Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg Page B

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    It was also surprisingly quiet. I couldn’t hear any cars and it was easy to forget I was only thirty or forty yards from a hotel full of people.

    The quiet was really nice. You don’t realize just how loud your world is until the volume is suddenly turned down. I became aware of sounds I don’t usually hear in my hectic urban life. The breeze rustling through the leaves. Birds chirping. The buzz of insects. The trickle of water washing over rocks in a creek. The crackle of dry brush under my feet. The gentle background noise was like soft music.

    I wandered a bit farther and came upon what first appeared to be a tree house. But as I got closer, I could see that it was actually a hunter’s blind made of branches and wood and enshrouded with vines. If not for the corrugated metal roof, it would have melded perfectly with the trees.

    I climbed up the ladder into the blind and sat on the bench inside for a few minutes. I tried to imagine what it would be like sitting there for hours with my rifle, waiting for a defenseless animal to wander by for me to shoot.

    I didn’t see the pleasure or the sport in that. But sitting in that blind, I was overwhelmed with childhood memories of playing in the tree house that I’d built with my friends from scrap wood we’d scavenged from a construction site.

    They were memories I hadn’t tapped in years. It was like channel surfing and stumbling unexpectedly onto a favorite movie that you’d forgotten.

    I got so lost in my reverie that forty minutes seemed to pass in a matter of seconds. When I realized the time, I climbed out of the blind and walked back down to the Franziskushohe.

    I came into the lobby just as Dr. Kroger and Monk were finishing up their session outside. Dr. Kroger escorted Monk into the lobby as if it was his waiting room in San Francisco. If I’d been sitting on the couch reading Cosmopolitan or Highlights for Children, the re-creation would have been complete.

    Monk was transformed. He appeared settled, almost serene. He was back to his old self again. Except for the lederhosen, that is.

    “I think we made some real progress today, Adrian,” Dr. Kroger said. His words sounded forced to me.

    “The excitement doesn’t have to stop now,” Monk said. “We can keep right on going.”

    “Your session is over for today.”

    “But you don’t have any other patients to see. We can spend all of our time together,” Monk said. “You’re here, Natalie is here. This can be a dream vacation.”

    His dream, our nightmare.

    Dr. Kroger gave me an “I told you so” look. But I was prepared for this. I’d worked out my strategy during the walk back to the hotel.

    “We can’t stay here, Mr. Monk.”

    “Of course we can. This is a hotel,” Monk said. “The three of us could get adjoining rooms. Wouldn’t that be grand?”

    “I don’t think so, Adrian,” Dr. Kroger said.

    “Why not?” Monk said.

    “Because for seventy years this building was a sanitarium for people with tuberculosis,” I said. “And bronchitis, asthma, emphysema, and pneumonia.”

    “To name a few,” Dr. Kroger said, meeting my eye and giving me a slight, appreciative nod.

    “A few?” Monk said.

    “Think of all the thousands of sick people who’ve been here,” Dr. Kroger said, “and all the coughing and sneezing and wheezing that has occurred within these walls.”

    “The whole place is probably caked with layers of dried phlegm,” I said.

    Monk shuddered. “That’s not possible.”

    “See for yourself,” I said.

    I led them outside and across the parking lot to one of the trailhead signs, which had a reproduction of a vintage photograph showing patients strolling with their nurses outside the hotel.

    Monk stared at the picture in disbelief. “And they made this into a hotel? Were they insane?”

    “After the sanitarium closed it became a convent,” I said. “Maybe they thought it was cleansed by