DANIEL WAS astonished at the reaction of the staff, to put it mildly. At first he had felt relieved that the hostess didn’t seem to be taking the matter too seriously. He had imagined that he would be called in to see the clinic’s management, where he would be interrogated and then given a severe reprimand. The hostess’s nonchalant behavior and her unwillingness to help him arrange transport was so bizarre there it could only mean one thing: She didn’t believe him.
He had only himself to blame. He had spent a week doing his best to fool her, and he was forced to conclude that he had succeeded only too well.
Now at least he had told them what was going on, and it wasn’t his problem if they chose to believe him or not. He wasn’t going to spend another minute at this clinic. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be put through any more “tests.” Himmelstal might be a luxury clinic in some respects, but their patient safety measures were atrocious. It was probably an oversight that he and Marko had been left without staff overnight on a locked ward, and sheer bad luck that the fire occurred just then, but even so. That sort of thing simply shouldn’t be allowed to happen at a clinic. And clearly Marko shouldn’t have been able to disconnect the fire alarm.
He still hadn’t received an apology from the staff, and he wasn’t planning to hang around waiting for one. If no one was willing to help him arrange transport from the clinic, he’d have to ask someone in the village instead.
On his way down through the park he met a man carrying a tennis racket in a case. He smiled warmly at Daniel and called, “Do you fancy a game?”
“I’m afraid not,” Daniel replied. “It would have been nice, but I’m on my way out of here.”
“Aren’t we all? Until then we just have to make the best of it, don’t we?”
Daniel nodded and carried on down the hillside.
Down in the village he stopped by the well and looked hesitantly at the cobbled streets that radiated out from the little square. Where should he go? Hannelores Bierstube was the only place he had been to up to now, and that wasn’t open at this time of day. He saw a small shop and decided to try there.
The array of goods on offer in the shop was decidedly eclectic. There were shelves of groceries and cosmetics and DVDs, and there was a rack of clothes. A broad-shouldered man was standing idly in one corner. He showed no interest in Daniel, but he was evidently the salesperson.
“Excuse me,” Daniel said. “I need to get to the nearest town. I understand that there’s no public transport. But do you think I could get a lift with someone? I’d pay, naturally.”
The assistant adjusted a pile of T-shirts and slowly turned to face Daniel. He stood with his legs apart and his strong arms folded and chewed his gum for a while before saying, “Are you going to buy anything?”
There was something familiar about him, but Daniel couldn’t pinpoint where he’d seen him before. At the bierstube, probably.
“Buy anything? No, but—”
“This is a shop. If you’re not planning to buy anything, I suggest you leave,” the assistant said, pointing at the door.
His shirtsleeve slid up slightly, revealing a tattoo on his lower arm. At that moment Daniel remembered where he had seen him before: He was the man who had been lifting weights in the gym at the clinic. A patient doing vocational rehab in the village shop? Unless the villagers had access to the clinic gym, of course.
Daniel walked out.
It had stopped raining, but the sky was still dark. The streets were empty. He followed the main road out of the village and carried on, hood up, with a firm grasp on the straps of the rucksack.
Veils of fog hung like wet rags over the valley. He could hear the sound of an engine in the distance and saw a car approaching along the wider road on the other side of the valley. Obviously that was where he should be if he wanted to get a lift. But the river was blocking his way, and he hadn’t noticed a bridge so far. The only bridge he could recall seeing was the one he had crossed when he first arrived at the clinic, and that lay a long way off to the east. He’d have to go back at least a couple of miles, and he didn’t feel like doing that. There had to be another bridge at some point.
The rain started to fall again, light but persistent. Leafy thickets of deciduous trees were now lining the right-hand side of the road. A tractor and trailer emerged from a turning into one of these small groves. Both the tractor and trailer were tiny, the sort that are normally used in parks and residential areas. The trailer was heavily laden with roughly chopped chunks of wood.
Daniel waved down the tractor and said, “I’m on my way to the nearest town. Could you take me part of the way?”
