The Devil's Sanctuary (2 page)

MAX AND DANIEL
were identical twins, but they had almost been born on different days. When their mother, thirty-eight years old and a first-time mother, finally managed to free herself from one twin after ten hours of hard labor, the second, Max, was still inside her and evidently planned on staying there for a while longer yet. It was late in the evening and the midwife, who was also starting to get tired of the whole business, sighed and said to the exhausted mother, “It looks like you’ll have to organize separate birthday parties for these two.”

While Daniel was being washed and weighed, and fell sweetly asleep in his little bed, the obstetrician took out the suction cup, which unfortunately failed to get a grip on his resistant, evasive brother and instead sucked hold of their mother’s insides, threatening to turn her inside out like a tangled sweater. When the suction cup was eventually attached in the right place, Max seemed to realize that this was serious, adapted to the situation, and gave the first of many rapid bursts of speed that he would later employ to surprise those around him.

“Now we’ve got him,” the doctor began, but he had no time to finish the sentence before his catch, entirely on his own and without the need for any suction, slipped out on a waterslide of blood and slime, building up a bit of speed and flying into the doctor’s lap.

It was then five minutes to midnight, so the brothers were able to celebrate their shared birthday after all.

Five to twelve. How should that be interpreted?

That Max was struggling to be unique and wanted at all costs to avoid being born the same day as his brother, but changed his mind at the last minute and prioritized solidarity over integrity?

Or should it be interpreted the way those around Max often did when he arrived late—but not
too
late—to a meeting, train, or airport check-in desk and asked his nervous friends with a laugh what they expected from someone born at five minutes to midnight: a high-wire act, balancing on the edge, a way of getting people’s attention?

The boys spent their early years in their parents’ house in Göteborg. Their father was a successful businessman with his own electronics company, and until the boys were born their mother had rather aimlessly studied various art subjects at the university.

From the outset the two twin boys were very different.

Daniel ate well, seldom cried, and stuck to the growth charts in an exemplary way.

Max was a slow developer and, when he still hadn’t uttered a word by the time he was twenty months old, nor made any effort to move independently, his mother began to get worried. She took both boys to see a well-regarded pediatrician in her home city of Uppsala. When the doctor saw the boys together, she decided there was a simple explanation. Whenever Max so much as looked at any of the nice toys the doctor had laid out for the purposes of the examination, Daniel scrambled off on his stubby little legs and fetched it for him.

“You can see for yourself,” she said to the twins’ mother, pointing in turn at the boys with her pen as she went on. “Max doesn’t
need
to walk, seeing as Daniel fetches everything for him. Does he speak for his brother as well?”

Their mother nodded and explained that Daniel would work out in an almost uncanny way what his brother wanted and felt and would transmit this to those around them with his limited but skillfully employed vocabulary. He would say if Max was thirsty, hot, or needed his diaper changed.

The pediatrician was concerned about the brothers’ symbiotic relationship and suggested that they be separated for a while.

“Max has no natural motivation to walk or talk so long as his brother keeps providing him with everything he wants,” she explained.

At first the boys’ mother was uncertain about this separation, which she realized would be painful for both of them. They had always been so close, after all. But she had great confidence in the doctor, who was an authority in both pediatrics and child psychology, and after lengthy discussion with the boys’ father, who thought the idea made sense, she gave in. They decided that the boys should be separated for the summer, when their father was on vacation and could look after Max at home in Göteborg while their mother took Daniel to visit her parents in Uppsala. And according to the doctor, the summer was when children develop fastest and are most open to change.

Both boys spent the first week crying in despair with their respective parent in their respective city.

By the second week Daniel moved into a calmer phase. He seemed to realize the advantages of being an only child and began to enjoy the undivided attention of his mother and grandparents.

Max, on the other hand, went on crying. Day and night. His father, who was a novice when it came to looking after children, sounded more and more desperate in his phone calls to Uppsala. Their mother thought they should abandon the experiment and called the pediatrician, who encouraged them to carry on with it. But the father would need the help of a nanny.

