The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  He laughed.

  A group of people sat down at the table next to them. The barber let go of Daniel and turned toward them.

  “I see you picked the lasagna. Good choice. There’s no point eating in the restaurant when the cafeteria is such good quality, is there?”

  Daniel took his chance and got up. On his way to leave his tray in the rack, he had to stop himself from breaking into a run.

  37

  BEHIND HIS drawn curtains Daniel was waiting for the evening patrol. He was tired and was reading a book to stay awake. He didn’t really need to sit up and wait. They had their own key, after all, and if he did go to bed early they’d let themselves in and quickly and quietly check that he was behind the drapes covering the bed. But he always found it rather unnerving when the drapes were pulled aside and the beam of the flashlight crept across the walls of the alcove. He preferred to open the door himself and greet them while he was still dressed.

  He must have been very tired, because he hadn’t heard the electric cart approaching, and the firm rat-a-tat of the knock startled him. It had the same rhythm as an old advertising jingle that he vaguely remembered. A girl’s voice, shrill and naïve like some sixties pop song, called out exactly what he knew she was going to say: “Hello, hello, anyone at home?”

  He knew it was the little dark-haired hostess. She always knocked that way and always called out the same thing. With a weary smile he got up and opened the door.

  And there stood Samantha, dressed in pirate’s trousers with her blouse tied just below her bust. He went to close the door a second after he had opened it, but that was a second too late. She had already put her foot out to stop it and slid through the gap like a cat.

  “Fooled you,” she laughed, throwing herself down in one of the wooden chairs with her leg over one armrest and taking a cigarette out of her purse.

  “You have to go,” he said. “The evening patrol will be here any minute.”

  She shook her head firmly as she tried to get her lighter to work.

  “They’re starting down in the village tonight. They won’t be here for another twenty minutes. We’ve got time for a quickie,” she said with her cigarette bobbing on her lower lip. She was still trying to light it, but her lighter wasn’t working. “Fuck. Have you got any matches?”

  “Please, just leave,” he pleaded.

  She found a box of matches over by the hearth, lit the cigarette, and turned to walk slowly toward him with rolling hips and a lazy smile. There was something creepy about her, something exaggerated, out of control. As she got closer he could see from her eyes that she was clearly under the influence of something.

  “Hello, Lambkin,” she said softly, stroking his cheek. “I haven’t seen you for ages. You gave that Tom a real seeing to, I heard. Good work.”

  “I had to do something,” Daniel muttered, taking a step back.

  “You crushed his hand, darling. People all round the valley are talking about it. I don’t think you have to worry about any reprisals. Tom isn’t exactly popular. Everyone knows he’s an idiot. His head’s full of mashed potato.”

  She tapped her own head and pulled a face.

  “But I daresay Tom wasn’t too pleased. You’re not going to find it easy to get hold of any wood. There’s a fair chance you’ll freeze to death this winter.”

  Winter? The thought of being stuck in Himmelstal that long made him shudder. She laughed and patted him comfortingly on the arm.

  “Take it easy, Lambkin. For the time being someone else is taking care of the wood. Tom probably won’t be back for a while.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the Catacombs, I suppose.”

  “The Catacombs? Where’s that?”

  “Don’t really know. Not a nice place. Underground. Like Hell, pretty much. Mind you, Hell doesn’t exist. Maybe the Catacombs don’t either. The problem with places like that is that everyone talks about them, but no one ever comes back and says what they’re really like.”

  He remembered that Karl Fischer had mentioned something about “the cellar.” Could that be the same place?

  He peered through the curtains for the evening patrol. Samantha knocked on the table behind him: rat-a-tat-tat. He turned around and she laughed.

  “They’ll be a while yet. We’ve still got time.”

  She went and stood right next to him, cupped her hand over his groin, and squeezed gently as she slowly blew smoke out of her mouth. Her pupils seemed to be overflowing with some black, sludgy liquid. Disgusted, he pushed her away from him. It was a gentle push, but she reeled as if she were on a high wire.

  “What’s the matter? Waiting for someone else, maybe? A little sailor girl? A little shepherdess? Maybe that’s the kind of thing that turns you on?”

  Strange. Women were in the minority in the valley, and the only attractive ones he had met seemed to be fighting over him. He didn’t even have to leave his cabin, they just forced their way in. And they each seemed to keep a remarkably close eye on what the other was doing.

  “Do you know who she is really? Do you know what she did?”

  “Who?”

  “The little sailor girl. The shepherdess. Ding-a-ling.” She pretended to ring an invisible cowbell. “Has she told you what she did, before she came here? Do you know, Lambkin?”

  “Don’t call me that. My name’s Max.”

  Slowly she shook her head and wagged a long, red-varnished fingernail at his chin.

  “You’ve already told me all about it, have you forgotten? You’re his stand-in. Don’t be scared, Lambkin. It’s a wonderful secret, and it’s perfectly safe with me.”

  She smiled, and the look in her eyes drifted off into a dark pool.

  “I’d like you to go now, Samantha.”

  “Don’t you want to know what she did, your little shepherdess?”

