?” he asked, then looked down at his feet. “Oh,” he said, finally noticing where he was standing. He came up to me and extended his hand holding the false pearl. “I found something,” he said.

EPILOGUE

“We really need to go,” the optician called. He was leaning against his old Passat, in front of the house, at the foot of the hill, waiting. He sighed and looked up at the sky. It was morning and very clear.

Marlies and Dr. Maschke walked down the street. They stopped next to the optician and looked at him with concern. “What on earth is the matter?” Marlies asked.