. . IN WHICH ALL KINDS OF THINGS HAPPENED, THOUGH we know more about that than he does. No lowlander can sleep with impunity in the high mountains. The window, which has been left slightly ajar, lets in the cold night air. The man in the bed works his way through a series of dreams, none of which he will remember. In the silence, which he does not notice, an owl hunts its prey and a startled deer plunges into the black syntax of the forest, where Erik Zondag will take a walk tomorrow without identifying the deer’s tracks. When he wakes, he will see a snowy mountain range lit by the first rays of the sun – a row of sharp, gleaming-white teeth, daubed here and there with blood. Herr Dr Krüger – dressed, like Erik, in a white bathrobe – was already sitting at their table when he arrived in the dining room. There was a single bread roll on the plate, and next to that a tiny pitcher with a gooey yellow substance. Erik stared at it helplessly, and then at Herr Dr Krüger, who immediately introduced himself: two gentlemen in bathrobes shaking hands.
