The Devil's Sanctuary (13 page)

Tom nodded in approval, turned up the volume even further, and went back to his carving. He hunched his shoulders and started grinding his teeth and pulling faces, jerking his head back and forth in time to the music like a hen. He seemed to have withdrawn into a world of his own where Daniel didn’t exist.

IT TOOK
him almost an hour to walk back to the village.

The valley was completely filled with fog now, as if someone had tried to mend the crack between the two mountains with filler. Now and then a gap appeared and part of the landscape became visible, as distinct and surprising as a vision.

For a couple of seconds he saw a car high up by the Gravel Quarry. He didn’t know there was a passable road up there. And a while later came the sound of another car, driving invisibly in the other direction on the far side of the rapids. Unless it was the same car? Had it been down to the village and was now taking a different route back?

Either way, both of the roads were much too far away. Evening was falling and he was hungry. He decided to spend another night in Max’s cabin at the clinic. Tomorrow he would make another attempt at getting a lift. He’d cross the bridge off to the east so that he was on the right side of the rapids from the outset and could follow the main road.

Once again Daniel caught sight of a car’s headlights high up on the slopes of the Gravel Quarry Mountain. It did actually seem to be the same car he had seen before, driving east and then west on the other side of the rapids, and now heading east again until the fog swallowed it up. If it hadn’t been so unlikely, he might have thought it was driving round the valley in an elliptical circuit.

He was tired, his clothes were damp, and when he finally saw the glass buildings of the clinic rising out of the veils of fog on the hillside he experienced a feeling that surprised even him: a sense of coming home. Security. Back to the dear old psychiatric clinic after getting mixed up with uptight villagers and crazy recluses. The journey away from here could wait. Now he had to rest and eat.

He had no food left in the cabin; he’d eaten the last of it before he set off. If the cafeteria was open, he would eat there. He could sit there in peace and quiet, now that he no longer had to pretend to be Max.

The park lay deserted in the gray mist, but as he passed the swimming pool he caught sight of one patient swimming. He stopped. He could see it was a woman. Back and forth she swam with powerful strokes, sinking slightly below the surface only to emerge and take another breath. Her short hair was slicked down on her head and her shoulders glistened with water.

Daniel watched her in fascination until she had finished and pulled her slim frame nimbly onto the edge of the pool. With her shiny bathing suit and slicked-back hair, she looked like a sea lion.

“I thought I was alone here,” she said.

“I’m on my way to the cafeteria. Have you eaten?” Daniel asked bravely.

“You know I never eat in the cafeteria.”

“I don’t know anything. I’m not Max, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m his twin brother. Max has gone, and to be honest I don’t think he’s coming back. He tricked me into coming to visit, and now he’s just dumped me here. And it seems to be harder to get away than it did to get here in the first place.”

When she laughed Daniel could see how strikingly attractive she was. Her face, body, the smooth, lithe way she moved. It was all perfect. If he’d realized this at the start he’d never have dared talk to her.

“A hell of a lot harder, yes,” she said, wrapping a lemon-yellow bath towel round her shoulders. “I don’t usually like eating that much. Except after I’ve been swimming. Then I’m hungry as a wolf.”

She bared her canine teeth in a predatory grin.

“And then I want lots of food. Good food. And decent wine to go with it. And perfect service. In other words: the restaurant.”

With one hand she gestured toward the main building, and with the other she grabbed hold of Daniel’s upper arm, as if they’d known each other a long time. Even though her touch was comradely, almost rough, it still sent an erotic charge through his body.

“Right. But I’m not sure I can afford it,” he muttered.

“Well I can. I’m rich as anything. I’ll go and change, and we’ll meet in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

Forty-five minutes later—not twenty—she appeared in the light of the fire by the group of armchairs in the lobby where Daniel was sitting and waiting. She was dressed in a short, tight dress made of some sort of shiny fabric that left her shoulders bare. Daniel felt underdressed in his cotton shirt. On her feet she had vertiginous leopard-patterned high heels and, unlike most women Daniel had ever met, she didn’t seem to have the slightest difficulty walking in these stilt-like creations but practically ran into the lobby and across to the armchair where he was waiting. As she leaned over to give him a quick peck on the cheek, he was hit by a pressure wave of perfume.

