But it wasn’t until he arrived at Zurich airport and scanned the departure board that he’d decided where to go. A flight for Buenos Aires was departing in two hours. Coincidence or fate? On impulse, he’d bought a one-way ticket. It was time to discover, or rediscover, the place of his birth. How long he planned to remain there was impossible to say, but enough time, he hoped, to pacify the panicked yearning in his soul. Normally attuned to his own moods and desires, everywhere he turned in recent months had seemed like a dead end. The catastrophic loss of his clinic, the sole pillar around which he’d constructed his life, had left him adrift in place and time.

Perhaps, by strolling through the streets of the Argentinian city, he might reconnect with the child he’d left behind, and learn to forgive himself for the sins of his father he’d been helpless to prevent. Though our lives are an accident of birth, our fate is in our hands. A sentiment he repeated often as a form of solace. We do not choose our parents, or the debt they’ve bequeathed us. But we can, if we choose, create something better and finer from the ash heap of the past.

* * *

Two weeks later, back in Zurich and refreshed in spirit, if only marginally wiser from his rendezvous with the past, a stack of mail awaited his attention. Gessen made an espresso from the little machine he’d purchased in a local shop and savoured the rich taste as he flipped through the envelopes. A letter from abroad sent to Les Hirondelles contained a postmark from a month ago. It must have languished in the post office in Saint-Odile until someone thought to forward it to his new address in Zurich. After reading the letter, he opened the window wide to let the spring air blow through the room, pausing for a moment to study the faces of the pedestrians in the street.

There was no sign of a furtive, middle-aged man slipping around the corner. But for the rest of his days, Gessen would be on the lookout for a spectral figure with a watchful air. Holding his breath in anticipation of a sign from his mysterious double, hovering in the wings, waiting to be king.

* * *

Astrid I. Olsen, MD, PhD
Committee Chair, Søgaard Prize for Excellence and
Innovation in Neuroscience
Copenhagen, Denmark

15 May 2009

Dear Dr Gessen,
Regarding your letter of 21 January 2009, I was very sorry to learn about the unfortunate passing of Vidor Kiraly. How terrible to hear he perished in a fire at your clinic in Switzerland. In my capacity as chair of the Søgaard Prize Committee, I am writing to you in connection to some disturbing information the Committee received at the end of last year. I would have contacted you earlier, but we first wished to undertake a thorough investigation of the allegations made against Professor Kiraly.