  Finally there was a knock on the door, the same rhythm he had already heard that evening, and the same cheery cry. The lock turned and the little dark-haired hostess was standing in the doorway twittering, “How are you, Max? Had a good day? Samantha, hurry up. We’ll be at your cabin in a few minutes.”

  Samantha tilted her head back, shaped her mouth, and very carefully blew out several parting smoke rings before she pushed the hostess aside and slid out into the night.

  Long after she and the evening patrol had gone, the smoke swirled around under the beams in the ceiling, thick and suffocating, like fog from a swamp. Daniel wished he dared open the window to air the room.

  He was annoyed with himself for having been so credulous and opening up to Samantha. And he should have reacted quicker when he saw who it was. Shoved her back and closed the door again. He had to get quicker, smarter, stronger.

  He dug out his cell phone and called Corinne.

  38

  IT WAS early in the morning, and the little square was still shaded by the mountain. The bell on the door to the bakery kept ringing as people emerged with fresh loaves, and on one balcony a man in an undershirt was watering his window boxes. There was nothing to suggest that the village was anything but a perfectly normal village, with well-kept houses and industrious inhabitants going about their business.

  Corinne was sitting on the side of the well, wearing a jacket with the hood pulled up. As soon as their eyes met she gestured almost imperceptibly with her head and started to walk off. Daniel followed her through the narrow village streets, then up a flight of steps on the side of a building. They stepped through a door just under the ridge of the roof into a dark, narrow hall, leading to another door with a coded lock.

  “Your door’s more secure than mine,” Daniel said.

  “That’s because I’m a woman.”

  She let him into a large, gloomy attic space with walls and ceiling of rough wood, with just a few tiny windows.

  “Well, this is where I live,” Corinne said as she went round turning on the lights, mainly table lamps and small strings of Christmas lights.

  It was certa
inly an unusual home. The walls were adorned with fantastical masks, puppets, and posters for theater performances. The bed was covered with an Indian throw and, like an island in the middle of the room, there was a group of red-velour armchairs. A third of the space had been transformed into a gym, with weights and equipment and a large mirror on the wall.

  Daniel stopped and looked at the masks.

  “My former life,” Corinne explained. “And my current one.”

  She gestured toward the gym part of the room.

  “Okay,” she went on before Daniel had time to ask any questions. “So you’ve realized that you need to get in shape. Let’s start by warming up.”

  She pulled off her jacket and threw it aside. Under it she was wearing a red tank top. She went over to the equipment, took out a jump rope, and slowly began to skip.

  “You can have the bike.”

  Daniel walked in a curve around the flailing rope and sat down on an exercise bike. He put in some serious effort to get it going. Some years ago he had done plenty of exercise, jogging and going to the gym, but his depression had broken the habit and he had never gotten back into it again.

  “What have you been up to since we last met?” Corinne asked.

  “I’ve been writing some letters,” he panted. “Can you send letters from here?”

  “Sure. You hand them in at reception in an unsealed envelope. Before anything is sent, it gets read by the clinic staff to assess its suitability.”

  “Suitability?”

  “Obviously letters mustn’t contain threats or anything else unpleasant. And you’re not allowed to say too much about Himmelstal. Officially it’s a ‘special psychiatric clinic,’ nothing more specific than that, and we’re expected to maintain that image.”

  Corinne did a few extra-high jumps, spinning the rope twice while she was in the air, then resumed a gentler tempo.

  “And you’re not allowed to write to anyone you like. The addressee has to be checked and accepted first. Who have you written to?”

  “The population registry and passport authority in Sweden,” Daniel panted. “The Swedish embassy in Bern. I want to have my identity confirmed. I don’t have the exact addresses, but I was hoping someone could help me with that.”

  Corinne broke off her skipping and laughed out loud.

  “Those letters will never get out of Himmelstal.”

  “What about incoming mail?” Daniel asked. “Is that censored as well?”

  “Yes. Everything gets read. And the sender is checked out.”

  “That’s odd,” Daniel said.

  He had stopped pedaling and was sitting still on the bike.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Max received a letter before I got here. The contents were distinctly threatening.”

  He told her what had been in Max’s letter from the Mafia.

  “Did you see it?” Corinne said.

  “No. But I did see the photograph they sent. Of a woman they’d beaten up.”

  “That letter didn’t come in through official channels, that much is obvious.”

  “How would it have gotten here, then?”

  “How should I know? But a lot of things come into Himmelstal that shouldn’t be here,” Corinne said.

  She hung the jump rope up on the wall.

  “Drugs?” Daniel asked.

  “Has anyone offered to sell you some?”

  “A guy in the cafeteria implied as much. And I’ve seen people who’ve seemed to be under the influence.”

  “Samantha?”

  They certainly keep an eye on each other, Daniel thought. Who had seen Samantha at his cabin? Only the hostesses. Who might have told Gisela Obermann. Who might then have told Corinne during a therapy session.

  “I thought it was the evening patrol,” he said by way of excuse. “She was high as a kite. I got rid of her at once.”

  Corinne seemed satisfied.