“Come on. I’m
hungry,
” she urged, tramping impatiently on her high heels as she tried to pull him up from the armchair. She turned to the hostess at the reception desk and called, “What are they serving?”

The hostess shook her head with a smile.

“A surprise, then. Well, at least there are always two dishes to choose between. To give the illusion of
choice,
” she muttered as she hooked her arm under Daniel’s and steered him toward the elevator.

He allowed her to lead him. He was still feeling giddy from the shock of her perfume.

“Choice!” the woman repeated, pressing the elevator button and bursting out laughing. “Isn’t that funny?”

Daniel didn’t know if it was because of the fog outside the windows, or because he had the company of a beautiful unknown woman instead of his brother, but the atmosphere in the clinic’s restaurant struck him as quite different this time. The lighting was more subdued, the room seemed smaller, and he couldn’t recall those red velvet curtains being there last time, and definitely not the soft music.

The woman walked straight to a small table in the corner, sat down, and started to read the menu that was already on the table.

“Venison fillet or duck breast? What do you think? I’ll have the duck breast. Duck breast! Don’t you think that sounds strange?”

She cupped one of her own breasts in her hand. It was extremely large and strangely spherical. Daniel wondered if it was made of silicone.

“I really haven’t got much cash on me,” he muttered.

“Shut up about that now. I’ve already said I’m rich.”

Now that it was dry, her short hair looked much lighter, almost platinum blond. In her ears she had two huge silver rings, but her cleavage was a blank expanse of skin without any jewelry.

“We need some champagne!” she cried.

Shortly afterward, as Daniel was clinking his tall, vaguely pink-tinted glass against hers, he wondered how this had all happened. He had been on his way out of here with his rucksack that morning. And now he was sitting in the clinic’s restaurant drinking a toast with a beautiful, rich patient. Everything was somehow going too fast for him to keep up with it. But at the same time it felt as if time were standing still.

The food arrived. The woman stamped her heels eagerly under the table like a child.

“
God,
I’m so hungry. I can go weeks without eating a proper dinner. It’s not the sort of thing I ever think about really. But I build up a huge appetite. I turn into a black hole.”

Manic, he thought. But beautiful.

She started to eat, quickly and greedily, washing the food down with large gulps of wine. A trickle of wine ran down one side of her mouth and dripped onto the tablecloth.

“I really have got fucking awful table manners,” she declared, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“This is very good.”

“Is it? I never have time to notice.”

She took another few quick mouthfuls, then suddenly put her cutlery down.

“
God,
I’m so full.”

“Already?”

She thrust the plate away, then dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin and tossed it aside.

“I saw they’ve got chocolate tart for dessert,” Daniel said.

She shook her head firmly.

“I won’t need anything else to eat for a few weeks. I’m like a python. I swallow a whole ox, then spend a month digesting it. Do you want to hear a story? I don’t know if it’s true. There was a girl who had a python. She fed it rats and guinea pigs, and it slept in her bed every night. It would curl up at the bottom of the bed like a dog. Then one day it stopped eating. Not a single guinea pig for months. The girl got worried, of course, and took the snake to the vet. ‘Have you noticed anything else unusual about it?’ the vet asked. ‘Yes,’ the girl said, ‘it usually sleeps curled up at the bottom of the bed, but now it lies stretched out beside me like a person.’ Then the vet told her that pythons prepare to eat large prey by starving themselves for several months and lying down next to their victim to get the measure of it. Do you think that can be true? A friend of mine back home in London told me.”

“I don’t think it’s true,” Daniel said.

She shrugged her shoulders, pulled a pocket mirror from her purse, and checked her face.

“I ate my lipstick as well. See, I must have been hungry!” she cried, taking out her lipstick and applying a layer of smooth bubblegum pink that she hadn’t had on before. She pulled a face in the mirror, then tugged at her short hair with her fingertips. Then she closed the mirror and said, “Can’t we have a romantic evening, you and me?”