Getting hold of a nanny in the middle of the summer turned out to be tricky. And the mother obviously didn’t want to hand her son over to just anyone. There was no way she was going to accept a sloppy, immature teenager desperate to earn a bit of money over the summer.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the doctor said when the mother explained her concerns, and a couple of days later she called to recommend an Anna Rupke for the job. She was thirty-two years old and had experience nursing children with physical handicaps, but she had become so interested in children’s mental development that she had gone on to study psychology and pedagogy and was now working on her doctoral thesis. The pediatrician had supervised her in an independent study course, and Anna’s talent and engagement had made a lasting impression on her. Of course she lived in Uppsala, but if the family could arrange accommodation for her in Göteborg she was prepared to move down there for the summer to look after Max.

Two days later Anna Rupke moved into the guest bedroom of the family home. Her presence made life considerably easier for the boys’ father. The young woman seemed quite unaffected by the child’s cries and could sit and calmly read an interesting research article while Max sat on the floor howling loud enough to make the walls shake. Now and then the boys’ father would pad into the nursery and ask if this really was normal. Maybe the boy was seriously ill? Anna shook her head with an expert’s smile.

But surely he must be hungry? He hasn’t eaten anything all day.

Without looking up from the report, Anna gestured toward a Singoalla cookie placed on a footstool a few feet away from the boy. Max loved Singoalla cookies. His father resisted the instinct to get the cookie and give it to him. He left the room and put up with the screaming for another hour or so from his office upstairs, then, just as he couldn’t bear it for another second, there was silence. He hurried downstairs, worried that the boy had passed out from exhaustion or hunger.

When he reached the nursery he saw his son half shuffling, half crawling toward the stool, his eyes fixed on the cookie, concentrating hard, and extremely angry. Max got hold of the stool, and with a furious jerk he heaved himself up and grabbed the cookie. He took a big bite, and with his mouth full he turned round with a triumphant grin that was so wide that half the mouthful fell out again.

Anna Rupke gave his father a pointed look, then went back to her reading.

The following week was intense. With the help of strategically positioned Singoalla cookies, Max raced through the stages of shuffling, crawling, standing, and walking.

The next week Anna got to work on speech. To start with Max communicated in his usual way, which meant pointing and screaming. But instead of rushing round and desperately trying different things that Max might possibly want, Anna sat there calmly with one of her books. Only when he said the correct word was he rewarded. Max actually had a large passive vocabulary and understood an almost alarming amount of what other people were saying. It had just never occurred to him to say anything himself.

Toward the end of the summer it was time to reunite the two brothers.

They didn’t appear to recognize each other.

Daniel behaved the way he would have done with any stranger and was shy and reserved.

Max appeared to view his brother as an intruder and behaved aggressively when Daniel put his hands on toys Max regarded as his private property. (A not entirely unexpected reaction, seeing as “mine” was the first word Max uttered, and his first two-word sentence had been “Have it!”)

During the period of separation the parents had unfortunately come to regard the twin in their respective care as “their” boy. Every time the boys came to blows the family was therefore divided into two camps. On one side stood Daniel and his mother, with her parents in the background. On the other side stood the boys’ father, Anna Rupke, and Max. Their mother thought Max was treating her little Daniel badly. Their father and Anna thought that Max’s aggressive behavior was a positive sign of his liberation from his brother.

In light of the unsuccessful reunion it was agreed, in collaboration with the pediatrician in Uppsala, to separate the boys once more.

Anna Rupke was supposed to be going back to work on her thesis but decided to take a break and carry on as Max’s nanny. Or pedagogical instructor, as she preferred to call herself. The boys’ father expressed his sincere thanks, well aware that Anna had put her promising career on hold. But Anna assured him that Max was such an interesting child that he was more of a benefit than a hindrance to her research.

The boys’ mother once again took Daniel to her parents in Uppsala, and in this way the parents lived apart the entire autumn, each with his or her own twin, with daily phone calls about the boys’ progress.

When Christmas came, it was time to make a new attempt at reunification. But the split in the family was now so deep that it seemed impossible to repair. Besides, during the couple’s long separation, the father had embarked upon a relationship with his son’s nanny.

