Corinne came out. She was holding the bathrobe shut with one hand as she squeezed the water from her hair with the other.
“Am I the only person in Himmelstal who’s seen you exercising?” Daniel asked.
“Yes,” she said, sitting down in the armchair, then added, “Apart from Max, of course.”
She poured herself a glass of rhubarb cordial and drank it thirstily.
“Did you exercise together?”
Corinne laughed.
“You really don’t know your brother very well, do you? He hated getting sweaty. He’d never attempt any sport more strenuous than fishing.”
Daniel hesitated for a moment.
“It’s really none of my business. But what sort of relationship did you have?”
“Max and I? Well. It would be wrong to say we were friends. You don’t have friends in Himmelstal. But we used to spend time together. We could talk to each other. It started in the drama group, where I was the director. We put on a production of The Good Woman of Setzuan. A shortened adaptation that I’d been involved in myself before I came here. Max played the pilot. He was good. He understood whatever I said at once. He could have been a good actor if he’d chosen that path. The production was a great success, and after that he often came down to Hannelores Bierstube and chatted to me while I worked. Sometimes he came home with me afterward.”
She noticed the way he was looking at her and quickly clarified: “We didn’t have a sexual relationship. Neither of us was interested in that. We just sat here like this, talking.”
“How come you dared to bring him home? You were the one who told me not to open my door to anyone. Did you really trust him?”
Corinne thought for a moment.
“Well obviously I was exposing myself to a degree of physical risk. But there’s a different risk in Himmelstal, and when Max arrived in the valley that risk was starting to feel more and more of a threat: going mad. Mad with suspicion, isolation, and anonymity. I was so tired of always sitting here alone in the evenings, staring at the remnants of my old life.”
She glanced at the theater posters and masks on the walls.
“I longed to be able to talk about myself, to share my thoughts with another person. Nothing particularly deep or important. Just that someone would know a bit about who I am. I used to get that feeling when we were rehearsing The Good Woman and Max and I would talk about the play. And I didn’t want that feeling to stop. So I went on spending time with him, and I asked him back here with me so we could talk freely without everyone in the bierstube listening in. He was entertaining, nice. He made me laugh.”
Daniel felt a pang of jealousy.
“Did you know he’d beaten women up?”
Corinne nodded.
“Gisela had warned me. But I didn’t care if he killed me. Rather that than being as isolated as I had been.”
“You and Gisela Obermann seem to know each other pretty well.”
Corinne said nothing for a few moments.
“I like her,” she finally said. “And I think she likes me. But she’s a doctor. You can’t talk openly with a doctor. It’s a completely unequal relationship. She has total control over me. One careless word from me and she could send me to the Catacombs.”
There it was again, that word.
“The Catacombs?”
“Did I say that? Oh, it’s just Himmelstal slang. It means harsher treatment.”
“Like what?”
“Withdrawal of privileges. Heavy medication. A secure ward. That sort of thing.”
“So there is a secure ward here?”
“Yes. If a resident gets too violent and dangerous, they have to be able to isolate him from the others. Lock him up and pump him full of drugs. Otherwise the residents would kill one another and there wouldn’t be any research material left.”
She stood up and fetched the pitcher of rhubarb cordial from the fridge and refilled their glasses.
“Why is it called the Catacombs?” Daniel asked.
“As you know, there used to be a convent here. Only the leper cemetery is left from that time. The nuns themselves weren’t buried there, or in the village. They’re supposed to have had an underground crypt beneath the convent. In other words, beneath what is now the clinic. People joke that that’s where difficult residents are put, in the Catacombs. Himmelstal humor. I shouldn’t have used that expression.”
“Are you at risk of ending up in the Catacombs, Corinne?”
“No, it was just a way of saying that the doctors have complete control over us. It’s just what people say here. Don’t take it literally. But Gisela is just my therapist and doctor, not my friend. You can’t expect to find friendship here. But if you get the chance to grab a bit of human contact, you take it. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”
“Is that what you’re doing now? Grabbing a bit of human contact from me?”
She smiled in amusement.
“I get the feeling that for the first time here in Himmelstal I might be able to hope for…a bit more than that. I don’t trust you entirely, Daniel. And you don’t trust me entirely. And you shouldn’t, either. Not yet. But we can get to know each other better. And when we know each other, maybe we can trust each other. And become friends. Would you like to be my friend?”
She said this with a little quiver in her voice, as if she were asking something huge and was afraid of being rejected.
“I’m very choosy when it comes to picking my friends. But out of everyone I’ve met so far in Himmelstal, you’re the strongest candidate,” Daniel said.
Corinne lit up.
“That’s exactly the way to think of it. Okay, I’ve got a few things I need to do now. See you at the bierstube, maybe? Or at church?”
“I’d prefer the bierstube. Thanks for letting me use your gym.”
“You’re welcome to come back whenever you like.”
She went with him to the door and gave him a quick hug. He could feel her wet hair and smelled her soap. He put his fingertips round her wrist, very softly and gently, but the touch made her start and pull her arm away.
“Don’t you ever take off this bracelet?” he asked.
“No.”
“It means something special to you, doesn’t it.”
