The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  “You don’t think it looks a bit odd to be wearing a woolly hat in the middle of summer?”

  “Not if you’re going hiking in the Alps, which is what you said you were going to do. Up among the peaks it can be really cold. Snowstorms in July aren’t unusual. I’d never go up there without a woolly hat.”

  Daniel laughed. The whole thing was so absurd. And he was a bit drunk, and very tired.

  “I’m going to bed now,” he said. “All this,” he said, gesturing at Max’s face, then his own. “No, it’s not going to work. But it’s nice to be rid of the beard. You’re right. I look better without it.”

  “We look better without it,” Max said. “You’ve got one more thing left to do. This.”

  He grabbed Daniel by the hair and pulled him toward the bathroom.

  “You’re trying to cheat, aren’t you?”

  Max took out a pair of scissors and snipped at the air.

  “Is that really necessary?” Daniel said.

  “Of course it’s necessary.”

  Max started cutting Daniel’s hair. Then he switched to clippers and trimmed Daniel’s hair until he had the same cropped hairstyle as Max.

  “Okay. Now can I go to bed?” Daniel said, curling up under the blanket on his bunk. He glanced over at Max with his thick beard and woolly hat and burst out laughing again.

  He’d just taken off his glasses and turned to face the wall when Max said in a serious voice, “There’s something I want to show you before you fall asleep.”

  Daniel rolled over with a sigh. Max switched on the standard lamp above Daniel’s head, crouched down next to him, and held a photograph in front of his face.

  “They sent this to show me how they do business.” Max’s whispering lips were so close to Daniel’s temple that it felt like a kiss. “A traitor’s daughter. Seventeen years old.”

  Daniel had to put his glasses on again and found himself looking at a badly beaten face. Both eyes were swollen shut, the eyelids purple and bulging like overripe plums. Her bottom lip was split in two and her cheeks scarred with long cuts. It was impossible to tell how she had looked before, but with her long black hair and slender neck she could very well have been beautiful.

  “This is what they want to do to Giulietta,” Max hissed in a low voice.

  “The Mafia?”

  Max nodded quickly, put his finger to his lips in a hushing gesture, then vanished with the photograph into the alcove where his bed was.

  The next morning Daniel woke up to the sound of the hostess’s knocking at the door, then—and he had gotten used to this now—it opening at once and a cheerful voice saying, “Good morning, campers. Are you still feeling sleepy, Max?”

  “My brother will be here in a moment. I’ll go and wake him,” Daniel muttered.

  He fumbled for his glasses where he had left them the night before, but couldn’t find them. He threw off the blanket, stood up, and went over to Max’s alcove. He had slept in just his underpants and felt slightly embarrassed in front of the hostess. She smiled and put a hand up to stop him.

  “Your brother’s already gone, Max. He left the clinic at six o’clock. He probably didn’t want to wake you. Did he have a plane to catch? I’d better get on. It’s wonderful weather, by the way. Well, bye for now!”

  The door closed and then Daniel heard a knock on the next cabin, and the twittering voice repeating its “Good morning!”

  Daniel went over to the alcove containing the bed and drew back the curtain. The bed had been neatly made.

  He opened the door to the bathroom, but it was empty.

  He looked around for the clothes he had draped over one of the pine armchairs the previous evening. They were no longer there. He searched the whole cabin without success. His shoes were gone as well. And, far worse: His glasses had vanished without a trace.

  And his suitcase. And his toiletries bag. And his wallet, his mobile phone, and his passport. And the wristwatch that he had left on the table. Even his toothbrush was gone.

  But Max’s Bermuda shorts were on the back of the other armchair, and his sweatshirt on the seat. And Max’s expensive sports shoes in soft, thin leather were over by the door.

  Daniel suddenly realized that the only thing in the entire cabin that belonged to him were the underpants he was wearing. Automatically he grabbed the waistband, as if to hold on to them.

  The other hand he held up, just as automatically, to his naked, clean-shaven cheek.

  13

  IN ONE of the two wardrobes Daniel found a pair of clean trousers and a T-shirt and put them on. The light brown sports shoes Max had left by the door were size 11, the same as he wore. So he put those on as well.

  What annoyed him most was the fact that Max had taken his glasses. They were an extension of his senses, part of him. Without them life was fuzzy and uninteresting, and reading an impossibility.

  In the bathroom he found a large pack of single-use lenses. As children the brothers had the same problems with their sight, and that was evidently still the case, because after half an hour of fiddling about Daniel managed to get them in and found he could see as well as he usually did with his glasses.

  At once everything felt a bit better. Through one of the cabin’s small windows he looked out at the hillside and clinic. The mountain on the other side felt surprisingly close. The clinic had to be in an extremely narrow part of the valley.

  So, he was going to be spending three or possibly four days here. He felt annoyed that Max had left in such a hurry. He had probably been worried that Daniel might change his mind. His fears would have been justified. Daniel had changed his mind. He really had no desire to act as Max’s stand-in. Had he ever actually agreed to it? He couldn’t remember doing so. Mind you, he couldn’t actually remember giving an unambiguous refusal either. But he had been utterly convinced that Max’s crazy plan would fail and that the staff would just laugh at his false beard and woolly hat.

