Daniel picked up the picture and studied it carefully.
Gisela leaned over him.
“Is that someone you recognize?” she whispered.
“No. Who is it?”
“Someone who got in Max’s way. They both encountered Max.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“A young Italian girl who Max had a relationship with. She left him and met someone else. This man.”
Gisela picked up the picture of the man’s shattered face. She held it in front of Daniel for a few seconds until he looked away.
She spread the pictures out over the table.
“What are you feeling?” she asked.
“Take them away. It’s disgusting,” Daniel said.
“You asked who the woman was, but you weren’t curious about the man. Are you more interested in her?”
He shook his head violently but avoided looking at the pictures.
“Of course this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this, was it?” she went on.
With trembling hands, Daniel gathered the pictures together and turned the pile facedown.
“Max didn’t do that,” he said firmly. “He’s never been violent.”
“No? How well do you really know him?” Gisela Obermann asked as she put the pictures back in the drawer.
He sat without speaking for a few moments, then shook his head and repeated, “Max couldn’t have done that.”
She was looking at him intently, waiting for him to say something else, but he chose not to comment further on the photographs.
“So this is a clinic for psychopaths?” he said instead, trying to make his voice as neutral as possible.
“Yes.”
“Surrounded by an invisible barrier?”
She nodded.
“But the zones go round the whole valley, not just the clinic. How does that work for the people in the village?”
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Or do you mean to say that the people in the village…” Daniel gulped. “That they’re patients as well?”
“Not patients. We prefer to say residents. Everyone in Himmelstal is a resident. Some live in the clinic buildings or, like you, in cabins on the grounds of the clinic. Others live down in the village or in their own houses around the valley. It all depends what people prefer, and what the clinic’s management think most suitable.”
Daniel considered this for a moment, then said, “The older woman at the bierstube. Hannelore. She’s a…resident…too?”
Gisela nodded.
“What did she do? Why did she end up here, I mean?”
Gisela thought for a moment before saying, “We don’t usually talk about other residents’ backgrounds. But obviously you’re a special case. And as far as Hannelore and her husband are concerned, the whole valley knows about them already anyway. And plenty of people outside as well, for that matter. They were in the newspapers all over Europe ten years ago or so. Hannelore and Horst Fullhaus. You’ve never heard of them?”
Daniel shook his head.
“They had eight foster children and murdered six of them. Their own son was also involved, but he was never found guilty because he was a minor.”
“She murdered six children?” Daniel gasped. “How? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
He was trying to take in what Gisela had just said. Could it really be true? Now that he thought about it, he had actually read about the Austrian couple many years before. A child chained up in a dog kennel, was that it? And something about a tumble dryer.
“What about Corinne?” he went on. “The girl at Hannelores Bierstube, is she a resident as well?”
“Like I said: Everyone except the clinic staff and the research team is a resident. This isn’t a clinic in the usual sense. It’s a society in which each person has his or her own role. Corinne serves drinks and provides the entertainment at the bierstube. A talented girl. You like her?”
“What did she do?”
Gisela hesitated.
“I don’t think Max knew. And in that case I can’t tell you either.”
Suddenly he felt violently sick, and for a moment he thought he was going to throw up over the table, but it was just his racing pulse threatening to suffocate him.
She put her arm around his shoulders.
“All this is too much for you, isn’t it? You need to rest. I’ll call someone to take you back to your room.”
Gisela went over to the phone and made a call. She helped him up from his chair and passed him his crutches.
“You were about to say something about the woman,” she said as he hopped toward the door on his crutches.
“What woman?”
He turned round and suddenly caught sight of the coat hook that Gisela must have been given by Tom—or more likely had bought from him. The carved face glared at him with its staring eyes and silently screaming mouth.
“On the pictures I showed you. You recognized her, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I’ve never seen her before.”
He was lying. He recognized the woman from the photograph that Max kept under his mattress. The same woman, the same injuries. The picture had probably been taken on the same occasion.
32
“WELL, WHAT do you think?”
The image on the white screen faded away. For a moment the conference room was dark. Gisela Obermann touched a button and with a whisper the curtains glided open. Squinting eyes peered at the light flooding in, as if a new film, gentler but grander, was starting up on the vast picture window.
“The first video was recorded in my room on May third this year. The second is from July fourteenth,” Gisela said, turning her back on the natural scenery outside. The sky above the mountains was blue in that transparent, fresh way that always made her feel thirsty.
“Astonishing,” Hedda Heine exclaimed. “I see what you mean, Doctor Obermann. It’s the same man. He’s even wearing the same top on both occasions. Yet still: a completely different person!”
“The body language is certainly different,” Doctor Pierce muttered as he leafed through his bundle of papers.