He wasn’t entirely sure how it had come about. It had started with him being impressed. By the way Anna dealt with Max, her certainty, her calmness, her intelligence. He concluded with some satisfaction that she, like him, had a pragmatic researcher’s nature and wasn’t an indecisive, emotional creature like the boys’ mother.

Without him really noticing, he went from being impressed to being attracted. By Anna’s high Slavic cheekbones, the fresh smell of shampoo she left after her in the bathroom, the thoughtful way she twined her necklace, and the audible yawns from the guest bedroom before she fell asleep.

Maybe there was no more to it than a man being attracted by the woman living in his house and looking after his child.

During the autumn the mother had made a life for herself in Uppsala. While her mother looked after Daniel, she spent a few hours each day working as a secretary at the Institute of Classical Languages, where her father still worked as a professor.

One year later this arrangement was confirmed. The boys’ parents divorced, the father married Anna, and the mother moved into an apartment just ten minutes’ walk from her parents.

So the twins grew up with one parent each and only met once a year on their shared birthday, October 28.

Everyone was always nervous in advance of these birthday encounters. Did the brothers still look similar? What did they have in common? What were the differences?

It was clear that the brothers, in spite of being twins, had retained their differences. Max was sociable, outgoing, talkative. Daniel was reserved and cautious. It was odd to think that Max had once been entirely dependent on his brother for all that he wanted in life.

But while their behavior grew more and more different with every year, they became more and more alike in their appearance. Max, who to start with had been both shorter and skinnier than his brother, soon caught up, and from the age of three the boys’ height and weight matched down to the last inch and ounce. Their facial similarities also emerged more clearly when Daniel’s features were no longer concealed by pink puppy fat, and Max’s voice, which in his early years had been shrill and piercing, sank around the age of five to the same pleasant, soft tone as Daniel’s. When the boys met on their seventh birthday, they felt a mixture of delight and horror when they realized they were staring at their own mirror image.

Birthdays were the only time each year when the two camps met, Max-father-Anna and Daniel-mother-grandparents, and all sorts of feelings were stirred up. The grandparents regarded the father as an adulterer and marriage wrecker. The mother criticized the way Anna was raising her son. Anna, who regarded herself as an expert in the field, wasn’t prepared to take advice from an amateur. And the boys’ father felt confused at suddenly seeing his son in duplicate.

While the adults talked and argued the two boys would run out into the garden, down into the cellar, or somewhere else exciting. They were drawn to each other, curious and full of anticipation. They would fall out, keep their distance, then converge again. They fought, laughed, cried, and comforted each other. During that one single intense day the boys were subjected to such a tumult of emotions that they were left utterly drained for a week afterward and often suffered bad bouts of fever.

Although the adults disagreed about almost everything else, they were in complete agreement about one thing:
One
meeting a year was enough.

DANIEL FOUND
himself in what looked more like the lobby of a fashionable old hotel than the entrance to a health clinic.

He was met by a young woman wearing a well-cut light-blue dress and shoes with a slight heel. The way she was dressed, her straight posture, and her smile made him think of a stewardess. She introduced herself as a “hostess.”

She appeared to know who Daniel was straightaway, and whom he was there to visit. She asked him to write his name in a green ledger, then showed him to some armchairs grouped in front of a magnificent open fireplace in the art nouveau style. The wall above was adorned with a crossed pair of old skis, with stuffed animal heads on either side: an ibex with enormous ridged horns and a beard, and a fox with its top lip pulled back, baring its teeth.

“Your brother will be here shortly; I’ll go and tell him you’ve arrived. My colleague will take your luggage up to the guest room.”

Daniel was just about to sit down when a blond man in a short-sleeved steward’s shirt and tie appeared and took Daniel’s suitcase away.

“But I’m not staying. I’m going on to a hotel later,” Daniel protested. “Can’t I just leave my bag down here for a couple of hours?”

The man stopped and turned round.

“Which hotel are you going to?”

“I don’t really know. The closest one, I suppose. Can you recommend one?”

