The next day, Alice went along the neighborhood’s narrow paths to the invalid, who sat askew in a chair in the kitchen and talked about all the years he was looking forward to. The future unfolded itself for Einar, and he spoke of it in hazy images. On the table were some tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed. He fingered them and expounded on what was to be planted in the kitchen garden next year. He also spoke about how he was now going to be cured. A woman he went to croquet with on Tuesdays had dropped by with a guide to eating yourself free from cancer. Lemons and baking soda in particular were known to work miracles. The woman had also brought provisions. Alice could have a look herself, and she did: Einar’s refrigerator was full of lemons and baking soda, but Alice easily swept the contents into a garbage bag. Afterward she sat beside him and laid a thin hand over his. “My father was a dentist,” she said, “and the only thing baking​ 85soda can save is a cake.” Later, Alice went home and called up the woman with the lemons. She asked her straight out to pack it in, though she needn’t have sounded so harsh. That’s what she thought afterward, before she called the others. After all, the invalid had chosen the schnapps over the lemons, and the prescribed tranquilizers lay on the table like mints. To judge by Einar’s condition, he wasn’t able to figure out his doses. “We just have to hope he manages to get into a hospice,” Alice told everyone who was following Einar’s last days, and then she went to bed and slept like a rock.

Every day from the twelfth to the nineteenth, Alice went over to see Einar. He was lying in his bed more often now, which made his feet easier to get at. She removed his socks and massaged his feet, lumpy as they were, because it felt so nice, she knew it did. As she sat there at the foot of Einar’s bed and talked about her father, who’d been a dentist, about her devoted years as a schoolteacher, about her deceased husband, and about her son, who’d been sweet as a child, her fingers were busy pinching and patting. The big tom that always hung about Einar was easy enough to shoo off the bed. Then it stalked around beneath the bed and glowered at Alice, while up on the bed she spoke of the future. “I for instance have my funeral completely sorted,” Alice told Einar, who floated in and out of a schnapps fog. “I know precisely which songs they’ll sing,” and Einar opened an eye with difficulty and said, “But I still have long to live.”