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Doctor Kalpak at a staff party. He didn’t go to parties. She had shaken his hand when she arrived at the clinic and introduced herself to him. She had never forgotten the touch of his hand. Slender and brown, with the longest fingers she’d ever seen. It was more like an independent object than a hand. Some sort of animal. A quick, agile, silky animal. A weasel, maybe.
    His lilting accent fit in well up here in the mountains, soft, with a rising note to it, like Austrian or Norwegian. But his expressive hands were his true language: When you saw them you almost forgot to listen to what he was saying.
    Gisela Obermann had let go of most of her dreams. One by one she had let them fall and drift off on the harsh winds of life. But the dream of one day feeling Doctor Kalpak’s hands on her naked body remained, and she would take it out and enjoy it when she was alone.
    She shut her eyes again and felt the wine drawing swirling patterns in her brain. She remembered that Max had had a visit today. From his brother. Max was the only one of her clients who still gave her a glimmer of hope. What would a visit like this do to him?
    The cat’s purring motor speeded up.
    “I love animals because they are alive without being human.” Who was it who said that? Mayakovsky? Dostoyevsky?
    Gisela went back to thinking about Doctor Kalpak’s hands. Two silken weasels padding over her body. One on her breasts, and the other on her stomach and down between her thighs.

9
    IT WAS DARK outside now. Widely spaced lights lit up the paths in the park surrounding the clinic. Max and Daniel were heading down the hillside toward the village.
    “You seem to be able to come and go from the clinic as you like,” Daniel remarked.
    “Of course. The clients here would never accept anything else. As long as I go to bed like a good boy each night, I can do pretty much whatever I want during the day.”
    They had reached the bottom of the slope and come to a narrow paved road where the lighting was brighter and more regular, like a jogging track. A funny little electric cart, bright yellow, was coming toward them with a gentle hum. The driver said hello as he glided past. He was wearing some sort of uniform, like a janitor or hotel porter, and there was a similarly dressed man sitting beside him in the cramped vehicle. Daniel guessed that they belonged to the clinic staff. Absentmindedly and without comment, Daniel returned the man’s greeting, then quickly crossed the road.
    They passed a few houses, went round a bend, and suddenly found themselves, without Daniel actually realizing how it had happened, in the center of the village.
    Houses with flower-covered balconies surrounded a small square with a well at its center. There was a cozy glow from the leaded-glass windows, and from somewhere there came the sound of voices and a dog barking, echoing between the rocky walls of the narrow valley. It was strange to think that people lived their lives in this fairy-tale world.
    Max turned off into an alley and stopped in front of a brown house set in a small garden where colored lanterns hung from the trees.
    “Hannelores Bierstube,” Max explained rather unnecessarily, seeing as the name was written above the doorway like icing, in looping, ornate white lettering.
    “And there was me thinking it was the witch’s gingerbread house,” Daniel said.
    “Who knows?” Max said. “Are you brave enough to go in?”
    “I’d love a beer. Let’s forget the idea of coffee and liqueur. A large tankard of cold German beer is just what I need. Come on, let’s go in. It looks nice.”
    “That’s what Hansel and Gretel said too. Well, if you like,” Max said, gesturing to Daniel to go first.
    It looked like Max was a regular customer in the gingerbread house, because as soon as they got in he settled down in a corner of the dimly lit room, then turned toward the bar and ordered beer for them both without saying a word, by just holding two fingers in the