The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  “Nothing. But to continue working here takes more than not making mistakes, as I’m sure you understand. This is a research clinic. You haven’t come up with any findings.”

  “Not yet. But I’ve seen so many interesting things here.”

  “And I’ve no doubt you will have use of that in your future activities. But your contract expires in October, and I can see no reason to extend it. There are hundreds of researchers who want to come and work here.”

  “But Doctor Pierce has been here considerably longer than I have. What findings has he come up with? Has anyone come up with any firm results?” Gisela exclaimed in a voice that had suddenly become unpleasantly shrill.

  The elevator had stopped and the doors slid open, but Karl Fischer was blocking her exit.

  The strong features of his face were marked by deep furrows. Cropped gray hair stood up from his head like nails. Behind him she could make out the doors lining the staff corridor.

  “It isn’t your concern to evaluate the others’ findings,” he said calmly. “And you lack the most important requirement for working here: vision.”

  Fischer was still standing in the way of the doors, stopping them from closing.

  “Have you spoken to Max since his brother was here?” he went on.

  The elevator doors were jerking impatiently, but he ignored them.

  “No, I haven’t had time. But I’ll call him in as soon as possible. I think his brother’s visit will have done him good. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about it. Max is without any doubt an extremely interesting patient.”

  “You think so? I don’t agree.”

  Karl Fischer stepped aside so that Gisela could get out. As she passed him he said, “You smell of alcohol, Doctor Obermann.”

  She turned round and saw the doors slide shut with Fischer still in the elevator. She remained where she was, frozen to the spot, listening to the noise as it rushed down through the clinic.

  Doctor Fischer was right. She lacked vision. Both when it came to the patients and herself. All the other researchers had come to Himmelstal with theories, plans, and brilliant ideas lighting up their futures. As for her, she could see nothing ahead of her. She had simply run away from her own tattered life. That was the truth, although of course she had phrased it rather differently in her application. She had felt drawn by the alpine air, the isolation, the narrow valley that held its inhabitants like a womb.

  At the beginning she had also felt stimulated by the sense of starting afresh at the clinic. The others’ enthusiasm had infected her like a virus.

  But it wasn’t long before life here felt just as pointless as life outside. The sense of workplace camaraderie that she had been hoping for never materialized.

  In their free time the researchers socialized energetically. There was a party almost every evening in one of the staff’s quarters. But when it came to work, each of them clung to his or her specialist area and guarded it jealously. They were all extremely secretive. Often she didn’t understand what people were talking about in meetings. She didn’t believe the others understood everything either. Doctor Fischer seemed to be the only person who was kept informed about all the different projects.

  He never took part in the parties, nor did Doctor Kalpak. They didn’t live in the researchers’ residential section. Gisela assumed that they lived on one of the upper floors of the admin building, where the nurses and hostesses had their apartments.

  She herself had no project. That was the problem. She had arrived with her mind open to suggestion, assuming that the stimulating environment would make her creative. That it was just a matter of time before she got going. That turned out to be a mistake.

  She had long since stopped listening to what the others said during meetings. Instead she would look at the alpine scenery outside the window, or at Doctor Kalpak, who always sat there with his eyes closed, as if he were asleep. In her head she called him Doctor Sleep. He seemed to be in a permanently drowsy, half-asleep state, even when his eyes were open, and the patients he treated were always falling asleep. No, not asleep. Unconscious.

  Oh, to be put to sleep. Gisela had never been put to sleep, but she had heard other people describe what it was like. Everything vanishes: pain, thoughts, dreams. Everything. Like death, but you wake up again. And during this temporary death things get better. Evil gets excised. Maybe something new gets put in. You wake up healthier, more beautiful, happier.

  Gisela often wanted to die. But she didn’t want to be dead all the time. Being put to sleep would be perfect. Her evil couldn’t be cut out, but she was convinced that the very act of being put to sleep would be good for her.

  What would Doctor Kalpak say if she asked him to put her to sleep? For just a couple of hours, or maybe a couple of weeks?

  No, she had to stop thinking like that. She had to stay alert. She had to stay sober. She had to concentrate on her work.

  She had to find herself a project.

  16

  DANIEL WAS walking along the road that he and Max had cycled on the day before. They had raced along it quickly and the whole experience had seemed unreal: the speed, the intense green of the grass, the improbably pure air rushing down into his lungs.

  Now he had the peace and quiet in which to look around at his own pace. He was struck by how narrow the valley actually was. Scarcely a mile across, and surrounded on both sides by high mountains. In the middle ran the rapids. Their water was zinc gray, bubbling like an effervescent tablet dissolving in a glass. Maybe it would be okay to go fishing down here as well? He’d see about borrowing a rod and give it a try.

  His gaze was drawn to the southern mountainside, which was dramatically vertical, like an immense wall. Now that the sunlight was hitting it from the side, the details of the surface stood out more clearly. It seemed to be a different sort of rock than the mountain on the north side. Was it sandstone? Limestone? The surface was smooth and yellowish white. Occasionally there were hollows and caves whose size was impossible to determine, and which no person would ever reach. Some of these indentations appeared to be inhabited by the swallows that circled the rocks. Others formed the mouths of small streams, which had carved themselves a passage through the rock and filtered out through these natural drainpipes and into little trickles down the rock face. The constant flow had left long black lines along the yellowish surface. Some of these had taken almost human form, as if the rock face were the backdrop to a vast Balinese shadow theater where the characters were a hundred feet tall.

