So, on Friday, after the markets closed, they took the train around the lake to Sierre and walked a few streets over to board a funicular that carried them out of the city and up three thousand feet, soaring over houses, then pastures, and then, the town shrinking below them, revealing the mountains beyond the mountains that huddled around the lake. They talked about the scenery, and Harvard, and the future of the yen. They ate dinner in an Italian restaurant that was half empty because it wasn’t ski season and took a room in a hotel that looked like a low-end Las Vegas promoter’s idea of a Swiss hotel. They had easy sex and both managed to fall asleep as if they had nothing to worry about.

In the morning, brisk but bright, they set out to hike the Bisse du Ro. Catherine knew what it was, but for Majid it was the day’s first surprise. The path started in, of all places, a parking lot at the edge of the village, then meandered gently through trees and backyards, until, a mile or so in, they were upon it. Majid stopped.

“Is there a problem?” said Catherine.

Majid was looking ahead at the trail, if it could even be called a trail. It was a narrow ledge on the side of a cliff, with a vertical rock face above and below. Originally, it had been a channel carved into the mountain face by local farmers to capture snow melt and divert it to their fields. Where the natural ledge had been narrow or nonexistent, they had used rough timber to cantilever a trough out over the edge, with a vertical rock face above and nothing below. Now, with some modest reconstruction, it was a tourist attraction for tourists who didn’t mind hiking a trail that was at most four feet wide, sometimes with a guardrail on the downhill side and sometimes without one, sometimes only a rope slugged into the cliffside wall to hold on to.

The valley straight below was lush and green and gleaming in the sun. And it was very far below.

“Is it all like this?” said Majid.

He was standing by a plaque mounted into the sheer cliff wall. It was dedicated to a local man who had died on the trail or, rather, off the trail, falling from it to his death. The plaque said, Il a aimé les montagnes, et main-tenant la montagne l’a pour toujours.” He loved the mountains, and now the mountain has him forever.

“Is it all like what?” said Catherine. She had no concern about the trail. Even at its narrowest, it was wider than a diving board.