“What kind of dog is Alaska?”

“He belongs to my father,” I said.

We crossed the Uhlheck. Frederik ate the Mars bar and kept glancing at me, then at the landscape that was now dressed to the nines, like Elsbeth when she had Sunday visitors. The ears of wheat were truly golden, the sky perfectly clear.

“It’s beautiful here,” Frederik said.

“It is, isn’t it,” I agreed, “a glorious symphony of green, blue, and gold.”

Everything about Frederik was light: the hair missing from his head, his very present turquoise-colored eyes. How can anyone be so beautiful? I thought. My thought had the same intonation as the optician’s when he had asked no one in particular how anyone could be so young.

Then I stopped and grabbed Frederik’s sleeve.

“It’s like this,” I said. “I’m twenty-two years old. My best friend died because he leaned against a door on the local train that wasn’t properly shut. That was twelve years ago. Whenever my grandmother dreams of an okapi, someone dies soon after. My father believes you can only become yourself somewhere far from home, so he’s traveling. My mother has a flower shop and is having an affair with the owner of an ice-cream parlor whose name is Alberto. The optician took a saw to the posts of that hunting blind there”—I pointed at the adjacent meadow—“because he wanted to kill the hunter. The optician is in love with my grandmother but won’t tell her. I’m doing a bookseller apprenticeship.”

I had never told anyone all these things because some were already known by everyone I knew and some were things that no one should know. I told them all to Frederik so he could jump right in.

Frederik looked over the fields and listened to me like someone listening closely to directions so he can remember them exactly.

“That pretty much sums it up,” I said.

Frederik laid his hand on mine, which was still clutching his sleeve, and kept looking into the distance.

“Is that him?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Alaska.”

From far, far away, something was running toward us, a small gray thing that got bigger and bigger and looked more and more like Alaska as it got closer. When it got very close, when it reached us, it truly was him. “You can become yourself somewhere nearby, too,” Frederik said.

I knelt down and threw my arms around the breathless dog, who was covered with twigs and leaves. “I’m so happy, so happy,” I cried, “but where have you been?” For once, I was surprised Alaska didn’t answer.

I plucked the twigs and leaves from his fur and looked him over to see if he had any injuries. He was intact.

“That’s a very handsome dog,” Frederik said, lying to me for the first and only time. Alaska was friendly but by no means was he handsome.