Philip Pierce had spent most of his life in the world of research and had hardly any clinical experience. He was always quiet, careful, excessively cautious. Gisela couldn’t quite understand how he managed to get by as well as he had. No one questioned his research, even though it was ridiculously expensive and produced meager results. The only explanation had to be that he had no natural enemies. He was too bland for anyone to want to sink his teeth into him. A researcher like that could last a lifetime at Himmelstal.
“As you heard, the man in the later recording claims to be Daniel, Max’s twin brother,” Gisela pointed out. “It is significant that he does really have a brother, even if they aren’t twins, and that this brother visited him three weeks ago.”
A middle-aged woman with masculine hair and clothing held up a finger.
“Doctor Linz?”
“How long has he claimed to be Daniel?”
“Max’s brother visited him three weeks ago. He claims that they swapped places with each other then.”
“Did you meet the brother, Doctor Obermann?”
“No, we don’t usually meet visitors. But of course some of the hosts met him. They just remember that he had a thick beard, shaggy hair, and glasses. Looked a bit bohemian. When he checked out he was wearing a woolly hat. Naturally it’s difficult to see the features of someone with a beard and a lot of hair, especially at a distance. But no one I’ve spoken to was struck by any great resemblance.”
“And Max doesn’t actually have a twin brother,” Karl Fischer pointed out, nodding toward the blank projection screen. “We can ignore that story. He’s simply lying. Putting on a performance. It’s good, I’ll give him that. But our residents have had a whole lifetime to practice lying and manipulation. Lying is part of their characters.”
“You talk of lies,” Gise
la Obermann said. “But I have a feeling this is something different. I’m starting to think that our client really does see himself as a different person.”
“Dissociative personality disorder? Multiple personalities? Is that what you mean?” Hedda Heine said, peering intently at Gisela.
Gisela nodded eagerly.
“In this case we’re not talking about a switch between various personalities,” she said quickly when she saw Karl Fischer’s derisive smile. “The cases I have been thinking about are those in which the person in question finds himself in an insoluble situation and can’t see any way out. Yet he simply can’t bear being who he is. He leaves debts, family conflicts, and disgrace behind and reappears somewhere else as an entirely different person, without any memory of his former life. We all know how unhappy Max was in Himmelstal. He never reached the stage of acceptance, getting down to some sort of serious activity the way most of our residents do. You all know about his repeated attempts to bribe and charm us into letting him leave. His desperate attempt to escape through the drains. Part of him, the sensible part, finally realizes that there is no way out at all. He has lost his freedom because he is who he is. But another part carries on looking for an escape route. And one day he simply runs away from himself. Into a person who would never have ended up in Himmelstal. A person who is friendly, selfless, law-abiding. He’s had the model in front of his eyes for several days and has known him since childhood: his own brother. When his brother leaves, he re-creates him and takes over his personality.”
The faces around the table were a tableau of all the responses she had prepared for: skepticism, confusion, interest, derision. Only Doctor Kalpak seemed unconcerned, just sitting there with his almond-shaped eyes lowered. She fixed her gaze on the most positive, a young male visiting researcher whom she didn’t know, and added, “This is an unconscious process, not conscious. And it is made easier by him claiming that his two-year-older brother is actually his twin.”
“A fascinating theory, Doctor Obermann,” Karl Fischer said, his stern voice wrapped in silk. “And what makes you think that the process is unconscious?”
“Because it’s such a thorough transformation. It encompasses his whole being. As you saw for yourselves.”
“Hmm,” Fischer said thoughtfully.
He waited until he had the complete attention of everyone else, then went on in a slow, quiet voice, speaking very clearly, like a schoolteacher addressing a class of first graders: “Everything you mention is part of an actor’s repertoire. Max is an astonishingly good actor. He has a natural talent for it and a lifetime of training. You saw him in that play last winter, didn’t you? I have to say that I was impressed. It was as if we were watching an entirely different person, wasn’t it? The way he moved and spoke, everything was different. He’s doing the same thing now. And he is fully aware of what he’s doing. Study him when he doesn’t know he’s being observed. He’ll probably have resorted to his normal pattern of behavior again.”
“That play…,” Doctor Pierce interjected cautiously. “I seem to remember it was about someone pretending to be two people, one bad and one good, and managing to fool everyone. Max could have gotten the idea for this deception from that.”
“Like I said: He’s deceiving you, Gisela,” Karl Fischer said dismissively.
Gisela Obermann pretended not to have noticed that Doctor Fischer had dropped her title, in contravention of accepted practice within the walls of the conference room.
“Doctor Fischer,” she said, with strained politeness. “We are all capable of being deceived. The day we consider ourselves too smart to be deceived is the day we are most at risk. We must always be on our guard, and I am grateful for your reminder. Max’s exceptional acting talents are obviously something we need to bear in mind. But what has convinced me isn’t his physical mannerisms, but his selfless behavior in recent weeks.”
“What exactly do you mean, Gisela?” Hedda Heine said, peering amiably above her glasses.