The woman and man exchanged an anxious glance.

“You’ll probably have to go a fair distance,” the woman said. “Most of the hotels up here in the mountains are health resorts. They have their regular guests and are usually booked up months in advance.”

“But there’s that village down in the valley. Isn’t there anyone there who has a room to let?” Daniel wondered.

“We don’t recommend that our visitors stay in the village,” the woman said. “Has anyone offered you a place to stay there?”

She was still smiling, but her expression had hardened slightly.

“No,” Daniel said. “It was just a thought.”

The man cleared his throat and said calmly, “If anyone does offer you a room in the village, just say no. Politely but firmly. I suggest that you stay in one of our guest rooms. That’s what most visitors do. You can stay a few days; we’ve got plenty of rooms at the moment.”

“I wasn’t planning on that.”

“It won’t cost you anything. Most relatives live a long way away, so it seems reasonable for us to let them stay here a few days. So people have time to settle in a bit and can spend time together in a more natural way. You’ve never been to Himmelstal before?”

“No.”

The man, who had been holding Daniel’s suitcase in his hand throughout this conversation, appeared to regard the matter as settled.

“Perhaps you’d like to see your room and get unpacked? We can take the elevator over here,” he said, leading the way across the thick carpet.

Daniel followed him. Maybe, he thought in the elevator on the way up, it wasn’t a bad idea to spend one night here after all. It was getting toward dinner, and he wasn’t looking forward to chasing round trying to find a room nearby late at night.

The guest room was small, but bright and pleasantly furnished. There was a vase of fresh flowers on a white painted table, and the view of the valley and the mountaintops in the distance would have matched any tourist’s expectations of a holiday in the Alps.

Himmelstal. Heavenly valley. A beautiful name for a beautiful place, Daniel thought.

He washed in the basin and changed his shirt. Then he lay down on the bed and rested for a few minutes. It was a good-quality modern bed, extremely comfortable; he could feel that at once. He would have liked to stay and have a nap for an hour or so before seeing his brother. But the hostess downstairs had already told Max he was here. He could sleep later.

In the elevator down to the ground floor he realized what had been so odd about the conversation he had had a short while ago. He had been aware of it the whole time he was talking to the man and the hostess, but hadn’t been able to put his finger on it: They had been speaking different languages. He had addressed them in German, seeing as he assumed that was their mother tongue, and they had responded in English.

He was so used to switching between different languages that he had hardly noticed. It had just made a slightly jarring impression, a sort of disconnect.

He had always found languages easy. As a child he had spent a lot of time with his maternal grandfather, who was a linguist. He and his mother used to eat dinner with his grandparents pretty much every day. While his mother and grandmother did the washing up in the kitchen, Daniel and his grandfather would go off to the large tobacco-scented study.

Daniel loved sitting on the floor leafing through books full of pictures of Egyptian tomb paintings, Greek sculptures, and medieval engravings, while his grandfather told him about languages that were still alive and languages that were dead. How languages were related to one another just like people, and how the origins of words could be traced far back in time. Daniel thought this was absolutely fascinating. He was always asking his grandfather where different words came from. Sometimes he would answer at once, and sometimes he would look the words up in a book on his desk.

To Daniel’s astonishment, he realized that the words he used and took so much for granted were considerably older than he was, older than Grandfather, older than the old house with its creaking wooden floors. They had traveled a long way, through different countries and ages before suddenly landing in Daniel’s little mouth like a butterfly on a flower. And they would continue their journey long after he himself was gone.

He had retained this respectful delight in language. He studied classics in high school, then went on to study German and French at the university, and eventually got a job as an interpreter for the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Using his own voice to express another person’s thoughts and opinions, which often completely contradicted his own views, stimulated him in a strange and exciting way. If what was being said had a strong, emotional charge, spoken language wasn’t enough, and he would use gestures and facial expressions to convey the message of the person whose words he was interpreting. Sometimes he felt like a puppet with someone else’s hand inside him. As if his own soul had been pushed aside. He heard his voice change and could feel himself using facial muscles he never used otherwise. Ah, he would think in fascination; so this is what it feels like to be you!

