LIKE MOST old places the layout of the village streets was confusing, with no straight lines, and he spent a while walking about before he found the brown gingerbread house. As he wandered around he discovered that the village was fairly small, but it still contained a café and a number of shops whose contents it was difficult to determine from outside.
Last time he was here it had been dark and he had gotten a sense that it was an old village. Now, in daylight, he got the impression from certain details—building foundations, drainpipes, window frames—that most of the houses had been built recently but made to look old.
Corinne was a waitress rather than a singer this evening. She was still wearing her dirndl. She came over to him and waited for his order as she impatiently and rather distractedly twined a towel in her hands. When their eyes met she gave him a smile that he couldn’t quite decipher.
He asked for the menu.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said, slapping him with the towel. “What do you want? The usual?”
“Yes, please,” he said, hoping it was something he liked.
He was served rösti with fried egg, cocktail onions, pickled gherkins, and a tankard of beer. When he had finished he ordered more beer and began reading his book.
The room was fairly gloomy, and when Corinne saw he was trying to read she came over to his table and lit the candles in the squat candelabra. Small leaves made of red, yellow, and orange glass dangled from a black metal frame. When the candles behind them were lit, they shimmered like fire. Beautiful, but not much good as a source of light. With the book open in front of him, he sat and stared at the glowing leaves as they quivered gently from the heat.
Corinne spent most of her time in the kitchen but emerged every now and then to serve customers. He snuck glances at her triangular face and narrow eyes. When she passed his table she reached out her hand, stroked his hair against the grain, and said, “Have you had a haircut or something? I hardly recognized you.”
She was gone before he had time to think of an answer. Her touch had been so fleeting and light that none of the other customers had noticed anything, but it continued to send waves of tickling pleasure across his scalp and neck long after she had gone.
He wondered what sort of relationship she had with his brother, and he began to toy with the idea of somehow exploiting the situation. A belated act of revenge for the girl in London. Max had asked him to step into his place. Well, he ought to do it properly.
But obviously he would never do anything like that, using an innocent woman as a pawn in their old sibling rivalry. That was what had upset him most about the girl in London, that was what he could never forgive.
A hand approached from behind and he felt its caress on his head again. It ended in a firm grip of his ear. Corinne was at the other end of the room. Daniel gasped with pain and tried to turn round, but the iron grip on his ear made that impossible. Someone leaned over him and a deep female voice—or a high male voice, Daniel couldn’t tell which—snarled, “Amateur!”
The voice slid into laughter and his ear was released. A middle-aged man, slim and fit, with silly boyish bangs in an improbable shade of dull red, was standing beside him with a tankard of beer in his left hand. With the forefinger and thumb of his right hand he snipped at the air like a pair of scissors, and said, “Who was it?”
Daniel gave him a questioning look.
“Who is it who wants to take the bread from my mouth?”
He gave Daniel a hard slap over the head.
“You don’t have to say. It doesn’t bother me. You’re the worst advertisement he could possibly have.”
The man laughed again and sat down at a table a short distance away. He finished his beer, then left the bierstube.
When he had gone Corinne came over and sat down beside Daniel.
“You really ought to get your hair cut at the barber’s,” she said. “He might take offense if you let someone else do it.”
The barber? Oh, so that was who the man was.
“Surely I’ve got the right to get my hair cut wherever I want?” Daniel said.
She nodded quickly.
“But he might take offense. Bear it in mind.” She gave him a serious look and added, “And he’s right. It doesn’t look as good this time.”
She looked at his cropped head and smiled apologetically.
“Has your brother gone now?”
“Yes. But he’s coming back on Thursday.”
“Is he? What for?” she asked in surprise.
“He’s doing a bit of traveling in the area. Then he’s coming back to say good-bye before he goes home to Sweden.”
She nodded and he tried to interpret her smile. Warmer than a waitress’s smile. Cooler than a lover’s.
“It must have been nice to have a visit from your brother. Did you used to see much of each other before you came here?”
“Not much.”
There was a moment’s silence. Daniel wondered if Max had told her he was a patient at the clinic.
Corinne was idly fiddling with a chunky bracelet of different colored stones. Then she let out a sudden laugh and started talking about all sorts of things. Difficult customers, her aching back. How no one appreciated her performances. An endless torrent of complaints, but presented with smiles and jokes, as if she were worried about appearing to feel sorry for herself.
“Tell me something,” Daniel interrupted. “Why is a talented artiste like you stuck in a dump like this? I saw you sing the other night. You should be on stage in Berlin.”
It was risky. Maybe Max already knew all this.
She let out a harsh little laugh.
“I have been on stage in Berlin. And maybe I would still be there if things hadn’t gotten in the way. But life’s the way it is, isn’t it? I’m just happy I get to perform here. I don’t care about the audience. I do it for my own sake.”
There was a note of sorrow in her defiant statement.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said.
“What would you like to talk about, then?” Daniel asked.
“Nothing right now, actually. I have to work.”
She got up abruptly and disappeared toward a group of impatient customers at another table.
When Daniel found himself back in Max’s cabin a short while later, he felt a degree of reluctance about sleeping in his brother’s bed. But the bench where he had spent the previous two nights was hard and uncomfortable. He looked for clean sheets in the wardrobes but found none and decided to make do with the ones Max had used.
It felt odd lying in that cramped little space, a niche in the wall with no room for anything but a bed and a shelf of books that ran around the wall of the alcove. When the little bedside lamp was lit and the curtain drawn, it felt like a secret childhood den, cozy and exciting.
But when he turned out the light it felt a bit claustrophobic. The heavy curtain shut out every glimmer of light, the air felt heavy and low in oxygen, and the smell, which couldn’t be anything but his brother’s body odor, suddenly was stronger and more intrusive. But the bed was wonderfully comfortable and his senses were slightly muddled by the beer. Within a couple of minutes he was asleep.
As if in a dream he saw the beam of light from a flashlight. It didn’t hit him right in the face, but was directed discreetly at the wall. He blinked and saw a figure leaning over him. A woman’s face, shining white like a moon, smiling tenderly. The feeling of confusion and fear subsided and was replaced by a great sense of calm. It was only Mom, come to tuck him in.
The curtain fell back into place, it was dark again, and outside he could hear amiable whispering and footsteps going away as he slid back into a sleep from which he had never really woken.