Indeed, on the floors and along the corridors ancient little bells ring out to announce appointments for which one cannot be late.

Nurses and masseuses leave their antiseptic changing rooms in their respective uniforms and set off towards their assignments. Doctors put on their white coats.

And the guests, most of them elderly, all wearing the same hotel-issue dressing gowns, form orderly queues for the various check-ups, swimming pools, saunas and massage rooms.

The silent, small and peaceful comings and goings of a world getting started.

In the dim light of the breakfast room, the waiters are setting the tables again. An anorexic chef makes it to the back of the kitchens and enjoys the first drag of a cigarette while he looks up beyond the Swiss mountains at the sky’s luminous blue.

8

Soporific New Age music pervades the massage room.

The subdued lighting is augmented by a sea of candles placed all around.

Fred is stretched out comfortably in an enormous cradle of straw as if he were an eighty-year-old Baby Jesus in his crib.

A small Thai man of about fifty is scattering burning-hot black stones over his body. Each time a stone is placed on him, Fred lets out a slight cry of pain.

The masseur laughs. In hesitant English he says: “After pain comes pleasure.”

“Before the pain starts again,” Fred concludes.

9

Later on a nurse takes a blood sample from Fred.

A doctor in his sixties enters the room. He has a likeable and good-natured face.

“How are we getting along today, Mr Ballinger?”

“Well, we’re getting along. I’m not sure where to, but we’re getting there.”

The doctor smiles, then stops to examine Fred’s face. He slips on his spectacles and looks even more closely.

“My daughter says I suffer from apathy. Does it show much?”

The doctor smiles again. “Would you like to have these age spots lasered?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Why?”

“Because they’re not aesthetically pleasing.”

“But they remind me of something fundamental.”

“What’s that?”

“That life is full of blemishes.”

The doctor and Fred smile at each other. The nurse has finished taking the sample.

Fred looks out of the window that frames an unblemished Alpine peak outlined against a blue of singular clarity. His expression is now serious.

10

The young scriptwriters are in the middle of a slanging match. Submerged by the sea of papers in his suite, Mick listens to them without intervening. Fred enters the room, but no-one pays him any attention. They are all too busy arguing. He listens to them in a disinterested way.

Everyone is talking over everyone else, but two voices manage to shout more loudly and attack each other more savagely.

Of course, these two are the young man and woman that Mick maintains are on the road to reciprocal love.

“You’ve just seen too many movies, you idiot, and forgotten about real life,” he screams.

“Movies are life! All you do is criticise! You’ve never once had any inspiration,” she shouts back.