“How do you mean?”

“You know. Have some wine. Cuddle up under the moonlight.”

“It’s raining,” Daniel pointed out, glancing at the window.

“Good. Then we’ll have to seek shelter in your cabin, take off our wet clothes, and dry out naked in front of the fire.”

He laughed.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Nonsense. Everyone knows my name.”

“I don’t. I’m not a patient here. I came to visit my brother…”

He fell silent. How many times had he said this now?

“Yes?”

She was leaning interestedly over the table and he could see right down her cleavage.

“Max and I are twins. He asked me to swap places with him for a few days, but he didn’t come back. He’s abandoned me here.”

“Cool.” She discovered a splash of wine at the bottom of her glass and quickly drained it. “Do you want to come out for a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“I didn’t ask if you smoked. I asked if you wanted to come out for a cigarette.”

She had already pulled a cigarette and lighter from her bag.

“Okay,” he said.

They took the elevator back down and went and stood on the steps under the projecting roof. The rain hissed invisibly in the darkness. She lit the cigarette, greedily inhaled the smoke, then blew it out in a short, hard puff.

“It’s a lovely clinic, this,” Daniel said tentatively.

“You won’t think that when you’ve been here as long as I have.”

“How long have you been here?”

She seemed to be thinking, blowing some smoke rings that danced off into the darkness.

“Eight years.”

“Eight years! Nonstop?”

She nodded.

“But you do get to go out occasionally?”

“Are you kidding?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three. My own parents are responsible for me ending up here. My own parents!” she snapped bitterly. “Even though they knew I’d never get out. Unless that was precisely the reason.”

Daniel tried to imagine what it would be like to spend the prime of your life in a clinic.

“It’s a bit rude of me to ask, and you really don’t have to answer, but what’s your diagnosis?” Daniel asked carefully.

“The same as you, I imagine.”

“As me?”

“The same as everyone here.”

“I’m not actually ill. It’s my brother who’s ill.”

“Idiot,” she said, and carried on smoking without looking at him.

He explained the whole story, about the threat from the Mafia, the bill, and the false beard. It sounded completely incredible. He hardly even believed his own story. He expected her to shrug her shoulders and blow out some more smoke. But to his surprise she dropped the cigarette and looked at him with eyes that grew steadily larger the longer he went on.

“Is that true?” she asked. “You’re not just standing here making up a load of crap to keep me amused?”

“It’s true,” he said wearily.

She looked at him with renewed interest.

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “That’s crazy. Why haven’t
I
got a twin who could swap places with me? God, that’s so unfair!”

“So you do believe me?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

The cigarette lay on the steps, glowing by itself. She crushed it under her high heel.

“Because it’s such a useless story. Not even the craziest lunatic would come up with something that bad. But there’s something else as well.” She paused and gave him a sly glance. “I can tell you’re different. I’d almost forgotten what people like you are like.”

“People like me?”

“You’re so alive. And you’ve got a really good aura. Did you know that?”

“No. In what way?”

“I can see people’s auras. It’s a gift of mine. Some people have really strong auras, others’ are weak. Yours is strong. Really beautiful.”

“Has it got a color?”

“Green. Emerald green. I haven’t seen an aura like it since I got here. Max’s aura was white and metallic. Like thunder.”

Daniel laughed.

“Shall we go back up to the restaurant? You look cold, with your shoulders bare like that.”

“You can put your arm round them if you like.”

“Okay,” he said, without doing it. “But I still think it would be best if we went back up. We haven’t paid the bill.”

“So? They know where we are, don’t they? The rain’s stopped. Come on, let’s go for a walk. We’re supposed to be having a romantic evening, or had you forgotten?”

She put her bare arm under his and pulled him down the steps and out into the park. The clinic grounds were quiet and still, and the trees were dripping after the rain. Her arm was cold, her hip bumped against his as she walked.

 As they strolled along the narrow footpaths in the damp darkness, Daniel thought, You don’t spend eight years in a clinic for no reason. As if she could read his mind, she said, “You think I’m mentally ill, don’t you?”