The Devil's Sanctuary by Marie Hermanson Read Free Book Online Page A

got your letter.”
    “Like I said, this is the best clinic in Europe for nervous exhaustion. You should have seen me when I arrived.”
    Max tilted his head to one side, stuck out his tongue, and crossed his eyes.
    “Nervous exhaustion,” Daniel repeated. “You’ve never been diagnosed with that before.”
    “No. Weirdly enough. Because if you think about it, all my breakdowns occurred after periods of seriously hard work. The last time I was in the hospital was after I’d spent a while working twenty-four hours a day. I never slept. It’s hardly surprising I got exhausted.”
    “But,” Daniel said, “that sort of hyperactivity is a symptom of your illness. Not one of the causes. ”
    “Are you sure about that? Maybe we’ve been getting it wrong. Maybe we haven’t understood what was the chicken and what was the egg. Maybe I’ve been wrongly diagnosed all these years. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that I’ve simply been suffering from recurrent bouts of nervous exhaustion. Exhaustion can express itself in any number of ways.”
    “Well,” Daniel said with a yawn, “if we don’t go home to bed, I’m going to end up with nervous exhaustion. And I wouldn’t like to imagine how that might express itself.”
    Just as he said this a few long notes from an accordion broke through the noise of the room, and a moment later a woman started to sing in a low voice with a clear, lilting rhythm. Daniel looked round in surprise.
    In the glow of a newly lit spotlight at the far end of the room a young woman had appeared and was standing there singing, dressed in some sort of peasant costume with a laced bodice and puffed sleeves. She was accompanied on the accordion by a middle-aged man wearing a flowery vest, tight knee-length trousers, and a ridiculous flat hat with flowers stuck under the brim.
    “Look at that, tourist entertainment,” Daniel exclaimed. “I thought we were well away from the tourist trail. Maybe I could find a hotel nearby after all.”
    “Well,” Max said nonchalantly, “I’m not sure I’d call it tourist entertainment. More like locals entertaining other locals. They’re here a couple of evenings each week. Do you want to listen, or shall we go?”
    “We can’t go as soon as they’ve started. Let’s wait a bit,” Daniel said.
    The woman sang with exaggerated clarity, emphasized by gestures with her hands and eyes, as if she were singing to children. Yet Daniel still understood practically none of her Swiss German. Every now and then she rang a cowbell. It was a long song, with an amusing, narrative text—he understood that much—and after a few verses he found he was able to predict when the cowbell was going to be rung.
    “They carry on like that for ages. Come on, let’s go,” Max said in his ear, but Daniel shook his head.
    There was something about the singer he found fascinating. She had narrow brown eyes, bright red lipstick, and a stubby little nose with a scattering of freckles. Her hair was chocolate brown and cut in a short bob with bangs as straight as a ruler.
    Daniel looked at her, trying to work out the nature of her beauty, because it wasn’t at all obvious. She was pretty in an enchanting, doll-like way, but beneath the prettiness there was an entirely different sort of face, with heavy peasant features that could only be seen from certain angles. Daniel could guess what her older relatives looked like, and what she herself would look like one day. There was something enticing about this solid core beneath the pretty exterior, and in no way did it detract from her appeal.
    But really it was her eyes that formed the foundation of her beauty, he suddenly realized. They glinted like pulsating stars, and when she held her head still and moved her eyes from side to side, it was as if the glitter flew out and landed on the audience.
    Her singing voice was nothing remarkable at all, and the whole performance was rather ridiculous. Exaggerated.