We crossed the Uhlheck. It was blustery, the forest rustled. We had turned up our coat collars and the wind blew my hair into my face. Selma maneuvered her wheelchair over the soggy path.

Selma was no longer very steady on her feet, but she refused to give up her daily walk in the Uhlheck, so she had gotten herself a wheelchair with thick tires like those on mountain bikes. Selma would not let anyone push her. She would always bump along beside me in her wheelchair for a while, then she would get up and push it like a walker.

While Selma let her thoughts wander, she read mine, which, especially since Frederik’s visit was approaching, refused to wander anywhere; they wrapped themselves around me and the surrounding tree trunks like garlands of letters.

“Why do you worry so much?” Selma asked. “Why are you so nervous?”

I looked at the wheelchair as it struggled through the mud and said, “Henry, the coach is breaking.”

Selma looked at me from the corner of her eye. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“I’m scared he’ll think we’re all strange.”

“But he himself is strange,” Selma said. “He stumbles out of the underbrush and eats Mars bars.”

The wheelchair got bogged down with one wheel in a mud puddle. Selma shook it free. “But that’s not the only thing, is it?” she asked.

“No,” I answered. Since Frederik’s visit had been getting closer, I’d been eyeing my heart suspiciously, just as everyone in the village kept a suspicious eye on their own hearts after Selma’s dreams. My heart was not used to getting so much attention, and so raced at a disturbing pace. I remembered that the onset of a heart attack is accompanied by a tingling in the arm, but couldn’t remember which one and so both arms tingled.

“You’re confusing things,” Selma said.

Love befalls you, I thought, it arrives like the bailiff who recently appeared at Farmer Leidig’s house in the neighboring village. Love comes in, I thought, slaps a seal on everything you have, and announces: “None of this belongs to you anymore.”

“You’re confusing things, Luisa,” Selma said again. “That’s not love, that’s death.”

She put her arm around me, and it looked like she was pushing me and the wheelchair through the mud. “And there’s a slight difference between them,” she said, and smiled. “A few people have returned from the kingdom of love.”