The Devil's Sanctuary (4 page)

MOSELLE WINE.
Cool, refreshing, like it had been drawn from a well deep in the earth.

Gisela Obermann wished she still had the Bohemian crystal glasses she’d inherited, instead of the dull, mass-produced glasses of the staff quarters. But she’d given the old glasses away to charity, and they had been sold to raise funds. She had given everything away when she got the chance to work at Himmelstal. She had gotten rid of her beautiful apartment and put an end to a damaging long-term relationship. The only things she kept were a few decent items of clothing, some psychiatric textbooks, and her cat, Snowflake.

“I’ve burned my boats,” she said to herself.

She loved that expression. In the past generals would burn their boats so that their men wouldn’t be tempted to set off for home when the fighting got too tough. She could see the burning boats before her, flames reflected in the water. A beautiful, terrifying sight.

Gisela lay down on her bed and curled up beside her long-haired cat, breathing in its faint, clean smell. Unlike dogs, cats always smelled good. She’d have liked to have a cat-scented perfume.

The cat purred, its soft white coat vibrating gently against her face.

The window was ajar. A blackbird was singing outside. She could hear voices and the sound of metal scraping against stone. Then she picked up the smell of burning charcoal. Yet another staff party. She wasn’t thinking of going.

She closed her eyes, letting the cat’s fur caress her cheek and pretending it was Doctor Kalpak’s hand.

She would never see Doctor Kalpak at a staff party. He didn’t go to parties. She had shaken his hand when she arrived at the clinic and introduced herself to him. She had never forgotten the touch of his hand. Slender and brown, with the longest fingers she’d ever seen. It was more like an independent object than a hand. Some sort of animal. A quick, agile, silky animal. A weasel, maybe.

His lilting accent fit in well up here in the mountains, soft, with a rising note to it, like Austrian or Norwegian. But his expressive hands were his true language: When you saw them you almost forgot to listen to what he was saying.

Gisela Obermann had let go of most of her dreams. One by one she had let them fall and drift off on the harsh winds of life. But the dream of one day feeling Doctor Kalpak’s hands on her naked body remained, and she would take it out and enjoy it when she was alone.

She shut her eyes again and felt the wine drawing swirling patterns in her brain. She remembered that Max had had a visit today. From his brother. Max was the only one of her clients who still gave her a glimmer of hope. What would a visit like this do to him?

The cat’s purring motor speeded up.

“I love animals because they are alive without being human.” Who was it who said that? Mayakovsky? Dostoyevsky?

Gisela went back to thinking about Doctor Kalpak’s hands. Two silken weasels padding over her body. One on her breasts, and the other on her stomach and down between her thighs.

IT WAS DARK
outside now. Widely spaced lights lit up the paths in the park surrounding the clinic. Max and Daniel were heading down the hillside toward the village.

“You seem to be able to come and go from the clinic as you like,” Daniel remarked.

“Of course. The clients here would never accept anything else. As long as I go to bed like a good boy each night, I can do pretty much whatever I want during the day.”

They had reached the bottom of the slope and come to a narrow paved road where the lighting was brighter and more regular, like a jogging track. A funny little electric cart, bright yellow, was coming toward them with a gentle hum. The driver said hello as he glided past. He was wearing some sort of uniform, like a janitor or hotel porter, and there was a similarly dressed man sitting beside him in the cramped vehicle. Daniel guessed that they belonged to the clinic staff. Absentmindedly and without comment, Daniel returned the man’s greeting, then quickly crossed the road.

They passed a few houses, went round a bend, and suddenly found themselves, without Daniel actually realizing how it had happened, in the center of the village.

Houses with flower-covered balconies surrounded a small square with a well at its center. There was a cozy glow from the leaded-glass windows, and from somewhere there came the sound of voices and a dog barking, echoing between the rocky walls of the narrow valley. It was strange to think that people lived their lives in this fairy-tale world.

Max turned off into an alley and stopped in front of a brown house set in a small garden where colored lanterns hung from the trees.

“Hannelores Bierstube,” Max explained rather unnecessarily, seeing as the name was written above the doorway like icing, in looping, ornate white lettering.

“And there was me thinking it was the witch’s gingerbread house,” Daniel said.

“Who knows?” Max said. “Are you brave enough to go in?”

“I’d love a beer. Let’s forget the idea of coffee and liqueur. A large tankard of cold German beer is just what I need. Come on, let’s go in. It looks nice.”

“That’s what Hansel and Gretel said too. Well, if you like,” Max said, gesturing to Daniel to go first.

It looked like Max was a regular customer in the gingerbread house, because as soon as they got in he settled down in a corner of the dimly lit room, then turned toward the bar and ordered beer for them both without saying a word, by just holding two fingers in the air. His order was received with a nod by a thickset older woman, and a moment later she was on her way over to them with two huge tankards. She set them down firmly on the table. She had arms as big as a lumberjack’s and a mouth like a bulldog.

“What did I say?” Daniel whispered with a shudder. “Do you think she’s going to gobble us up?”

