“Oh, that,” the optician said, and wiped his cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. Since early morning, tears had been continually streaming down his face even though he was convinced he wasn’t crying. “I don’t know, they just keep dripping on their own. I’m guessing it’s some defect in my tear ducts due to age. Or an allergic reaction.”

“Or sadness,” Dr. Maschke suggested.

“Has she already left?” Marlies asked.

“No, I’m about to give her a ride,” the optician said. He looked at Dr. Maschke. “Luisa is flying to Australia today. In other words, practically to the middle of the Indian Ocean,” he said, as if Dr. Maschke didn’t already know, as if he hadn’t been telling everyone he met for weeks.

“Yes, I’m aware,” Dr. Maschke replied, handing the optician a handkerchief.

“She’s flying because of the endless expanse,” the optician recited what I’d told him, “and because she decided to do it.” He said it the same way he had recited the sentence about disappearing, the one no one had been able to explain to him.

The optician blew his nose thoroughly. “We really need to go,” he called again in a slightly lower voice.

“I’ll be right there,” I called down from the front door of the house on the hill. Frederik helped me hoist my enormous backpack onto my shoulders. “Time to go,” he said.

He was covered with paint. He’d been repainting the living room while I ran back and forth, packing the last few things.

“I’m definitely coming back,” I said, “in exactly four weeks. You can count on me.”

“I do,” Frederik said.

“And you’ll still be here?”

“Yes,” he said, “right here. Although I might be in the kitchen. I very likely will, actually.”

I kissed him. “And then we’ll see,” I whispered into his ear.

He smiled. “Yes, then we’ll see.”

“If anything happens, you have my number,” I said, and Frederik wiped white paint off my chin.

“I very much have your number,” he said, because I’d taped notepaper with my cell phone number all over the house.

Frederik looked at me. He saw that I was trying not to ask a question I’d already asked one hundred times for the one hundred and first time.

“Yes, I’ll remember Alaska’s pills.”

“And no one dies,” I said.

“No, no one dies.”

I let go of Frederik’s hand and walked down the hill, turning around again and again to wave at him. It was a morning in summer. I was brightly illuminated.

Frederik watched me go, then closed his eyes. Behind his lids he saw a static afterimage, the frozen movement of a last wave, a frozen smile, and everything that was actually light was dark to his inner eye, and everything that was dark appeared very bright.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS