Henkell was as tall as a lamppost, with Wehrmacht-gray hair and a nose like a French general’s epaulette. His eyes were a milky shade of blue with irises the size of pencil points. They looked like two lumps of caviar on Meissen saucers. On his forehead was a frown line as deep as a railway cutting; a dimple made his chin look like the badge on a Volkswagen. It was a grand, commanding sort of face that belonged properly on some fifteenth-century bronze duke, astride a horse cast from melted cannons and set in front of a palazzo with hot-and-cold-running torture chambers. He wore a pair of steel-framed glasses that were mostly on his forehead and rarely on his nose and, around his neck, a single Evva key that was for the medicine cabinet in my room and several others like it elsewhere in the hospital. Drugs were often being stolen in the state hospital. He was tanned and fit-looking, which wasn’t surprising given that he had a chalet near Garmisch-Partenkirchen and went there nearly every weekend—hill-walking and climbing in summer, and skiing in winter.

“Why don’t you go and stay there?” he said while he was telling me about the place. “It would be just the thing for someone recuperating from an illness like yours. Some fresh mountain air, good food, peace, and quiet. You would be back to normal in no time.”

“You’re kind of caring, aren’t you?” I remarked. “For a doctor, I mean.”

“Maybe I like you.”

“I know. I’m real easy to like. I sleep all day and half the night. You’ve really seen me at my best, Doc.”

He straightened my pillow and looked me in the eye.

“It could be I’ve seen more of Bernie Gunther than he thinks,” he said.

“Aw, you’ve found my hidden quality,” I said. “And after all the trouble I took to hide it.”

“It’s not so well hidden,” he said. “Provided one knows what to look for.”

“You’re starting to worry me, Doc. After all, you’ve seen me naked. I’m not even wearing makeup. And my hair must be a mess.”

“It’s lucky for you you’re flat on your back and weak as a kitten,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Any more remarks like that and my bedside manner is liable to turn into a ringside manner. I’ll have you know that at university I was considered to be a very promising boxer. Believe me, Gunther, I can open a cut just as quickly as I can stitch one.”

“Wouldn’t that be against the Hippocratic Oath, or whatever you pill pushers call it when you’re taking yourselves too seriously? Something Greek anyway.”

“Maybe I’ll make an exception in your case and strangle you with my stethoscope.”