Max shrugged.

“I’ve been okay so far. I think she’s waiting until I get a serious beer belly first. She usually pinches my waist to see how it’s coming along. Well, cheers, bro! It’s really good to have you here!”

They raised their tankards.

“I feel the same. Much better than I thought, in fact. I never imagined—,” Daniel said, but was interrupted by an unexpected “cuckoo,” and only now did he notice the large cuckoo clock on the wall beside them.

The clock played out an entire little scenario. In addition to the cuckoo popping out of its door, there was an old man chopping wood and an old woman trying to milk a goat. But the goat kept kicking its hind legs, knocking over the little pot, and the old woman kept having to stand it up again.

“Damn,” Daniel said, taken aback, once the performance was over and the cuckoo had disappeared behind its door.

Max seemed untroubled. He was gulping his beer greedily, and some of the froth ran down onto the table. A skinny little man in an apron with thin back-combed hair appeared out of the gloom like a ghost and wiped the table with a cloth. As the man leaned over into the light of the candle Daniel thought that his cheekbones stuck out like a skeleton’s.

“I take it that was Hansel?” he said after the man had withdrawn with a silent bow. “He’s doing a good job of not letting himself get too fat.”

“There’s a Gretel as well. I don’t know if she’s here today,” Max said, looking round the room. “Maybe she’s been gobbled up already. It wouldn’t surprise me. She’s fairly tasty. If I didn’t have my little Giulietta I might have been tempted to have a little nibble.”

“Who’s Giulietta? Your latest conquest?”

“Latest, last, and only. A stunningly beautiful twenty-two-year-old olive farmer’s daughter from Calabria. She still lives at home with her parents, but we’re engaged.”

“A twenty-two-year-old! But you’re thirteen years older than her,” Daniel objected.

“That’s not unusual in Calabria. Her parents are very happy with me. I’m mature, experienced, and comfortably off.”

“And burned out. In a rehab clinic. But perhaps you haven’t told them that?”

“No, I’ve told them I’m in Sweden on business.”

“What about Giulietta? Is she happy with you as well?”

“She’s crazy about me.”

“And does she think you’re in Sweden on business too?”

“Yes. But I’m going to take things a bit easier from now on. When I leave Himmelstal we’re going to get married and settle down in Calabria. We’re going to have our own olive farm. Children. Seven or eight.”

He nodded happily to himself, as if this was a decision he’d just made. Then he looked up and asked, “You don’t have any children, do you?”

“No, you know that perfectly well. Emma wanted to wait, and then we got divorced.”

Max put a calming hand on his shoulder.

“There’s no rush. Us men have time on our side. It’s different for women. Shall we have another beer?”

“I haven’t gotten through this one yet. You have another. I’ll pay.”

“You’re not paying for anything. You’re my guest,” Max said, gesturing with his hand to order another tankard from the bulldog woman.

The room had filled up and the noise level had increased. Most of the clientele were men, but it was hard to get any idea of what sort of people they were, seeing as the lighting was so dim. Except for a few spotlights on the bar, the only lighting was the candles on the tables.

“Your stay here seems to have done you good,” Daniel said. “I was actually quite worried when I got your letter.”

“Like I said, this is the best clinic in Europe for nervous exhaustion. You should have seen me when I arrived.”

Max tilted his head to one side, stuck out his tongue, and crossed his eyes.

“Nervous exhaustion,” Daniel repeated. “You’ve never been diagnosed with that before.”

“No. Weirdly enough. Because if you think about it, all my breakdowns occurred after periods of seriously hard work. The last time I was in the hospital was after I’d spent a while working twenty-four hours a day. I never slept. It’s hardly surprising I got exhausted.”

“But,” Daniel said, “that sort of hyperactivity is a
symptom
of your illness. Not one of the
causes.
”

“Are you sure about that? Maybe we’ve been getting it wrong. Maybe we haven’t understood what was the chicken and what was the egg. Maybe I’ve been wrongly diagnosed all these years. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that I’ve simply been suffering from recurrent bouts of nervous exhaustion. Exhaustion can express itself in any number of ways.”

“Well,” Daniel said with a yawn, “if we don’t go home to bed,
I’m
going to end up with nervous exhaustion. And I wouldn’t like to imagine how that might express itself.”

Just as he said this a few long notes from an accordion broke through the noise of the room, and a moment later a woman started to sing in a low voice with a clear, lilting rhythm. Daniel looked round in surprise.

In the glow of a newly lit spotlight at the far end of the room a young woman had appeared and was standing there singing, dressed in some sort of peasant costume with a laced bodice and puffed sleeves. She was accompanied on the accordion by a middle-aged man wearing a flowery vest, tight knee-length trousers, and a ridiculous flat hat with flowers stuck under the brim.

“Look at that, tourist entertainment,” Daniel exclaimed. “I thought we were well away from the tourist trail. Maybe I could find a hotel nearby after all.”