“It reminds me of who I am,” she said. “See you.”
On the way back Daniel hesitated, unsure whether to take the shortcut through the patch of fir trees or follow the road up to the entrance to the clinic. Fir trees brought back unpleasant memories. But still he chose the path through the woods. It looked as if most of the residents used the path—it was well trodden and littered with cigarette butts and rubbish—and Daniel didn’t want to appear different, or afraid. He would rather have run, but he forced himself to walk calmly but quickly. He even tried whistling.
Suddenly he caught sight of someone sitting in amongst the trees, thirty feet from the path. He calmed down when he saw that it was a woman on her own.
There was nothing violent or unsettling about the scene. The woman was sitting on a mossy rock, smoking. She was staring into the middle distance and didn’t seem to have noticed Daniel. She had kicked off her high-heeled shoes, which lay on the ground in front of her.
“Doctor Obermann,” Daniel said, surprised.
She gave him a weary glance, then looked away. The smell of her cigarillo merged with the smell of sap and firs.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he went on, walking toward her.
“You’re no longer my patient,” Gisela Obermann said curtly.
“I know. I’m Doctor Fischer’s patient. But I’d rather have you back.”
She let out a short, odd laugh. Without looking at him, she said, “So you think you’ve got a choice?”
A ray of sunlight found its way through the branches of the trees and illuminated her face. Daniel was taken aback when he saw how tired and worn she looked. Her tight skirt had slid up over her thighs, revealing a run in her tights, large as a spider’s web.<
br />
“No,” he said, “but I find it easier to talk to you than Doctor Fischer.”
“Go away,” she said coldly. “Do you hear me? You’re not my patient and I’ve been forbidden to talk to you. I’m not allowed to have any contact with you.”
“But you’ve got to help me. I need to contact the Swedish authorities to get confirmation of who I am. You have to talk to your colleagues.”
Daniel was talking quickly and animatedly. He crouched down beside her on the moss.
Gisela Obermann tossed her half-smoked cigarillo aside and stood up abruptly. She took a few steps backward in her stockinged feet, holding her cell phone in front of her like a crucifix to ward off a vampire.
“If you don’t leave at once, I’ll call the guards,” she hissed. “I’ll press the emergency alarm. Have you got that?”
Daniel looked at her in horror, then hurried back to the path.
39
“THERE ARE days when I think life in Himmelstal is pretty okay, in spite of everything,” Corinne said. “When I imagine I could probably manage to live my life here.”
They were sitting on the grass close to each other on Corinne’s spread-out jacket. On the other side of the rapids the swallows were circling their nests in the rock face, and off to the west the snow-clad mountaintop seemed to be floating on pillows of cloud in the clear air, like an independent world with its own natural laws.
“I’ve got these wonderful surroundings, I’ve got my singing and my performances. And now I’ve got you, Daniel. You coming here is probably the best thing that’s happened to me since I got here.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back but thought that it certainly wasn’t the best thing that had happened to him.
“I’ve always thought I could live a decent life in Himmelstal if there was just someone here I could rely on. A single person I could feel safe with.”
“I’m not going to be staying here, you know that,” he said firmly.
She looked past him to the snow-capped mountain, smiling serenely as if she hadn’t heard him.
“But,” she went on after a pause, turning to face him, “there’s still one thing I miss terribly. I didn’t think about it to start with, but I’m missing it more and more. Do you know what it is?”
Daniel could think of so many things. He shook his head.
“Children.” She said the word with a little whispering sigh. “For years now I’ve heard nothing but adult voices, mostly men. Never any shouts from children playing, or toddlers screaming, or babies gurgling. Their laughter! Oh, I’d give anything to hear children laughing. You know, that chuckling, unstoppable laughter. Complete, unadulterated joy. Without the slightest doubt that life is anything but completely good.”
Her voice broke and she hid her face in her hands, and he saw her shoulders shake with silent sobbing. It was a heartbreaking sight.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her. And as she cried against his chest, he realized that she wasn’t just missing children in the abstract.
“Do you have any children on the outside?” he asked gently.
“No.” She was so close to him as she muttered her reply that he could feel her lips moving against the cotton shirt over his nipple. “But I really like children.”
And then she cried some more. For children she had never had, and would never have.
The clanging church bell began to ring. Off to the west a bird of prey was silhouetted against the sky. It circled higher and higher until it finally vanished over the top of the Wall.
A van was driving along the road. It slowed down and stopped, but no one got out.
“Whose vehicle is that?” Daniel asked.
Corinne looked up. She wiped the tears from her eyes so she could see better.
“That,” she snorted. “That’s a safari bus. Full of psychopath tourists. We’ve probably got fifteen pairs of binoculars pointing at us right now. Fuck you!” she said to the van, giving it the finger.
The vehicle set off again and carried on through the valley.
“Guest researchers from all over the world come here to study us. Mostly they just sit in the safety of the conference rooms or guest accommodations. But sometimes they go out on an adventure in that van. With bulletproof windows that they’re under strict instructions never to open.”
Corinne glanced at her watch as she wiped away the last of her tears.
“Mass starts in half an hour,” she said.
