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admitted. “But really I’m just a parrot.”
    “A parrot? Yes, there’s probably something in that. You like mimicry, Daniel. But at the same time you’re absolutely terrified of being the same as anyone else. Me, for instance. What are you frightened of?”
    “I’m not frightened. I don’t understand why you’d think that,” Daniel protested, sounding more upset than he meant to.
    “Well, let’s not start arguing when we’ve only just met. We don’t want to upset little Marike, do we?”
    He smiled at the waitress, who was standing beside the table with two plates.
    “Go ahead, Marike. He looks dangerous but he doesn’t bite.”
    The trout was fried whole and served with new potatoes, melted butter, and lemon.
    “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?” Max said when the waitress was no more than a few steps away. She was in her forties, and hardly a little thing.
    “Not in the conventional sense, obviously,” he went on. “But she’s got something, don’t you think? Did you notice how big her backside was? All the women born round here are like that. You can tell at first glance if a woman is actually from the mountains or has moved here. Well, I’m talking about the ones whose families have lived here for generations, of course. They’ve all got an excess of subcutaneous fat, mainly concentrated around their backsides and hips. The men are thickset as well, but you see it most clearly in the women. Do you know why that is?”
    “Why you see it more clearly in the women? Probably because you look at them more than the men, I suppose,” Daniel said.
    “Very funny. I mean what makes people up here in isolated mountain regions fatter than people down on the plains? It’s the same in all the mountainous parts of the world. But not just there. People on islands, in the Pacific for instance, or deep in the jungles of South America, exhibit the same solid, fleshy body shape. Whereas people who live on plains, like the Masai in East Africa, for instance, are tall and thin. Why? Well,” Max said, pointing at Daniel with his fork, “when there’s a famine, the people on the plains can walk to new areas to find food. People with long legs, the ones who are most mobile, survive, while the little fat ones are left sitting on their big asses and starve to death. But in isolated places there’s no advantage to having long legs, because you’re still not going to get anywhere. On an island, or in thick jungle or snowed-in alpine valleys, it’s no use being agile. The ones who survive periods of famine are the ones who have an extra layer of fat to live off.”
    Daniel nodded. He always had trouble keeping up with Max when his thoughts wandered off into uncharted territory like this.
    “That sounds plausible.” In an effort to shift the conversation into calmer waters he added, “This trout really is very good. It seems very fresh. Do you suppose they caught it nearby?”
    “The trout? Of course. In the rapids. Who knows, it might have been me who caught it.”
    “You?”
    “Or someone else. I catch more than I can eat, so I give the rest to the restaurant. But it’s interesting, isn’t it? In this age of globalization. That genetic predispositions like that still survive. You can travel all round the world, but nature has still programmed you to live in an alpine valley where you might be forced to live off the fat you’ve built up. It’s quite attractive. Women with big backsides, I mean. It piques your imagination. Don’t you think?”
    He glanced at the waitress, who was passing their table on her way to the solitary diner at the corner table.
    “Maybe.”
    The waitress cleared the man’s table and went past them again with her hands full of dishes. Max quickly stuck out his hand and gave her a light slap on the buttock. She turned round with a slight grimace but said nothing.
    “That was completely uncalled for,” Daniel said disapprovingly.
    Max laughed.
    “A madman has to permit