  The north side of the valley, where the clinic was located, wasn’t as abrupt and wall-like. The mountain rose gently in grass and forest-covered slopes before stretching up to its full height, gray and naked with drifts of fallen stone.

  To the west the mountains opened up like a window at the end of a corridor, and through this opening you could make out a snow-capped mountaintop, sparkling regally in the sun, the way everyone imagines the Alps.

  Daniel immediately christened the southern mountain the Wall and the northern side the Gravel Quarry, then felt rather surprised at himself. Why give names to anything in a place he was going to be leaving soon?

  He had been walking in dazzling sunshine but now reached a narrow passageway that was completely shaded by the mountain. The valley constricted like a cramping intestine. The contrast between light and dark was so abrupt that for a moment he was almost blind. So when he suddenly caught sight of a man on a bicycle, it felt as if he had appeared out of nowhere.

  The bicycle was pulling a cart laden with a large wooden box. The whole contraption was moving very slowly, with a great deal of squeaking.

  When the man was about thirty feet from Daniel he stopped, got off the bicycle, and rifled through his shoulder bag.

  “Good afternoon,” Daniel said in German. “Do you know if it’s okay to fish down here?” He pointed toward the rapids.

  The man looked up.

  “I presume so,” he replied.

  His fac
e looked almost Mongolian, with pronounced cheekbones, a small nose, and a low, wide forehead. His eyes were small and bright blue. Daniel was reminded of a particular breed of cat but couldn’t quite remember which one.

  The man pulled on a strange rough leather gauntlet that he had taken out of his bag.

  “I went fishing farther up the valley the other day,” Daniel went on. “It was excellent. But perhaps it’s not quite as good down here?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  The cart rocked slightly, and from inside the box came a scratching sound, followed by several shrill squeaks. Daniel stared at it. There was something alive in there. The look on the man’s face didn’t change.

  “What have you got in the box?” Daniel asked.

  Without a word the man loosened a couple of straps on one side of the box and carefully pulled back a sliding door. Out tumbled a confusion of feathers and fluttering wings.

  The man turned to Daniel. On his arm sat a falcon. Its head was covered by a leather hood crowned by a little bundle of feathers, and it had a bell attached to one ankle. The hood bulged out over the falcon’s eyes, making it look like a huge insect.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” the man said.

  Daniel nodded in agreement. “Very.”

  The falcon was sitting quite still on the man’s arm, as if the loss of its most important sense had left it lethargic. Mechanically and with almost creepy regularity, the blind head turned left and right, like the lingering reflexes of a dead body.

  “And there was me thinking you had fishing tackle in the box,” Daniel exclaimed with a laugh.

  “I prefer hunting to fishing,” the man said. “And this is the oldest form of hunting. Without weapons. I don’t like guns.”

  He raised the falcon to his lips as if he were about to kiss it, but instead he nipped the little cluster of feathers with his teeth and pulled the hood off with a jerk of his head.

  A tremble ran through the bird as it came back to life. Daniel was astonished by its eyes, big and glossily black, like wet stones. There was nothing predatory about them. The eyes seemed to belong to some creature in a fairy tale, from some dark forest or bottomless lake.

  “She can see seven times better than any person,” the man said.

  He held the fluttering falcon up to the wind. It took off and rose in circles, higher and higher on the air currents, like an invisible spiral staircase. The little bell rang out faintly up above them.

  “Silent and beautiful,” the man said, following the bird’s flight with his head tilted back. “We ought to learn from the animals.”

  The falcon held still, hovering, then dived straight down toward the ground like an attack plane. Then it returned at once to its master with something small and gray in its talons. It dropped its prey in his right hand, then settled down on his gloved left arm.

  Daniel saw that its prey was a small bird, wounded but still alive. Its eyes were blinking in terror and it was flapping one wing without actually being able to move.

  The man threw it to the ground and gave the bird an imperceptible signal to help itself to its prey.

  The little bird’s wing was still flapping as the falcon tore chunks from its chest.

  “Nature’s wonderful, isn’t it?” the man said.

  Daniel felt distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Wonderful,” he repeated with a shudder.

  A church bell began to ring. It sounded muffled and tinny, like the clatter from a distant factory echoing off the mountainsides. Hannelores Bierstube would soon be open.

  Daniel raised his hand in farewell.

  The man didn’t react. But the falcon turned its onyx eyes toward him and observed him with its sevenfold sight. Bloody entrails hung like worms from its beak.

  17

  LIKE MOST old places the layout of the village streets was confusing, with no straight lines, and he spent a while walking about before he found the brown gingerbread house. As he wandered around he discovered that the village was fairly small, but it still contained a café and a number of shops whose contents it was difficult to determine from outside.