  “There are drugs in the valley,” she admitted as she wrapped her hand with a long strip of black cotton. “Not much though. Enough to satisfy demand, but little enough to keep prices high. I’d estimate that the amount available is exactly calculated for the number of users in a population of this size to keep maybe two or three dealers in a life of luxury.”

  “Who are they? The guy in the denim vest?”

  “He’s a small-time dealer. But if you head west in the valley you’ll find a couple of really nice houses up on the right. The people living there don’t have very special jobs. They must have other sources of income.”

  “So who lives there?”

  “Kowalski lives in the villa at the top of the slope. Sørensen lives in the one lower down.”

  Kowalski and Sørensen were the men who usually played cards by the pool.

  “But how do they get the stuff in?”

  “Good question. Everything coming in gets thoroughly checked. It ought to be impossible.”

  “Does the clinic management know there are drugs here?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why don’t they intervene?”

  Corinne looked at him in surprise.

  “And do what? Call the police? Make sure the guilty parties are prosecuted? Punish them? They’ve already been convicted and punished. All that’s already been done. They’re beyond courts and prisons now. There are no further sanctions available. All that’s left is the accurate and scientific study of what happens.”

  “So they study the drug trade but they don’t stop it?” Daniel exclaimed.

  Corinne wound the last of the cotton strap around her hand and fastened it.

  “Of course they don’t want drugs here. But they’re here, in which case they have to be taken into account in any research. Who the dealers are, who the runners are, and who ends up buying. Who gets rich from the trade, and who ends up poor. What method of payment is used: money, goods, services, prostitution. There’s a sociologist here, Brian Jenkins, the one with the red beard, who’s interested in this sort of thing.”

  “What research methods does he use? Does he stand there taking notes as the deals are done?” Daniel asked as he slowly began to pedal again.

  “He interviews residents in his office. Talks to the staff. Gathers information. A bit here, a bit there. Some residents can be extremely helpful if they think it’ll do them some good.”

  “Snitches?”

  “I think they’re called informants.”

  “What do you get by passing on information?”

  Corinne pulled on a pair of boxing gloves.

  “You get a gold star in your case file. It’s important to keep on good terms with the research team.”

  “But you’d hardly get a gold star from Kowalski and Sørensen.”

  “You can’t please everyone. Look, we’re cooling down now. Come on. You can have the bench press.”

  Corinne set about gently hitting a punching ball. Daniel watched her in fascination. As she shifted her weight from one leg to the other she increased her speed. The ball slapped rhythmically against its wooden base as her bracelet of colored stones rattled against the edge of the glove.

  “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever seen a woman box before?”

  “Not wearing a bracelet, no.”

  She ignored his comment and went on punching. Daniel struggled on with the exercise bike.

  “Do you want to try it?” she asked after a while.

  He got off the bike and she wrapped his hands the same way she had done her own a short while before, then pulled on the gloves, still damp with her sweat, and fastened the Velcro straps. Daniel felt like his mother was putting his mittens on so he could go outside and play in the snow.

  She showed him the various blows: jab, right and left hooks, and uppercut.

  “Who taught you to box?” he asked.

  “I did a bit of training before I came here. But I’m mostly self-taught. There are plenty of people here who could teach me more. But I don’t want to be dependent on anyone else. My
training is my little secret. It’s best that way.”

  Daniel gave the ball a punch and leaped back as it swung back toward him, then hit it again.

  “Hey,” Corinne said. “Don’t break my punching ball. It was hard enough to get hold of as it is, and the clinic management will never get me another one. Not so hard. That’s it. And let your body roll with the punch. Good.”

  He carried on and found a rhythm, but it was much harder than it looked, and after a short while he gave up.

  “You’ve got talent,” Corinne said. “Ask the management for a pair of gloves. Then we could practice sparring together.”

  Daniel laughed breathlessly. His shirt was drenched in sweat.

  “Doesn’t all this exercising bother your neighbors? It must make a fair bit of noise,” he pointed out as he pulled the gloves off.

  “I’m on my own in the building. The ground floor is used as a storeroom for the shops. And the first floor is vacant at the moment. It’s nice being by myself. But on the other hand, if I do ever get into trouble, no one will hear me screaming,” she said with a smile. “Do you want to take the weights, or shall I?”

  Daniel held up his hands.

  “I think that’s enough for today.”

  “The shower’s over there by the front door,” Corinne said as she lay down on the bench under the weights.

  When he emerged from the bathroom with Corinne’s bath towel round his hips, she had prepared a pitcher of rhubarb cordial with ice and had changed into a terry-cloth robe.

  While she showered he sat down on the red sofa and poured himself a drink. He looked around the large, strange room. On one chair were her sweaty gym clothes. On impulse he put his hand into the right pocket of her jogging pants and pulled out her cell phone. He glanced quickly at the bathroom door, then checked for received messages. Completely empty. The same with sent messages. Evidently she erased everything straight away.

  But in saved messages he found something: one solitary message from someone identified only as “M.” He opened it and read: I feel happy every time I see you. Be careful. It was sent on May twenty-first. He looked round for a pen to write down the phone number, but the water had stopped in the bathroom and he quickly put the phone back.