And the light came on in her eyes again. Not at full strength, more like the distant glow from a city at night. She put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Come with me to church, Daniel. I’d really like that. You only have to sit there. Do it for me.”
The light filtering into the little church was subdued and colored by the stained-glass windows. At first glance it gave an old-fashioned impression, but the windows clearly dated from the second half of the twentieth century. The style was clumsily naturalistic, the colors garish.
The windows made him think of the rumors he had heard in the bierstube: that Father Dennis was a pedophile who had violently assaulted his Sunday school pupils in the name of Christ and was guilty of murdering one of them.
One of the windows depicted a handsome Jesus with two children dressed in loose togas that looked as if they might fall off at any moment. A flaxen-haired girl leaned longingly against Christ’s hip while a little boy appeared to be struggling to get off his lap, as if he were having doubts. His toga had ridden up, revealing his stubby little penis. The motif seemed to have been chosen specially by Father Dennis himself.
The second window depicted a lamb that was very skillfully holding a large wooden cross between its crooked front legs. A patch of red, which might have been blood, spread out around its hooves. This window also had unpleasant associations for Daniel. The lamb was staring blankly and stupidly ahead, and he could hear Samantha’s hoarse whisper: “Lambkin.”
The third window showed a collection of fat cherubs dancing in a circle like a swarm of marzipan pigs with wings. Lots of peach-colored flesh, pouting lips, and dimpled little buttocks. Father Dennis’s idea of heaven?
They sat in a pew right at the back. Recorded organ music streamed out of a pair of loudspeakers. Daniel counted eight people in the pews other than themselves. They were all sitting alone, at some distance from one another.
Shortly after they sat down Father Dennis appeared in his priest’s robes. He looked very distinctive. His forehead had a deep depression in it, and the skin of one cheek was pale pink and stretched. These were the evidence of two assaults. Child abusers were loathed and persecuted everywhere, and Himmelstal was no exception.
In Father Dennis’s way of looking at the world, however, this persecution had elevated him and now showed that he had been specially selected. It was a form of martyrdom comparable to that of the saints. He didn’t even balk at drawing comparisons with the suffering of Christ himself, and he believed that the derision of the rest of the world gave him a greater understanding of what Our Savior had gone through. He accepted every insult, every hate letter, every punch as a sign that he was blessed, a sign of his solidarity with He who was most hated and derided.
For understandable reasons, the priest lived a retiring existence. He had a room in the actual care center building itself, from which he communicated with the outside world through his page on the valley’s intranet, and through enthusiastic use of group e-mails. Every day he was escorted to and from the church on one of the hosts’ little electric carts. Father Dennis’s religious activity was seen as important in the valley, which was why the clinic’s management had seen fit to extend this level of security to him. It made him even more hated among the other inhabitants, who couldn’t count on the same level of protection.
A long, narrow box of fine sand ran along the top of the altar rail like a window box on a balcony. The sand contained a few burned-out candles surrounded by a ring of melted wax. Father Dennis placed a row of new ca
ndles in the sand and lit them one by one. With each candle he muttered a short prayer and made the sign of the cross.
“For the dead,” Corinne said with her head bowed.
They were on their knees in the pew, their hands clasped together. Daniel glanced at her.
“Which dead?”
“Residents of Himmelstal who’ve died.”
The priest took a few steps back and stared ceremoniously at the lit candles while a Bach fugue rumbled out of the speakers. Daniel counted the candles.
“Twenty-four. How many of those died a natural death?” Daniel whispered.
“That depends what you mean by natural. In Himmelstal it’s natural to die from murder, suicide, or overdose,” Corinne muttered, looking down at her clasped hands. To anyone watching it would have looked like she was praying. “There are probably far more than twenty-four. But some are never found. They just disappear.”
The organ music fell quiet. Father Dennis had climbed up into the pulpit.
In his e-mailed sermons he had two favorite themes to which he kept returning. One was the Lamb: the innocent sacrificial lamb, so white and pure. The Lord taking care of his flock. The Good Shepherd.
The other was wounds: Christ’s miraculous bleeding wounds. The wounds of the martyrs. Father Dennis’s own cherished, painful wounds that he wore like jewelry.
Sometimes he combined these in a sermon about the wounds of the Lamb.
Daniel wondered which of these themes he’d choose for today’s sermon.
Father Dennis cleared his throat and began: “Let us for a moment imagine that we are angels.”
“You’ll have to imagine pretty hard,” Corinne said quietly to herself.
“Wonderful, pure angels with snow-white wings, floating up in the sky. We’re drifting high above the Alps and see them below us. It must look beautiful, mustn’t it? And then we drift over Himmelstal, and what do you think that looks like? I can tell you. The landscape is mountainous, no great peaks, but a few ups and downs, like the hair on an animal’s back. Then suddenly: a cut! A wound in this back. Narrow. Deep. Painfully deep. And this is Himmelstal. A wound. Carved by the icy knife of a glacier. My friends: We live at the bottom of a wound! You and I are maggots living in that wound. We infect it, keep it open, make sure the pus keeps flowing. That’s our lot. Living at the bottom of a wound.”
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