“That doesn’t really sound very interesting,” Elsbeth said. “But, fine. I won’t say anything superstitious.” She apologized to another ivy root. “I hope I won’t forget. Here, take this.”

She pressed the shears into my hand, closed her eyes, took two big steps forward and two back.

“What was that?” I asked, and Elsbeth said, “It helps against forgetfulness.”

I found the optician with his head in the arc perimeter. Selma was there. She had brought him some cake and was perched on the edge of the table with the phoropter, with which Martin and I had believed you could see the future.

“It’s just Luisa,” she said when the bells on the door jingled, so the optician would know it wasn’t a customer and he could safely keep his head in the instrument and signal to the little dots that he had seen them.

“Could you take Alaska with you today?” Selma asked. “I’ll be at the doctor’s all day tomorrow.” Selma’s deformed hands shone with the pain relief ointment she had rubbed into them.

“Of course,” I said. “I wanted to ask you two something.”

“Shoot,” the optician said.

“I wanted to ask you not to ask Frederik too many questions about Buddhism.”

The optician took his head out of the perimeter and spun on his stool to face me. “But why not?”

“Because he won’t be here on duty,” I said, and thought of my father, who, when he was still a practicing doctor, was constantly being approached on the street, in the ice-cream parlor, and even in Dr. Maschke’s waiting room, for advice on symptoms.

“What’s that list you’ve got there?” the optician asked. I held my spiral notebook out to him, and he read out loud:

Marlies: nicer

Optician: no Buddhism

Elsbeth: less superstition

Selma: less skeptical

Palm: fewer Bible quotations

Mama: less absent-seeming

Me: draw fewer blanks, less timid, less anxious, new pair of pants

The optician pressed his hands against his lower back. “I thought Buddhism was about authenticity,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “but not necessarily ours.”

“New pair of pants is good,” Selma said.

“Why no Bible quotations?” the optician asked.

“I thought that might irritate him, as a Buddhist,” I said, as if Buddhism and Christianity were rival football teams.

“I thought he wasn’t here on duty,” the optician said, and Selma added, “And I thought nothing irritated Buddhists. But maybe I really should be a bit less skeptical.”

“By the way, Buddhism is also about giving up control,” the optician said, and stuck his head back in the perimeter.

“Come, let’s go for a walk,” Selma said to me. “It’s almost half past six and I think you desperately need some fresh air.”