The man driving the tractor had a thin beard, graying shoulder-length hair, and a large cowboy hat on his head. Daniel had spoken to him in German, but the reply came in American English.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not a patient, if that’s what you think,” Daniel said irritably.
The man in the tractor eyed him suspiciously.
“Okay,” he said after a while.
Now Daniel thought he understood the reason for the man’s reluctance. There was only space for one person in the little tractor; there was no passenger seat.
The man gestured impatiently toward the trailer load of wood.
Daniel walked round, clambered up, and stood at the back, holding tight to a metal pole. The trailer jerked and set off.
After a while the road curved and started to head upward. Daniel recognized their surroundings. This was where he and Max had gone fishing. Through the fir trees he could hear the rapids, fierce and foaming in this section of the valley. The road grew steeper and more uneven, the trailer shook, and it was only with a great effort that he managed to hold on.
He heard the sound of cowbells as they drove past sloping meadows with pale brown cows standing still and grazing in the rain. They were high up the slope now, close to the Gravel Quarry. Fir trees rose up around them through the fog, taller, thinner, more elegantly continental than their Swedish cousins.
Then the tractor stopped.
They were in front of a house that was architecturally very similar to those down in the village: shuttered windows, a balcony with an ornate balustrade, scalloped barge boards. But this house was painted shocking pink, the details picked out in lime green, bright yellow, and purple, apart from the shutters, which were painted in a black and white zebra pattern. On the railing around the veranda was a large hand-painted sign with the words “Tom’s Place.”
The man in the cowboy hat climbed down from the tractor. Daniel jumped down onto the ground and looked round as he tried to flex his fingers, which had gone stiff from clinging to the metal pole.
Opposite the house was a little sawmill, and in the yard there were stacks of timber, spreading an aromatic smell of fresh wood. On the veranda were grotesque sculptures carved from misshapen logs and tree stumps.
The man went up the steps and into the house. Was he going to get the keys to some larger vehicle? Or phone someone? Daniel waited a moment, but when the man didn’t reappear he went in after him.
He found himself in what looked like a living room that had been gradually transformed into a workshop. Among the dirty upholstered chairs was a carpentry bench, and the threadbare Persian rugs were covered with sawdust and wood shavings.
There were more of the bizarre sculptures in here, and at the far end of the room was a collection of stumps that were presumably intended to become sculptures in the future. The fog and the surrounding fir trees made the room as gloomy as if it were evening. It was cool inside, and there was a smell of old cigarette smoke.
“Did you have something to sell me?” the man in the cowboy hat asked. He was sitting in an armchair whose stuffing was spilling out of the shabby fabric like moss from cracks in a rock face.
Daniel shook his head, confused. “I just want a lift.”
The man snorted and took his hat off. Under it he was wearing a multicolored headband woven from some sort of wool, with little tassels dangling off it. He kept his dirty suede jacket and cowboy boots on. He leaned over, lit the floor lamp, and began picking at a half-finished sculpture with a knife.
“You’ve made some lovely things,” Daniel said.
He waited for a moment, then, when he got no response, he went on. “Do you know anyone who could drive me to a bus or train station? Obviously I’m willing to pay.”
The man was evidently too absorbed in his work to reply. Daniel waited in silence. Once the critical moment had passed, the man looked up and pulled a face.
“You’re crazy. So fucking crazy. I’ve always known that,” he suddenly said in a voice that managed to express both derision and sympathy.
Daniel gulped.
“You’re probably getting me mixed up with my brother. I can see why. We’re twins. You might have met him in the village, perhaps? Max?”
The man snorted again and went on with his carving.
“I’ve been visiting him at the clinic down there, and now it’s time to leave,” Daniel continued.
The man had slid off the armchair and was now kneeling beside the lump of wood. Squinting, he looked at it from various angles, holding it away from him, then bringing it closer. The whole while his lips kept moving, but the sound they were making was so faint and unclear that Daniel had to take a few steps closer to hear what he was saying: “So fucking crazy, so fucking crazy, so fucking crazy…”
Daniel pulled back. While he tried to think of something suitable to say, he looked at the strange sculptures. He was simultaneously impressed and unsettled by them. Facial features had been drawn out of the contours of the wood with such skill that they seemed to have been there from the start and merely revealed rather than created.
