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 face 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.