The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  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?”

  “No?”

  “He had to get someone else to take over the oars. Do you get it? As easy as that. He just needed to get one of his passengers to row for a while. And then he’d be free and could get away, while the other man was left to row for all eternity.”

  Max couldn’t stop laughing at his own story.

  They had reached the park now. Moths were fluttering round the lamps. Then they were blinded by headlights and a moment later one of the funny electric carts came rolling down the path. A young man leaned out and called cheerily as he glided past: “So, this is where you’ve gotten to, is it? Evening round in twenty minutes, Max, don’t forget!”

  “Oh God, we’d better speed up,” Max muttered.

  Five minutes later they stepped inside the little cabin at the top of the slope, out of breath.

  Without getting undressed, having a wash, or brushing his teeth, Daniel lay down on the bench by the wall that Max had said would be his bed. He felt ready to pass out. Max tossed him a blanket and pillow.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, but it’s been a long day,” Daniel muttered, already drifting off to sleep.

  A loud knock woke him up with a start.

  “Coming!” Max shouted from the bathroom, where he was brushing his teeth.

  In just his underwear, with his toothbrush still in his mouth, he went over to the door.

  “The evening round,” he explained as he went past, his mouth full of foam from the toothpaste.

  Through half-open eyes Daniel watched as a woman in a pale-blue dress (a “hostess,” as they were evidently called) and a man in a pale-blue steward’s uniform (a “host”?) took a couple of steps inside the room and then stopped and nodded with friendly smiles. They glanced quickly round the room, caught sight of Daniel under his blanket on the bench, and the man whispered: “Your brother’s already asleep? Sleep well, Max, and have a good day together tomorrow.”

  Max said something inaudible with his toothbrush in his mouth. The man and woman quickly slipped out again. Daniel heard them knock at the next cabin and exchange a few words with its resident. Then another knock farther away.

  He closed his eyes. Everything he had experienced during this long, peculiar day was rushing through his brain, all out of order and muddled. Voices, sensory impressions, little things he didn’t even know he had noticed.

  On the edge of sleep a memory popped up, crystal clear in every detail: the uniformed men who had stopped them at the roadblock. Their faces below the peaks of their caps. The metal detector. The deserted, shaded road. The rock face with its ferns, the little trickles of water, and the smell of rock and damp. For a moment his brain was utterly awake, full of an anxiety he hadn’t felt at the time.

  Then he tumbled helplessly off into sleep. As he might have expected, his dreams were restless and confused. Only one of them etched itself into his consciousness and would stay with him for most of the following morning: Corinne in her laced-up dress. She was standing on the isolated road beside the rock face and was blocking his path by swinging her cowbell high above her head. He stopped the car—he was driving, there was no taxi driver in the dream—and got out.

  She rang the bell and the sound was thrown back by the mountains. Then she came over to him and ran the cowbell over his body, first the back, then the front, playful and laughing.

  As she held it over his chest she suddenly became serious, as if she had discovered something. (He was bare chested now, unless he had been the whole time?) She pressed the cowbell to his skin, right where his heart was, then frowned in concentration, her eyes narrowing to slits as she listened, trying to detect someth
ing vibrating.

  He knew what she had picked up on, he could hear it himself now: His heart was pounding so hard and fast that it was close to bursting.

  She’s found out! Now everything’s lost! he thought, as if his heart had been a stowaway he was trying to smuggle out, but which had given itself away.

  But in the dream the woman wasn’t called Corinne, but Corinte; he knew this even though neither of them had uttered a word. It was something to do with her eyes.

  10

  THE SMELL of fried bacon was the first thing he noticed when he woke up the next morning. When he opened his eyes the cabin was lit up by strong sunlight. Max was standing by the stove.

  Daniel squinted at his watch and saw to his surprise that it was twenty past nine. He almost always woke up at quarter to seven, weekdays and weekends alike, with or without an alarm clock. It was hard to believe he had been able to sleep with the sunlight flooding the room and the sound of Max clattering about in the kitchen.

  “Breakfast in five minutes,” Max said in a slightly stressed voice as he got plates out and slammed the cupboard shut.

  Daniel hurried into the bathroom and had a quick shower, then, with a feeling of having fallen behind, he sat down at the table where Max was already eating. Through the window there was a view of the steep, shaded mountainside to the south.

  “Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with your sleep,” Max said, pouring coffee into Daniel’s cup. “But it’s good you’ve had a proper rest, because we’re going on an adventure today. We’re going to cycle up into the mountains and go fishing at my favorite spot.”

  “Cycle?”

  “Yes, and don’t try to get out of it by saying you haven’t got a bike, because I arranged for that while you were asleep. And I’ve asked for a packed lunch from the kitchen as well. I could have made it myself, but I haven’t got much in the fridge right now and I didn’t think we should waste time going shopping in the village. They’ll put together something nice, and we can pick it up before we set off.”

  Daniel couldn’t recall them planning an outing for today.

  “You do know I’m leaving today? I did say,” he reminded Max. So as not to seem ungrateful, he quickly added, “Yesterday was fun. Dinner really was excellent, and I liked that bierstube. But it didn’t feel right, you paying for me.”

  His brother waved away his objections, saying, “I didn’t think we really had enough time together. And you’ve hardly seen anything of how lovely it is round here. Have you ever been trout fishing?”

  “No.”

  “You’re really missing something. It’s incredibly intense. Total concentration. You really should try it. Anyway, now I’ve asked for a packed lunch and arranged rods and bikes for us. So I’d be very disappointed if you decided to leave straightaway.”

  Daniel gave up. “Okay, then. If you’ve already got it all planned, I’ll come with you.”

