The Asylum (4 page)
Authors: Johan Theorin
There is a dotted line at the bottom of the page, and when Jan looks up he sees that Högsmed is holding out a pen.
He takes it and signs his name.
‘Good,’ says Högsmed. ‘As I said, I thought it was best if you had a look at it before we go in. All pre-schools have their own rules and regulations, after all. You’re used to that, no doubt?’
‘Absolutely.’
But Jan has never come across any of these rules before. And the order from those in charge at the hospital is crystal clear:
Keep quiet about St Psycho’s
.
No problem. Jan has always been good at keeping secrets.
Lynx
Jan had started work at the Lynx nursery when he was twenty years old, the same hot summer when Alice Rami’s debut album came out – the two events were linked in his mind. He had bought her record when he spotted it in a shop window; he took it home and played it over and over again.
Rami and August
was the title of the album, but August wasn’t a person’s name; it was her band, which consisted of two guys playing drums and bass guitar. There was a picture of them with Rami, two guys with black spiky hair on either side of her angel-white head. Jan looked at the picture and wondered if either of them was her boyfriend.
The following day he bought a cheap portable CD-player so that he could listen to Rami on his way to work at the nursery. The shortest route was through a dense coniferous forest; he ambled along the paths listening to her whispering voice:
Murder is always suicide;
I kill you, I kill me
Hatred can be called love
then I know where I am with you
.
Life can be death
and strength can be weakness
,
when lambs fill the trains every day
Other texts were about power, darkness, drugs and moon shadows. Jan listened and listened all summer until he knew the words by heart; he felt as if Rami was singing to him. Why not? She even had a song on the album with the name ‘Jan’ in it.
In the middle of August a number of new children started at the nursery. One of them was special. A little boy with blond, curly hair.
Jan was standing by the entrance to Lynx when the boy appeared. He actually saw the boy’s mother first; Jan thought he recognized her. A celebrity or an old acquaintance? Perhaps it was just that the mother looked older – between thirty-five and forty, quite old to have a child at nursery.
Then Jan caught sight of the boy – small and as thin as a rake, but with big blue eyes. Five or six years old. He had golden-blond hair, just like Jan had had at his age, and he was wearing a tight red jacket. He walked towards the nursery holding his mother’s hand, but they went past Lynx and headed for the door leading to Brown Bear.
He thought they were an ill-matched pair: the mother was tall and slim, dressed in a light brown leather jacket with a fur collar, while her son was so small he barely came up to her knees. He was having to trot along with short, scampering steps just to keep up with his mother’s strides.
The boy’s outdoor clothes looked inadequate in the autumn chill. He could do with new ones.
Jan had opened the door of Lynx, on his way into the warmth with half a dozen children in front of him, but he stopped and watched when he saw the mother and child. The boy kept his eyes fixed on the ground, but the mother gave Jan a passing glance and an impersonal nod. He was a stranger to her, an anonymous classroom assistant. Jan nodded back and remained in the doorway long enough to see them walk up the slope and open the door to Brown Bear.
On the outside of the door was a dark-brown bear cut out of chipboard, and on the door Jan had just opened was a yellow lynx.
Two
forest carnivores. Ever since he had started at the nursery the previous summer, Jan had thought the names sounded wrong; after all, bears and lynx were no ordinary animals. They were predators.
The boy and his mother had disappeared. Jan couldn’t stand here in the doorway, he had work to do. He went to join his own group of children, but he couldn’t forget the brief encounter.
The registers for all the nursery classes were held on the computer, and before Jan set off home accompanied by Rami’s music, he sneaked into the office to find out what the new boy at Brown Bear was called.
He found the name straight away: William Halevi, son of Roland and Emma Halevi.
4
‘COFFEE, JAN?’ ASKS
Marie-Louise.
‘Yes please.’
‘A drop of milk?’
‘No thanks.’
Marie-Louise is the supervisor at the Dell. She is between fifty and sixty years old, with light-grey curly hair and deep laughter lines around her eyes; she smiles a great deal and seems to want everyone around her to feel comfortable, whether they are big or small.
And Jan actually does feel comfortable. He doesn’t know what he expected the pre-school to be like, but in here there is no hint of the high concrete wall just a few metres away.
After St Patricia’s bare corridors and Högsmed’s white office, Jan has entered a rainbow world where vibrant children’s drawings cover the walls, where green and yellow wellingtons are lined up in the entrance hall, and where big boxes in the playroom overflow with cuddly toys and picture books. The air in here is slightly warm and heavy, just as it always is in a room where children have been playing.
Jan has been in many bright and clean pre-schools over the years, but the Dell made him feel calm as soon as he walked in. There is harmony in this little place – it feels
cosy
.
At the moment it is very quiet, because the children are having their nap in the snuggle room. This means that all the staff are free to meet.
There are three younger colleagues at the table with Marie-Louise. Two of them are women. Lilian, who has dark-red hair piled on top of her head, is about thirty-five. She has a sorrowful look in her eyes which she tries to hide; Lilian talks a great deal, moves nervously and laughs just a little too loudly. Hanna, who has straight blonde hair, is perhaps ten years younger; she is wearing a white blouse and pink jeans. Pretty blue eyes; she doesn’t say much.
