The young man had rescued her on numerous occasions from the backs of long, slow lines and Colette paid him well in warm smiles and, occasionally, with flattery.
After Dr. Chasman finally made his own way through the line, he joined Beekman and Freich, who led him out of the terminal building to the pickup area, where two black sedans awaited, their drivers standing like statues by the vehicles’ open doors.
“Hello, Charles,” Colette greeted her driver as she approached the car.
“Welcome home, Mademoiselle,” he replied cheerily.
“Thank you,” she added, and turned to face Dr. Chasman, offering her hand. “I hope you enjoy Lausanne. It’s lovely this time of year.”
“I’m sure I will.” He watched Colette step into her sedan before he got into the back of the second car with Herman Freich.
In the front sedan, which was heading toward Colette Beekman’s family estate, Colette felt comfortably reassured, the way she always felt when she returned home. But as he sat beside Herman Freich in the back of the vehicle that was headed toward Johann Flugle’s home, Michael Chasman’s emotions were more complicated. He could not help but recall the last time he had come here with Lena; though she had already fallen ill, he had never allowed himself to consider that it would be the last time the two of them would travel together, and he never would have been able to imagine that he would return here without her.
As the car sped toward Lausanne, Chasman tried to linger on the most romantic of his recollections, partly for the comfort they brought him and partly to make sure they were still vivid and bright. As long as his memories kept the good times in focus, he hoped he would be able to continue staving off a sense of having been cheated by life.
Johann Flugle, doctor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Geneva, lived in a modest cottage situated next to a small vineyard on the outskirts of Lausanne. Chasman and Freich were greeted by Johann Flugle and Flugle’s German colleague Dr. Gertz Welbocht, doctor of astronomy at the University of Heidelberg. Flugle, in his early seventies, was tall and slender and looked as though he had been a playboy in years past. Welbocht was the younger man and yet he looked older—what was left of his hair was gray and his stomach hung over his belt.
“It was good of you to come, Doctor,” said Flugle, while Gertz Welbocht’s analytical eyes measured the American astronomer with a steady gaze. “Both Gertz and I are greatly honored by your presence. Come.” Flugle gestured with his arm as he moved toward the house. “Let’s get you settled, give you time to freshen up a bit, and then we’ll have lunch. Were you able to sleep well on the plane?”
“Not too badly. I don’t require as much as I used to,” said Chasman, falling into step beside his host.
“Yes,” Flugle chuckled. “For some of us, that goes for a hell of a lot more than sleep, I’m afraid. Though I sometimes wonder, is it that we really don’t require it, or is it that we’ve simply developed the habit of doing without it?” Then, over his shoulder to Freich, who was walking a few steps behind with Welbocht, he asked, “What do you say to that, Herman?”
“I think the body speaks to itself about its own needs, and sleep is no exception,” responded Freich.
“Which is to say, you don’t have a list of what you no longer require much of,” said Flugle with a wry smile.
“Correct. But which is also not to say that time and gravity won’t eventually force its own list on those of us who are reluctant to bow prudently to the irrefutable fact that we grow old and die,” said Freich.
“Only if we’re lucky do we grow old and die,” said Gertz Welbocht. “Only if we’re lucky.”
A splendid lunch was served in the garden; one, Chasman surmised, that was meant to put him at ease, for no mention at all was made of the reasons he had been asked to come all the way to Switzerland. Conversation was wide-ranging and included the tennis prowess of Roger Federer, the dangers of nuclear weapons development in Iran, and famine and unrest in northern Africa. Indeed, it seemed to Dr. Chasman that astronomy was the only subject that his hosts were specifically avoiding.
Once lunch was over, the men moved inside to Flugle’s cozy study and settled themselves comfortably around a table that