Everyone was worried, but apart from Friedhelm, the shopkeeper’s brother, no one was terrified, because being terrified usually requires some level of certainty. Friedhelm was as terrified as if the okapi in Selma’s dream had whispered his name. He ran off stumbling through the forest, screaming and trembling, until the optician caught him and brought him to my father. My father was a doctor and gave Friedhelm a shot that made him so happy that he spent the rest of the day waltzing through the village singing, Oh, you lovely Westerwald, and getting on everyone’s nerves.

The villagers also kept a suspicious eye on their hearts, which, unused to getting so much attention, raced at a disturbing pace. They remembered that the onset of a heart attack is accompanied by a tingling in the arm, but couldn’t remember which one, so the villagers felt tingling in both arms. They kept a watchful eye on their state of mind, and these minds, also unused to so much attention, were set racing at a disturbing pace as well. They wondered, as they stepped into their cars, picked up a pitchfork, or took a pot of boiling water off the stove, if they might not lose their minds just then—be overcome by a bottomless despair and with it an urge to drive full speed into a tree, fall onto the pitchfork, or pour the boiling water over their heads. Or, if not to harm themselves, they might feel the urge to douse with boiling water, to stab with a pitchfork, or to run over someone close to them: their neighbor, their brother-in-law, their wife.

Some of the villagers avoided all activity the entire day; some even longer. Elsbeth once told Martin and me that years earlier, on the day after one of Selma’s dreams, the retired mailman had stopped moving altogether. He was convinced that any movement could mean death; he remained convinced for days, even months after Selma’s dream, long after someone had in fact died in accordance with the dream’s dictate, the shoemaker’s mother. The mailman simply stayed in his chair. His immobile joints became inflamed, his blood became clotted and finally came to a standstill halfway through his body at the very moment that his mistrusted heart stopped beating. The retired mailman lost his life from fear of losing it.