“Well,” Max said nonchalantly, “I’m not sure I’d call it tourist entertainment. More like locals entertaining other locals. They’re here a couple of evenings each week. Do you want to listen, or shall we go?”

“We can’t go as soon as they’ve started. Let’s wait a bit,” Daniel said.

The woman sang with exaggerated clarity, emphasized by gestures with her hands and eyes, as if she were singing to children. Yet Daniel still understood practically none of her Swiss German. Every now and then she rang a cowbell. It was a long song, with an amusing, narrative text—he understood that much—and after a few verses he found he was able to predict when the cowbell was going to be rung.

“They carry on like that for ages. Come on, let’s go,” Max said in his ear, but Daniel shook his head.

There was something about the singer he found fascinating. She had narrow brown eyes, bright red lipstick, and a stubby little nose with a scattering of freckles. Her hair was chocolate brown and cut in a short bob with bangs as straight as a ruler.

Daniel looked at her, trying to work out the nature of her beauty, because it wasn’t at all obvious. She was pretty in an enchanting, doll-like way, but beneath the prettiness there was an entirely different sort of face, with heavy peasant features that could only be seen from certain angles. Daniel could guess what her older relatives looked like, and what she herself would look like one day. There was something enticing about this solid core beneath the pretty exterior, and in no way did it detract from her appeal.

But really it was her eyes that formed the foundation of her beauty, he suddenly realized. They glinted like pulsating stars, and when she held her head still and moved her eyes from side to side, it was as if the glitter flew out and landed on the audience.

Her singing voice was nothing remarkable at all, and the whole performance was rather ridiculous. Exaggerated. Absurd. The staring eyes moving left and right like a toy’s. The overblown gestures: arms folded, head tilted, hands on hips. The red rubber-band mouth.

And the pudgy, red-cheeked man with the accordion and the stupid hat had to be some sort of joke, surely. A parody of the worst clichés of alpine culture.

The paradox was that the performance, in spite of its overemphatic nature and childish simplicity, was utterly incomprehensible. Daniel had never heard such a peculiar dialect. It was something to do with cows, he grasped that much. Cows and love. Mad! Mad and tasteless, yet simultaneously, Daniel was forced to admit to his own surprise, deeply fascinating. He sat there enchanted, unable to tear his eyes from the girl.

When she had finished singing, she accepted the feeble applause with a curtsey, holding her skirt coquettishly between forefinger and thumb. Daniel thought the audience was being churlish, and he applauded loudly. The girl looked in their direction and blinked at him. Or possibly at Max?

“Okay, let’s take our chance before they start up again,” Max said, getting up.

He walked quickly toward the door. Daniel followed him, walking backward, still clapping and without taking his eyes from the singer.

When they reached the door the accordionist played a long, drawn-out note, and they started to sing a duet, but Max had already dragged Daniel into the garden, where rows of red and green lanterns swung among the leaves of the trees, then out into the alley.

“I’m sorry if I’m rushing you, but we have to be back in our rooms and cabins by midnight at the latest. That’s the only rule at the clinic.”

“Who is she?” Daniel asked.

“The singer? Her name’s Corinne. She’s at Hannelores Bierstube pretty much every night. Sometimes she sings, sometimes she serves drinks,” Max replied.

They turned off the road and onto the path leading up through the patch of fir trees toward the clinic. It soon got dark when they left the lights of the village behind them, and the smell of the trees was intense. All of a sudden Daniel felt extremely tired.

“Do you think the clinic could help me get a taxi first thing tomorrow morning?” he asked. “To take me to the nearest railway station?”

“You’re leaving tomorrow? But you’ve only just gotten here!” Max exclaimed in disappointment, stopping on the path. “Most relatives stay a week.”

“Well, I only planned—”

“Yes, what had you planned? A free holiday in the Alps at my expense? Spend an hour visiting your crazy brother, then go off and have some fun?”

“No. Well… I don’t know.”

Daniel was so tired now that he couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t see how he was going to make it all the way back up the hill to Max’s cabin. His legs felt soft, like jelly. And the way his brother was talking was making him feel guilty. It was true that Max had actually paid for his trip.

“Do what you want. But I’d really appreciate it if you stayed another day. There’s so much I want to show you,” Max said, suddenly sounding gentle and beseeching.

They carried on up the steep path. Through the trees they could make out one of the modern steel and glass buildings of the clinic. Only the upper floor was lit up, which made it look like a hovering spaceship.

“It really is lovely here,” Daniel said. “Do you know, to start with I thought your letter came from Hell. I misread the postmark.”

Max burst out laughing, as though Daniel had said something incredibly funny. They were weaving through the trees and Daniel almost stumbled over a tree root, but Max caught hold of him, still laughing.

“Wonderful! That’s wonderful! Do you know the story about the man who rowed the boat to Hell?”

“No.”

“Anna used to tell it to me when I was little. There was this man who was doomed to row the dead across the river to Hell. Back and forth, back and forth, for all eternity. He was utterly sick of it, but he didn’t know how to escape it. Then one day he worked it out. Do you know what he did?”