‘A good idea,’ said Lena, and kissed him on the cheek.

A crimson runner with brass rods went up the stone stairs that led to the floor where Lena had her room, but the passageway itself was of whitewashed brick. Over the years, she had grown to like the carved linen chest, touching it with her fingertips as she went past, and the painted wooden dresser that meant she had only twenty steps to go. Bric-a-brac not needed in the patients’ quarters had been rehoused here: a drum with golden braids and a repaired blue vase, perhaps Chinese, watched over by a dark oil painting of a nobleman with a pointed chin that made her laugh.

Lena walked past, unsteady on her feet, having finished off more wine in the kitchen. In her bedroom, she splashed water on her face, took off her dress and fell asleep on top of the bed covers. She awoke an hour later, thirsty and disorientated. As she was brushing her teeth, she heard the sound of laughter from beneath her window. The clock by her bed showed almost midnight. She put on her dress again and went down the passage to where a window gave a view of the cloister.

A man and a woman were talking as they went slowly down the colonnade. The man was Rudolf, his face visible between the pillars. He was gesturing in that carefree way of his, engaging the attention of his listener.

The woman, who was in the shadow, kept her distance. There was no contact between them, nothing irregular; they were merely two people enjoying a conversation. As the woman stepped out of the darkness, her face was caught by a gas light in the wall and Lena saw that it was Martha.

‘Be careful, Fräulein, be careful!’, she wanted to shout, though stopped herself in time: she was not that drunk.

Nevertheless, as she went back to her room, she felt troubled. Rudolf could have no innocent reason for a late walk with his client. Any discussion about selling land could be done by daylight, in her office. He needed no new friends, having colleagues and mistresses enough in Vienna. As for Martha, Lena felt an urge to protect her – which was absurd, when what she liked about Martha was her self-possession. On top of it all she felt that if anyone were to have more of Rudolf it should not be Martha, it should be her. With this thought, she closed her eyes on the spinning room and fell asleep again.

5

After a boiled egg brought by the Hungarian girl (the blushing maid from the first day never seemed to be on breakfast duty any more), Anton took a second pot of the strong Trieste coffee up to his room and sat at the writing table to make some plans.

He was ready to write. He had spoken at length to all the staff and had gathered anecdote and colourful detail to go with the narrative. He had a grasp of the medical background and could consult further in libraries or by letter (bearing in mind that it was a general magazine and the readers couldn’t bear too much science). A day trip to the Wilhelmskogel could be undertaken at short notice and would help him develop his theme of what the history of the clinic represented: a well-intentioned but fatal overreaching; or, if you were of a religious bent, a doomed attempt to see into the mind of God. He foresaw some good symbolic detail in the broken-down mountain railway that had aimed to take them to the summit. He could, if necessary, have knocked out a feasible article in two days.