“That I believe him. He hasn’t deceived me. He’s deceived himself. Many of our patients have, of course, successfully managed to convince themselves that they’re perfectly normal, decent people. Max has gone a step further. His desperation to get away from here is so strong that his natural talent for acting has allowed him to create a new personality for himself.”
“Dissociative personality disorders are extremely rare when it comes to our residents,” Doctor Pierce pointed out. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a diagnosed case. And nothing in Max’s history points in that direction. He’s always been very stable in his identity.”
Hedda Heine nodded in agreement, and said, “Multiple personalities are extremely unusual in any circumstances. I’ve never come across a case in all the time I’ve been practicing, only read about them.”
She had a shawl covered in large roses fastened round her shoulders with a brooch. As she spoke about multiple personalities, Gisela thought she looked like one of those Russian dolls, and that if you opened her up at the middle you’d be able to pull out smaller and smaller versions of the same old woman in a shawl, until you finally ended up with a tiny, solid Hedda.
“The phenomenon has been widely debated,” Doctor Linz said. “Some people claim that these strange personalities don’t arise spontaneously but are conjured up by the therapist during hypnosis. That they are an undesirable side effect of treatment.”
Gisela’s eyes shone.
“That’s exactly what occurred to me! That this is a side effect of treatment. But a desirable side effect.”
The others looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“I was thinking of the Pinocchio Project,” Gisela said in a low voice. “Doctor Pierce, what’s your opinion?”
Karl Fischer groaned and shuffled as though he were in actual physical pain. Pierce glanced at him anxiously before turning toward Gisela.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Obermann. The project you’re referring to doesn’t work that way. Behavior is only affected very temporarily. At best. No profound personality changes have ever occurred. I only wish… But no. I haven’t been able to prove anything similar to what you have been talking about.”
“Up to now, maybe. But perhaps this is something entirely new. We might be on the right track toward a breakthrough,” Gisela said optimistically.
Doctor Pierce smiled, a look of sympathy in his eyes.
Gisela Obermann looked around to find support and interest from any of the others. But they all seemed rather bored, even the young visiting researcher. Brian Jenkins was impatiently clicking a ballpoint pen as he stared at the alpine landscape outside the window.
Gisela let out a little sigh of resignation.
“Well, it was just something that struck me. That there’s been a change. And that all change offers the hope of improvement.”
“There’s no change, Gisela,” Doctor Fischer said. He sounded very weary. “And there is, sadly, no hope.”
“So what’s the point of our research if we don’t believe in the possibility of change?” Gisela Obermann exclaimed angrily. “Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Keeping our eyes and ears open for the slightest change and using that to identify the germ of a solution? Otherwise we might as well all go home and employ camp guards instead.”
“Well, perhaps that’s what we ought to do,” Doctor Fischer said, glancing at the time. “After nine years in this place, I’m starting to lean more and more toward that opinion.”
“Doctor Fischer,” Gisela said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
She turned to the others.
“Let’s take a break. We’ll meet back here in half an hour. Then you’ll get the chance to meet Daniel again.”
She stood up and looked out through the picture window. Two large birds were hovering close to the rock face. They were circling back and forth in front of the black marks, as though they were trying to decipher them. They seemed to be some sort of bird of prey.
33
WHEN THE doctors were back in their seats again Daniel was already there. He had been collected from his care center room by two hosts and was sitting next to Gisela at the end of the table. He felt like a prisoner who had been dragged to his trial from his cell. He could only see the men and women around the table through a sort of fog. The box of contact lenses was still in the cabin and no one had fetched it for him even though he had asked several times.
Gisela welcomed him, then immediately set about questioning him like a lawyer.
“You and Max are twins, if I’ve understood you correctly?”
“I’ve said so plenty of times now.”
Everyone around the conference table was watching him with the greatest interest, except Doctor Fischer, who was looking pointedly up at the ceiling.
“Can you tell us who you are?”
As Daniel was talking, Doctor Fischer stifled a yawn, turned to Gisela Obermann, and said, “Gisela, my dear. Why are you taking up our time with this nonsense?”
“We have to listen to what he has to say. I think it’s quite clear that we’re dealing with a new personality here. He has no memories of his life as Max,” Gisela said.
Hedda Heine asked to speak.
“If Doctor Obermann is right, we’re facing a moral dilemma. Shouldn’t we be concerned for his safety? He is clearly what certain of our residents call a ‘lamb.’ Shouldn’t he have some sort of protection?”
“Absolutely not!” Karl Fischer snarled, slapping his hand down on the table. “He’s here for the same reason as all the others and he won’t be getting any more protection than anyone else. He’s a particularly devious, calculating individual who has read up about psychiatric disorders and is now trying to play us off against one another.”
“Doctor Fischer!” Gisela exclaimed. “Choose your words carefully. Remember that the resident in question is present.”
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