  Last time he was here it had been dark and he had gotten a sense that it was an old village. Now, in daylight, he got the impression from certain details—building foundations, drainpipes, window frames—that most of the houses had been built recently but made to look old.

  Corinne was a waitress rather than a singer this evening. She was still wearing her dirndl. She came over to him and waited for his order as she impatiently and rather distractedly twined a towel in her hands. When their eyes met she gave him a smile that he couldn’t quite decipher.

  He asked for the menu.

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she said, slapping him with the towel. “What do you want? The usual?”

  “Yes, please,” he said, hoping it was something he liked.

  He was served rösti with fried egg, cocktail onions, pickled gherkins, and a tankard of beer. When he had finished he ordered more beer and began reading his book.

  The room was fairly gloomy, and when Corinne saw he was trying to read she came over to his table and lit the candles in the squat candelabra. Small leaves made of red, yellow, and orange glass dangled from a black metal frame. When the candles behind them were lit, they shimmered like fire. Beautiful, but not much good as a source of light. With the book open in front of him, he sat and stared at the glowing leaves as they quivered gently from the heat.

  Corinne spent most of her time in the kitchen but emerged every now and then to serve customers. He snuck glances at her triangular face and narrow eyes. When she passed his table she reached out her hand, stroked his hair against the grain, and said, “Have you had a haircut or something? I hardly recognized you.”

  She was gone before he had time to think of an answer. Her touch had been so fleeting and light that none of the other customers had noticed anything, but it continued to send waves of tickling pleasure across his scalp and neck long after she had gone.

  He wondered what sort of relationship she had with his brother, and he began to toy with the idea of somehow exploiting the situation. A belated act of revenge for the girl in London. Max had asked him to step into his place. Well, he ought to do it properly.

  But obviously he would never do anything like that, using an innocent woman as a pawn in their old sibling rivalry. That was what had upset him most about the girl in London, that was what he could never forgive.

  A hand approached from behind and he felt its caress on his head again. It ended in a firm grip of his ear. Corinne was at the other end of the room. Daniel gasped with pain and tried to turn round, but the iron grip on his ear made that impossible. Someone leaned over him and a deep female voice—or a high male voice, Daniel couldn’t tell which—snarled, “Amateur!”

  The voice slid into laughter and his ear was released. A middle-aged man, slim and fit, with silly boyish bangs in an improbable shade of dull red, was standing beside him with a tankard of beer in his left hand. With the forefinger and thumb of his right hand he snipped at the air like a pair of scissors, and said, “Who was it?”

  Daniel gave him a questioning look.

  “Who is it who wants to take the bread from my mouth?”

  He gave Daniel a hard slap over the head.

  “You don’t have to say. It doesn’t bother me. You’re the worst advertisement he could possibly have.”

  The man laughed again and sat down at a table a short distance away. He finished his beer, then left the bierstube.

  When he had gone Corinne came over and sat down beside Daniel.

  “You really ought to get your hair cut at the barber’s,” she said. “He might take offense if you let someone else do it.”

  The barber? Oh, so that was who the man was.

  “Surely I’ve got the right to get my hair cut wherever I want?” Daniel said.

  She nodded quickly.

  “But he might take offense. Bear it in mind.” She gave him a serious loo
k and added, “And he’s right. It doesn’t look as good this time.”

  She looked at his cropped head and smiled apologetically.

  “Has your brother gone now?”

  “Yes. But he’s coming back on Thursday.”

  “Is he? What for?” she asked in surprise.

  “He’s doing a bit of traveling in the area. Then he’s coming back to say good-bye before he goes home to Sweden.”

  She nodded and he tried to interpret her smile. Warmer than a waitress’s smile. Cooler than a lover’s.

  “It must have been nice to have a visit from your brother. Did you used to see much of each other before you came here?”

  “Not much.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Daniel wondered if Max had told her he was a patient at the clinic.

  Corinne was idly fiddling with a chunky bracelet of different colored stones. Then she let out a sudden laugh and started talking about all sorts of things. Difficult customers, her aching back. How no one appreciated her performances. An endless torrent of complaints, but presented with smiles and jokes, as if she were worried about appearing to feel sorry for herself.

  “Tell me something,” Daniel interrupted. “Why is a talented artiste like you stuck in a dump like this? I saw you sing the other night. You should be on stage in Berlin.”

  It was risky. Maybe Max already knew all this.

  She let out a harsh little laugh.

  “I have been on stage in Berlin. And maybe I would still be there if things hadn’t gotten in the way. But life’s the way it is, isn’t it? I’m just happy I get to perform here. I don’t care about the audience. I do it for my own sake.”

  There was a note of sorrow in her defiant statement.

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” she said.

  “What would you like to talk about, then?” Daniel asked.

  “Nothing right now, actually. I have to work.”

  She got up abruptly and disappeared toward a group of impatient customers at another table.

  When Daniel found himself back in Max’s cabin a short while later, he felt a degree of reluctance about sleeping in his brother’s bed. But the bench where he had spent the previous two nights was hard and uncomfortable. He looked for clean sheets in the wardrobes but found none and decided to make do with the ones Max had used.