  Outside the cabin stood two mountain bikes with panniers strapped to them, and out of each bag stuck an oblong case that Daniel guessed contained a fishing rod.

  They walked the bikes up to the clinic’s main building, where Max slipped round to the kitchen and returned shortly afterward with some plastic tubs and bottles of beer that he stowed away in the panniers. With Max in the lead they rolled off down the slope, then turned off to the right and followed a narrow road that ran above the village.

  They soon got away from the houses and now the valley lay before them, such an intense green that it gave Daniel a feeling of unreality, as if he were in some sort of computer game.

  And their speed seemed somehow unreal as well. Had he always been able to cycle this fast? They really were racing along. It had to be the bike; its gears were excellent, overcoming all resistance. They were flying.

  Maybe it was something to do with the air as well. Everything around him was so clear and distinct, down to the smallest detail. He could see every flower in the distance.

  They were cycling through a narrow glacial valley. On the side they were on, the mountain rose up in sloping meadows and forests. The mountainside above was steep and bare, covered with fallen debris that made it look like a huge gravel quarry.

  On the other side of the valley there was no slope. The mountain rose vertically like a wall in a very peculiar way. A road clung to the mountainside, and Daniel could see a van driving along in the distance. Of course, that was the road he had arrived on the day before. And that was the rock face that had been covered with moss and ferns.

  Max was cycling ahead of him, leaning forward as if he were in a race. Every now and then he looked back and smiled at Daniel. He had a beautiful smile, with white teeth and masculine bone structure. He looks handsome, Daniel thought, then realized at the same moment that he himself ought to look handsome as well. As identical twins, they had an opportunity denied to most people: seeing themselves from every angle. From behind, and in profile, and speeding on a bicycle. It was quite different from looking in a mirror and seeing yourself the wrong way round, right and left reversed, observer and observed at the same time.

  So that’s what I look like without a beard, Daniel thought and immediately decided to shave his beard off as soon as he got home. (He looked ten years older with it, he had once been told by a blunt female colleague.)

  The beard had its own story. Daniel had started to let it grow when he was nineteen years old, and he could remember the circumstances and reason very well.

  He had been in London visiting Max, who was living in a sublet apartment in Camden. His brother had been an attentive host, taking him out on the town.

  When Daniel bought a rude T-shirt from a market, he hardly had time to pay before Max bought one just like it and put it on. Daniel hadn’t wanted to, but Max had insisted that they both wear their T-shirts, so he had reluctantly agreed. Max had his arm round Daniel’s shoulders and laughed whenever people looked at them and pointed. Daniel had felt uncomfortable, as if their similarity were some sort of defect.

  They reached a street lined with pubs and restaurants. Daniel wanted to go into one that looked interesting, but Max had led them instead into another pub that was big, smoky, and noisy, where they were showing soccer on wide-screen televisions.

  While Daniel jostled at the bar with Max and his friends, he caught sight of a girl sitting at a table and eating alone. She was platinum blond, thin, almost transparent somehow, like milky glass. There was something about the way she moved, the way she raised her fork, looking straight ahead without actually focusing on anything. Something determined, self-aware, almost aggressive.

  Max noticed his interest at once.

  “Bet you she’s Swedish,” he hissed close to Daniel’s face. It was hard to make yourself heard in there. The televisions were at full volume and the clientele were shouting and yelling in response to the match.

  “There are loads of Swedes here, you can spot them at a glance. And I’ll bet you something else.” Max leaned even closer, so that their noses were almost touching. His eyes were twinkling from intoxication, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and he had bad breath. “She’s a virgin.”

  Then Max’s friends had wanted to move on somewhere else, but Daniel didn’t want to go with them.

  “You go,” he said to Max. “I’m going to stay here a bit longer.”

  Once they had gone he went over to the girl’s table and asked if he could sit down. She was eating fish and chips. It looked greasy and unappetizing, but she was gamely struggling through mouthful after mouthful.

  “Are you actually enjoying that?” Daniel asked in Swedish.

  “Oh yes, I really…,” she began to say in a tense voice, then stopped herself. “You’re Swedish! Well, er, no, not really. But I’m trying.”

  She was an au pair for a family with three children. She had graduated from high school that spring, from the science program, and wanted to become a chemical engineer. But first she wanted to get some experience and see a bit of the world. She was hating
it and wanted to go home. She had one day off each week, but it was hard to make friends—she didn’t know where to go. And to her despair she had discovered that she was bad at English. She’d earned top grades at school, but the people here didn’t sound anything like they did in British television programs, and she could hardly understand a word.

  Daniel had asked why she didn’t just go home if she was having such a bad time. She had straightened her back, stuck out her chin, and said she wasn’t going to give up. She never gave up. She was her parents’ only child and they were very proud of her.

  “It’s tough being an only child,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I had brothers and sisters. Have you got any?”

  To his surprise Daniel heard himself say no. He didn’t know why, but at that moment he didn’t feel like going into the whole business of being a twin. It was a subject that always drew attention to itself and eclipsed everything else.

  “So you know what it’s like,” she said.

  They spent a long time talking, maybe a couple of hours. The girl said she hadn’t talked so much in months. She was evidently very lonely. No boyfriend, no female friends.

  There was something special about her. Something fragile but also very strong and unyielding. A girl of glass and steel, Daniel had thought. She had the sort of very pale eyelashes that most girls would have made darker with mascara, but she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. She was quite excitable. Her pale face would turn bright pink and her pupils would expand and reveal a blackness that was both enticing and scary.

  To his astonishment Daniel realized that he was falling in love. In a painful, fateful, and wonderfully absurd way that was entirely new to him. He felt great respect for this girl, almost adoration, and at the same time a desire that threatened to burn him up.