Occasionally, when he finished interpreting a particularly intense discussion, there would be a little gap before he landed back in himself again. For a few giddy moments he would experience what it felt like to be no one at all.

On several occasions he had been mistaken for the person he was interpreting for. People who disagreed would be abrupt and offhand with him, because they regarded him as an extension of their opponent.

The reverse was also true: that sympathy for the person he was interpreting for would spill over onto him as well. He suspected that this was how he had managed to arouse the interest of the woman who later became his wife.

Emma had been a lawyer, specializing in international environmental law. Daniel’s job had been to interpret a conversation between her and a German expert in water conservation, a stylish middle-aged gentleman with a very definite erotic appeal. While he was interpreting, Daniel had a strong sense that he was merging into the German, to the point where in an almost creepy way he felt he knew what the man was going to say before he spoke.

Emma, too, seemed to have regarded them as one and the same person, because even after the man had left she carried on discussing water conservation with Daniel, as if
he
had been the person she had been talking to, rather than his shadowy mimic. Several times he had to remind her that he didn’t actually know anything about water. But the conversation was under way by then. They moved on to other subjects, went to a little Italian restaurant, and then, rather drunk, they went back to her hotel room together. A couple of times while they were making love she jokingly addressed him as “Mein Herr,” which rather unsettled him.

Even after they were married Daniel had been unable to shake the idea that his wife had gotten him mixed up with someone else, and that she was constantly disappointed when reminded of her mistake.

Then he discovered that she was being unfaithful with a biologist from Munich, and they got divorced.

The year after the divorce Daniel had suffered a mental breakdown. He didn’t really know why. He had gotten over the divorce surprisingly quickly and thought in hindsight that it had been the right thing to do. He was well regarded within his profession, he had a good salary and lived in a modern apartment in the center of Brussels. He had short-term flings with career-oriented women who were as uninterested in a serious relationship as he was. He didn’t really feel he was missing out on anything, until one day when everything changed from one moment to the next, and he realized that his life was utterly empty and meaningless. That all his relationships were wholly insubstantial, and that the words he expressed in the course of his work belonged to other people. Who was he really? A glove puppet who performed tricks for a few hours each day and was then tossed in a corner. He was only alive when he was interpreting, and that life wasn’t his, it was borrowed.

This shattering insight had struck Daniel one morning when he was on his way to work and had stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper. He stood there with the money in his hand, as though he’d been turned to stone. The clerk asked which paper he wanted, but he couldn’t answer. He put the money back in his pocket and sank down onto a nearby bench, exhausted. He had an important job that day, but work suddenly felt quite impossible.

He was on sick leave for two months. For depression, according to the doctor’s note. But he realized it was about something more than that: terrifying clarity. A revelation of an almost religious nature. Like converts who had seen the light, he had seen the darkness, and it had given him precisely that sense of an absolute truth that he had heard such people describe. The shabby veil of existence had been yanked aside, and he had seen himself and his life exactly as they were. The experience had come as a shock, but at the same time he was deeply grateful for it, and the thought that he might have gone on living a delusion made him shudder.

Daniel had resigned from his interpreting job, moved back to his hometown, Uppsala, and gotten a temporary job as a language teacher in a high school. The pay was obviously much worse than his previous job, but it would do until he worked out what he was going to do with his life.

In his free time he played computer games. World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto. To start with it was just a way of passing the time, then he started to get drawn in. The grayer his real life became, the more vibrant those fictional worlds seemed. The classroom and staff room became waiting rooms where he would spend impatient hours, reciting verb conjugations like a sleepwalker and engaging in small talk with his colleagues. At the end of each working day he would close the blinds in his small, one-room apartment, switch on his computer, and immerse himself in the only life that could make his pulse race with excitement, his brain flash with ingenious insights. When he stumbled off to bed in the small hours, exhausted by hard fighting and breathtaking escapes, he was always surprised that he could feel so strongly about something that didn’t exist, when what did exist made so little impression on him.