  Should he go down to the main building and tell the hostess about the deception? Then Max would be tracked down, arrested, and charged with fraud. Maybe Daniel would also have to face repercussions. He decided against it.

  It was only a few days, after all. He had his own cabin and didn’t need to socialize with the patients. If it got lonely he could always go down to the village and have a beer in Hannelores Bierstube. Maybe Corinne would be there, singing and rolling her eyes and ringing her cowbell. He’d go and see if the real woman was anything like the one in his dream. All of a sudden the idea of spending time here seemed easier to bear, if he could see Corinne in the evenings.

  But the evening was a long way off. What was he going to do until then?

  He started by having breakfast. There were eggs and some sort of sausage in the fridge. Instant coffee. No bread.

  By the time he’d finished it was ten o’clock. He opened the cabin door and peered out. It was warm. Outside the cabin sat a fat man of indeterminate age. He was resting his head against the wall, his eyes were closed and his mouth half open. His drooping cheeks slid straight into his broad shoulders with no obvious neck. It looked like he was asleep, but just as Daniel was about to close the door he said, “Morning.”

  The voice was so high it was hard to believe it came from that huge body. The man still had his eyes closed. Daniel looked along the row of cabins, but no one else was outside.

  “Good morning. Lovely weather. Really warm,” Daniel said, without getting any further response from the man.

  He had no idea what sort of relationship Max had with his neighbor, but if there was no more to it than that, he’d probably be okay.

  Daniel recalled having seen a swimming pool farther down in the clinic grounds. He dug out a pair of trunks, sunglasses, and a towel, put them in a plastic bag along with the paperback he had started reading the previous evening, and went out. The air outside felt like a tickling caress against his newly shaven cheeks.

  He stopped some distance from the pool and checked it out. He had no desir
e to bump into anyone who knew Max and be forced into some sort of role playing.

  Beside the pool was a paved area where a dozen or so people were sitting on folding plastic chairs. A few had moved them into the shade of nearby trees.

  Daniel wasn’t entirely sure what sort of clinic this was. Max had described it as a rehab center for burned-out rich people. A rest home where top executives could regain their strength with alpine air and good food.

  But how bad were the patients really? He looked around. The people by the pool all looked perfectly normal. No tics, no outbursts, no hysterical laughter.

  Two of the men were playing cards, using a stool as a table. The others were sunning themselves. There was a faint splash as someone slid into the pool and started swimming round with gentle strokes. It looked like any other vacation hotel.

  Daniel strolled nonchalantly into the pool area, nodding politely but distantly at the others, took a free chair, and carried it over to a shaded part of the lawn. He adjusted it to the right position, spread his towel over it, took out his book, and was just about to settle down when he noticed he was being watched. The people around the pool—all men, he now realized—had turned toward him and were watching him with curiosity.

  Daniel remained standing. Had he done something wrong? Was he behaving in a way that Max wouldn’t? Maybe Max never came to the pool at all?

  He sank slowly onto the chair, made himself comfortable in a half-reclining position, and started to read. He glanced over the edge of the book. The others were still looking at him.

  The men who had been playing cards had gotten up and were standing close together and talking as they glanced in his direction. One of them, a skinny man in ridiculously tight bathing trunks, left the group and was heading calmly over the lawn toward him.

  The man stopped beside Daniel’s chair and looked down at him. He was standing so close that Daniel could make out the shape of his genitals under the tight nylon, as well as the ribs that stood out under his dry, hairless skin.

  Daniel put the book down and looked up at him questioningly. The man stayed silent. He can see I’m not Max, Daniel thought. He wasn’t sure if he should carry on pretending or admit that the man was right and confess everything. The latter would undoubtedly be easiest.

  “I think you took the wrong chair,” the man said.

  Daniel looked at the chairs around the pool, and at the ones that had been moved onto the grass. They all looked exactly the same as his.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought this one looked like it was free.”

  The man said nothing but started to rub one shoulder nervously. It looked like he was giving himself a massage.

  “I can put it back,” Daniel said amiably.

  Still the man said nothing. His rubbing had changed into a sort of gentle patting of his shoulder and arm. It looked like he was trying to calm himself the way you’d calm a startled horse. Daniel didn’t imagine the man was one of the burned-out executives Max had mentioned.

  He carried the chair back over to the pool and put it down by the edge.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  The skinny man was rubbing his shoulder and the back of his neck faster and faster.

  His friend pointed at one of the paving slabs. His body was covered with a thick steel-gray pelt, and on one finger he had an eye-catching ring with a dark red stone.

  “There,” the man said.

  Daniel couldn’t see anything special about where the man was pointing.

  The man gestured vaguely toward the chair with his hand as if he were brushing breadcrumbs in the air, then pointed his finger again toward the paving stone.

  Daniel moved the chair to where the man was pointing. The skinny man stopped rubbing himself and everyone around the pool seemed to exhale.

  The men sat down and started to talk to each other, ignoring Daniel. The others went back to sunbathing.

