Selma had known in theory that the optician smoked since shortly after Martin’s death, but he had never done it in front of her. She watched him, fascinated, like a child seeing an adult pee standing up for the first time. The optician did not enjoy the cigarette—not because it tasted like flowers but because Selma was watching him with such fascination. “Please don’t stare at me like that,” he said.

“I can’t get my head around you smoking,” she said, and kept staring.

The optician sighed. “Well, I can’t with you watching me,” he said, and put the cigarette out. Some things have to be kept secret from Selma, he thought.

After twenty minutes my father came back down and sat on the steps with us. He scratched his head under the bathing cap with his index finger. It was so tight, it didn’t slip. “Good,” he said, “good.”

“What do you mean by ‘good’?” Selma asked, and stroked my father’s back.

“I mean because everything is taken care of, and that’s good.”

He reached for the clove cigarettes. I wondered if the news about my mother and Alberto had to sink in overnight. But that wasn’t it. My father never mentioned Alberto again. He slept on Selma’s red couch, washed the lice shampoo out of his hair the next day, and packed his freshly washed, still-damp clothes into his backpack. “I’m off again,” he said. “It was nice here with you.”

In the blink of an eye Alaska was once again as old as he actually was.

“Ah, here you are,” Mr. Rödder said, and his eyebrows, as agitated as ever, drew together in a frown. “It’s high time. Marlies Klamp came in again today and said that she didn’t like your latest recommendations, either. It’s a shame, Luisa, a shame. If things continue like this—”

“I’ve brought you something,” I said, and handed the saddlebag to Mr. Rödder. His face immediately brightened.

“My goodness, Luisa, it’s beautiful,” he whispered, caressing the leather. “Is it really for me?”

“It’s for you,” I said. “It’s genuine camel leather.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Rödder said. “You know what? We’ll hang it over the travel-writing shelves. How did you find this treasure?”

“Connections,” I said.

When I climbed onto the stepstool to hang the saddlebag over the travel section, my mother suddenly appeared next to me. I put the bag onto a shelf.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. My mother was wearing a dark blue scarf with long gold fringes around her shoulders. Looking down at her head, I could see the gray roots in her dyed-black hair.

“It didn’t make the slightest difference to him,” my mother said, as if she had given my father an expensive present that didn’t please him at all.