Characters
Ulrike
Speaks for Unterdorn’s nursing home and its 47 residents
Ulrike speaks for the nursing home in Unterdorn, a former schoolhouse on the slope behind the church. She is around fifty and wears white pants, a cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, and reading glasses hooked into her neckline. She talks fast and looks past you into the building, as if someone were calling from inside. The home has 47 residents: six on oxygen, 14 with walkers, nine in wheelchairs. It isn’t in the emergency plan because it lies 20 meters outside the red zone. Ulrike measured the distance herself. To her, outside means that in an emergency nobody will come to help either.
First encounter
- First noticed: opens the door, doesn’t introduce herself, and the first thing she says is: “Konrad. You’re here about the plan.”
- Speaks: fast, in numbers; “20 meters won’t carry a wheelchair.”
- Object: the reading glasses at her neckline; the three walkers under the balcony
Connected to
- Konrad ZieglerInnkeeper in Unterdorn and chief of the fire department
- OttoKonrad’s brother, drives the school bus over the one bridge
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- UnterdornThe village below the dam, with one bridge out
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.