  The change in the atmosphere was so tangible that only now did Daniel realize just how tense it had been. As if a big carnivore had gone away and the birds had started twittering again.

  He didn’t dare take another chair, so he went and sat on his towel, leaned against a tree trunk, and picked up his book. The sun was warm and it felt good to be clean shaven with cropped hair.

  A tall, slightly crooked older man in a linen suit appeared by the pool. He strolled around purposefully as if he were a landowner surveying his estate, nodding right and left. The patients sat up and responded.

  “Good morning, Doctor Fischer,” the voices from the sun chairs echoed.

  “Good morning, my friends. Good morning, good morning,” the doctor replied.

  He stopped in front of Daniel and looked down at him.

  “Good morning, Max.”

  Daniel put his hand up to shade the sun, but before he had time to reply the doctor had moved on.

  At about one o’clock the pool area started to become less crowded. Daniel heard a few people talking about lunch. He was feeling hungry as well. Where did everyone eat lunch at the clinic? Surely not in the fancy restaurant that he had gone to with Max on his first evening there. He could hardly ask anyone because that would reveal him as a new arrival. He decided that the simplest thing to do was to follow the others.

  14

  THE PATIENTS’ cafeteria turned out to be a large open space with modern furnishings and glass walls facing the park. There was a choice of Oriental chicken or vegetarian pasta bake, and Daniel took the chicken. There were plenty of seats, and he was able to get a table to himself. Several other patients were also sitting on their own.

  He had just started eating, surprised at how good it was, when someone said close beside him, “I saw you by the pool.”

  Daniel looked up. Alongside his table stood a man of about his age, slightly overweight, with a denim vest and his thinning blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He was balancing a tray of food in one hand as he pulled out the chair opposite Daniel with the other. He sat down and grinned. “I don’t ask for permission before sitting down.” He began to eat, quickly and hungrily. “But then, neither do you,” he added with a pointed look.

  Daniel tried to think of a suitable response.

  The man held up his hand to stop him. He looked like a small-town rocker.

  “It’s cool, mate. You did exactly the right thing. It’s high time someone used that chair. He’s not coming back, is he?”

  “Who isn’t coming back?” Daniel asked cautiously.

  “Block. We’ll never see him again. Maybe that’s just as well.”

  Daniel nodded thoughtfully. This was what he had been worried about. Meeting someone who knew Max and spoke to him about things that only Max could know. Or else the man was a complete madman and was talking nonsense.

  “Block’s been transferred,” the man said with his mouth full, as he stared straight ahead over Daniel’s shoulder.

  “Oh. Has he?” Daniel said.

  Something told him that Max hadn’t been entirely honest in his description of the clinic and its patients.

  “And we both know why.”

  “Of course,” Daniel muttered as he struggled with a troublesome chicken thigh. He would have to avoid this man in the future.

  “Block wasn’t the man he pretended to be.”

  Daniel lowered his cutlery and held his breath. This conversation was distinctly uncomfortable.

  “And we don’t like that.” The man was eyeing some patients who had just arrived. He watched them carefully as they sat down over by the glass wall, then lost interest and turned back toward Daniel as he went on. “We’re the same, you and me. We don’t like people who sail under false flags.”

  For several unbearably long and silent seconds he stared at Daniel with pupils so sharp that Daniel felt he’d been speared with a fork. Then the man said, “Maybe it was you who got him transferred?”

  “No,” Daniel said, horrified. “Definitely not. I had nothing to do with it.”

  The man took out a too
thpick and began to clean his teeth. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Daniel with an amused expression.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Do you need anything?”

  He closed one nostril with his index finger and sniffed through the other.

  Daniel shook his head, excused himself, and left the dining room.

  He walked quickly up the slope toward Max’s cabin. He would have to avoid encounters of that sort in the future. He wouldn’t be eating in the dining room again.

  Max had said that he would be away for three, possibly four days. Today was Tuesday. That meant Max would be back on Thursday evening, or Friday at the latest.

  Daniel pulled out his brother’s worn Bermuda shorts, which he had carelessly tossed in a wardrobe. He dug through the pockets. The shorts smelled of smoke and had soot stains from the previous day’s campfire. In the back pocket he found Max’s wallet. Max could hardly have any objection to Daniel using his wallet, seeing as he had gone off with his.

  He decided to go down to Hannelores Bierstube for dinner at seven o’clock. On his previous visit he had noticed that they served some simple food. He would take his paperback, then sit and read over a couple of beers. Until then he would take a walk and get a look at the village and the surrounding area. He’d be back in the cabin by ten o’clock at the latest, carry on reading, get checked in by the night round, and then go to bed.

  And with that his first day as a stand-in patient would be over. It felt good to have his schedule worked out that far.

  15

  ON HER way up to the doctors’ floor, Gisela Obermann found herself in the same elevator as Karl Fischer. He stepped in from the lobby just after she had pressed the button and the doors had started to close. His linen suit was creased and he smelled slightly of sweat. She saw his reflection in the glass, and as the elevator rushed upward his reflection spoke to hers.

  “Your contract’s due to expire soon, Gisela. I have to warn you that it won’t be renewed.”

  “What have I done wrong?” she asked.