We searched until evening. “Alaska!” we called. “Alaska!” We passed through the two neighboring villages and asked everyone we met if they’d seen a dog that was much too big. For hours Elsbeth asked us over and over again if any of us happened to feel tingling in our right hands, which was as exhausting as Palm’s biblical exegeses would have been. Elsbeth had explained that you find someone you’ve lost when your right hand tingles. “No, still no tingling,” we’d answer each time.

“I can’t go any farther,” Selma finally announced.

“Let’s stop for now,” the optician suggested. “We can look for him again tomorrow. Maybe Alaska is sitting by the front door waiting for us.”

I didn’t want to stop. I feared that the person you’re looking for is truly lost if you stop searching. I was afraid my father might call. He loved Alaska. My father saw him only rarely, which made love much simpler, because those who are absent can’t misbehave. My father had called that morning and the connection had been terrible. Selma told him that Alaska had disappeared, even though we were all standing around her, waving our arms to signal that she shouldn’t say anything about Alaska’s disappearance, not yet. But Selma hadn’t understood what we were trying to tell her and had only looked at us, astonished at the way we were all flailing our arms as if we’d all burned our hands at the same time.

“You absolutely have to find him,” my father had said, at least as far as Selma could understand over the terrible connection, and he promised to call again that evening. I could picture Selma telling him that we’d looked everywhere for Alaska but hadn’t found him. I could see my father, in a telephone booth somewhere far away with a bad connection, only able to understand “everywhere” and “not.”

“Go home,” I said. “I’m going to keep looking a bit longer.”

I didn’t return through the villages but instead followed the edge of the forest. Night was falling. When I reached the Uhlheck, in the meadow where Selma had seen the okapi in her dream, three men emerged from between the tree trunks. They appeared so suddenly and so silently, it was as if they hadn’t stepped out of the forest but out of the void.

I stood still. The men were bald and wore black cowls and sandals. Three monks had burst out of the underbrush. The sudden appearance of an okapi would not have been more incongruous.

The monks were staring at the ground with intense concentration. A few steps from me, they finally raised their heads and stood still.