No one said anything for a long time, especially not Selma. Since the birthday girl wasn’t talking anymore, everyone decided it was time to go. Besides, my father wasn’t talking anymore either. Selma’s and my father’s combined silence was at least as big as an Irish wolfhound with a shoulder height of eighty inches. So the optician kissed Selma on the cheek and left. Elsbeth patted the dog, pulled off the rubber gloves, and left. Marlies stopped examining her supposedly visible incipient eyelid inflammation and her supposedly invisible despair and left. Martin lifted the dog once more and left. Selma and my father pushed their vigorous silence outside onto the front doorsteps.

I sat down on the steps next to Selma and ate the empty chocolate shell of a Mon Chéri. The dog lay down on my feet. I could feel its heartbeat on my toes. The dog was tired. It had been exhausting to encounter so many old, long-lost friends he’d never met before.

On the far side of the meadow at the edge of the forest, a deer appeared. Selma got up, walked to the garage, opened the garage door, and slammed it shut with all her strength. It was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays in season Martin’s father, Palm, went hunting, and Selma deliberately frightened the deer so that it would disappear into the underbrush, safe from Palm’s shotgun.

The deer startled and disappeared. The dog startled, too, but did not disappear. Selma returned to the house from the garage, and it is incomprehensible that we still hadn’t noticed her resemblance to Rudi Carrell. “Here comes Rudi Carrell,” would have been a perfectly justifiable reaction, “Rudi Carrell is walking from the garage straight toward us.”

Selma sat down on the doorsteps again, cleared her throat, and looked at my father. “Can’t Astrid watch him?”

“That’s not possible with the flower shop,” my father said, and Selma looked like she suddenly wished she had a shop, too.

“I bought him for therapeutic reasons,” my father explained.

“So the dog is part of Dr. Maschke’s nonsense,” Selma said.

“Don’t be so dismissive, it’s because of my pain,” my father said.

“What pain is that?”

“Mine,” my father answered. “My encapsulated pain.”

“But from what?” Selma asked, and my father replied, “That’s just it. I don’t know—it’s encapsulated.” And I thought that even with encapsulated things you know what’s in them, but maybe that’s only the case when there’s no pain in the capsule, just medicine or astronauts.

My father explained that Dr. Maschke had figured out how his pain could be accessed.

“I have to externalize my pain, hence the dog,” my father whispered excitedly.