Some of them had exaggeratedly coarse features, others looked like embryos, curled up with their eyes closed, with flat noses and pawlike hands. Over by the door stood an old man, the size of a five-year-old child, but there was something slack and retarded about him. His eyelids were heavy and his jaw jutted out to form a bowl that was evidently used as an ashtray.
Daniel cleared his throat.
“Your name’s Tom?”
The question was superfluous. The name was all over the place. It had been carved into every sculpture in capital letters and had been burned onto all the tools hanging above the workbench. It was also etched into the wooden base of the floor lamp, Daniel realized. It was repeated time after time, from the floor and up toward the bulb itself, like runes on a magic staff. Most striking, however, were the bright pink capital letters spray painted across the back of the old sofa. TOM. Every object in the room seemed to have been marked with the name. As if the man were worried about someone stealing them from him. Or as if he were himself unsure of his name and needed to be reminded of it constantly.
“Okay, Tom. My name’s Daniel.”
He held his hand out toward the man.
Tom looked at his hand as if it were a leaf or a cloud or something else that you notice without actually reacting to it.
“Completely fucking crazy,” he muttered and went on with his carving.
“Really lovely things.” Daniel let his hand drop and nodded at the room. “You’re an artist?”
“I work with wood,” the man said through clenched teeth.
“So I see.”
Daniel realized he couldn’t expect much help from this weirdo. It had been a mistake to get a lift with him. He ought to get away from here as quickly as possible. He was a fair way from the village, but he could use the river to help him get his bearings. He just had to follow it down to the floor of the valley.
He picked up the rucksack from where he had left it on the floor, brushed off the sawdust, and put it on.
“It was good to see your work, Tom. Now I need to get back down into the valley and see if I can find someone else to give me a lift. You don’t happen to know where the nearest railway station is?”
Tom looked up. He stared at Daniel with friendly interest, then said, “You’re really not doing so well, are you?”
“Well, okay, I guess. The fact is—”
“You’d feel much better if you were made of wood. Then I could have made something nice out of you. Your chin.”
“My chin?” Daniel said, taken aback.
“It’s wrong. It sticks out to the left. No, hang on. It starts too early. Way too early.”
Tom screwed up his eyes and held the knife out toward Daniel, taking measurements. He started to make complicated movements in the air with the knife, as if he were carving an imaginary sculpture.
Daniel gave his chin a quick rub and coughed lightly.
“Like I said, it was good to see everything, Tom. Really great stuff. Well, take care.”
He had just left the room when Tom roared with sudden intensity: “Are you the one who’s been stealing my wood?”
Daniel turned round in surprise.
“What did you say?”
“There’s some wood missing from my store down by the rapids. Was it you who took it?”
In a sudden flashback Daniel saw the stack of wood down by the rapids where he and Max had gone fishing. The spray-painted letters T O M. He’d assumed that was an abbreviation of something. Max had said it was okay to take some of it: “I know the farmer.”
So this was the farmer. A paranoid old hippie who had taken a few LSD trips too many and had ended up in a cottage in the Swiss Alps.
There had been hundreds of pieces of wood in that cache. Daniel had taken five or six. Did Tom count every single one?
“I haven’t touched your wood, Tom,” he said, trying to make his voice as firm and believable as he could.
“I’ll cut the throat of anyone who touches my wood,” Tom declared matter-of-factly, drawing the knife in front of his own throat. “All the wood in the valley is mine. I’ve got the sole rights to work the forest. If you need wood, you have to buy it from me.”
“Of course,” Daniel said emphatically. “Of course. I’ll remember that.”
Tom seemed satisfied. He went over to an old-fashioned record player in the corner and put an album on. A moment later two loudspeakers roared into life and Jimi Hendrix filled the room with his deep, vibrating electric guitar.
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.