Frederik took up the opening sentence for me but not the closing one. I had to carry that one myself. I carried it until the very last minute of our conversation.

“All right, then, take care of yourself, Luisa,” Frederik said.

I held one foot over the red-marked section. “I’d like to see you again,” I said.

Frederik was silent. He was silent for so long, I was worried he had suddenly turned to stone and become a mountain named after him.

“You’re very good at sticking your foot in the door at the last minute,” he said. He suddenly sounded very serious. “I have to think it over,” he said. “I’ll give you a call.”

“But how?” I asked, because he didn’t know my telephone number, but he had already hung up.

When Selma opened the door wearing a flowered ankle-length nightgown and a hairnet to keep her hairdo safe during the night, I was still balanced on one leg with my foot hovering over the red-marked section.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked, grabbing me by the shoulders and turning me around as if I were sleepwalking.

“I’m wide awake,” I said. I held the receiver out to her. “Japan was on the line.”

“That was certainly a highlight in this phone’s life,” she said, and took the receiver from my hand. Then with her shoulder she nudged me across the living room toward the sofa. I was as lively as if we were dancing a polonaise.

“He’s going to think over whether we should see each other again,” I said, and sat on the sofa.

“Maybe you should think it over, too,” Selma said, and sat down next to me. The hairnet made her forehead look like it was barred.

“Why?”

“Because he’s so far away,” Selma said. We sat very close. We were dreadfully flowery.

“Almost everyone is far away,” I said.

“Exactly, it would be nice to have someone nearby for a change. All I’m saying is that you should keep in mind the fact that it might not work out.”

“It will work out,” I said, “you can count on it.”

And fourteen days later, a letter arrived.

The widow in the neighboring village brought it to Selma’s on a Saturday. “I have an airmail letter for you, Luisa,” she said. She spoke very loudly, and I wondered if it was a delayed side effect of too much primal scream therapy. She held out a light-blue envelope as light as a feather. Beneath the many brightly colored, flowered stamps were lines in very even handwriting:

To

Luisa

c/o Selma (in the next village)

c/o The House of Contemplation

Fichtenweg 3

57327 Weyersroth

—Germany