Lilian and Hanna are not alike, but they do have one interest in common. In the middle of their coffee break they go outside for a cigarette just on the other side of the fence surrounding the Dell; they seem to be very close. Lilian whispers something and Hanna nods.
As Marie-Louise looks out of the window at the two smokers, a small furrow appears between her eyebrows. Then they come back inside, and she is smiling again.
Marie-Louise smiles even more frequently at the fourth employee: Andreas. He doesn’t smoke, he just takes snuff, and with his broad shoulders he looks more like a builder than a classroom assistant. There is something reassuring about Andreas; nothing seems to bother him.
Dr Högsmed is also sitting at the kitchen table. He began by introducing Jan, referring to him as ‘the male candidate’ – which gave away the fact that there was at least one other person under consideration for the post – but since then he has left the staff to do the talking.
But what can they talk about? Jan has just read the rules and regulations, and has no intention of breaking them, not today. So he can’t ask any questions about the hospital, and he can’t talk about the children. He searches for a topic of conversation. ‘Who was St Patricia?’ he asks eventually.
The doctor looks at him. ‘A saint, of course.’
‘But what did she do? Where did she live?’
The only response is silence and shaking heads.
‘We don’t have much to do with saints here,’ says Högsmed with a grim smile.
The room falls silent again, so Jan asks Marie-Louise about working hours.
‘The Dell is staffed around the clock at the moment,’ she replies. ‘We have three children who don’t have placements in foster care for the time being, so they are staying here overnight.’ She pauses. ‘Would that be a problem for you, Jan, having sole responsibility for the children overnight?’
‘Not at all.’
There is a tentative tapping on the kitchen window next to Jan, and when he turns his head he sees that it has begun to rain. Soon heavy drops are spattering against the glass. Beyond the curtain of rain he can just make out the wall and the hospital. He gazes out at the hospital until Lilian asks a question:
‘Do you have any family, Jan?’
That’s a new question. Is Lilian particularly interested in families? He gives her an involuntary smile. ‘My younger brother is studying medicine in London, and my mother lives up in Nordbro. But I’m not married … and I don’t have any children of my own.’
‘What about a girlfriend?’ Lilian says quickly.
Jan slowly opens his mouth, but Marie-Louise leans forward, her expression slightly troubled, and says quietly, ‘That’s personal, Lilian.’
Jan notices that neither Lilian nor Hanna is wearing a ring on her left hand. He shakes his head briefly.
No
. That could mean either that he’s single, or that he doesn’t want to answer.
‘So what do you do in your spare time, Jan?’ The question comes from Dr Högsmed this time.
‘Oh, this and that,’ he replies. ‘I’m interested in music, I play the drums a bit … and I enjoy drawing.’
‘And what kind of thing do you draw?’
Jan hesitates before replying – this is also beginning to feel rather personal. ‘I’m working on a kind of comic strip … An old dream project.’
‘I see … Is it for a magazine?’
‘No. It isn’t finished, far from it.’
‘You’ll have to show it to the children,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘We read to them a lot.’
Jan nods, but he doubts whether pre-school children will want to read his comic-strip story about the Secret Avenger. There is too much hatred in it.
Suddenly they hear a muted cry from the snuggle room. Marie-Louise stiffens, Andreas turns his head.
‘That sounds like Matilda,’ he says quietly.
‘Yes,’ Marie-Louise agrees. ‘Matilda dreams a great deal.’
‘She’s got a vivid imagination,’ Lilian says. ‘She’s always making up stories.’
That is all Jan hears them say about any of the children. They sit in silence around the table; it is as if they are waiting for more cries from the snuggle room, but nothing happens.
Högsmed rubs his eyes and looks at his watch. ‘OK, Jan, perhaps you’d like to be heading home?’
‘Yes … it’s probably time.’ He understands the hint – the doctor wants rid of him. He wants to hear what the staff think of the male candidate.
‘I’ll be in touch, Jan – I’ve got your phone number.’
Jan says his goodbyes, with a friendly smile and a firm handshake for everyone.
Outside the autumn rain has passed.
There is not a soul in sight by the wall as he walks out through the gate of the Dell. But St Patricia’s itself looks almost alive; the rain has darkened the façade, and the hospital looks like a great stone colossus, looming over the pre-school.
Jan stops and gazes over at the hospital. At all those windows. He is expecting someone to show themselves – a head moving behind the bars, a hand placed against a pane of glass. But nothing happens, and eventually he begins to worry that one of the guards will spot him and think that a lunatic is standing there staring at the place. He sets off, with a final glance at the little pre-school.
St Patricia’s enormous wall is eerily fascinating, but he must stop thinking about it. He must concentrate on the Dell, the little wooden building with its sleeping children.
Pre-schools are like oases of tranquillity and security.
He really wants the job, even though he is still feeling tense
following
Högsmed’s scrutiny.
The hat test
. And even worse, the phone call to his former employer.
But what happened at Lynx is not going to happen at the Dell. He had been young then, a twenty-year-old classroom assistant. And totally off balance.
5
AFTER THE HEAVY
rain, the autumn air in Valla is cold and fresh. The town looks as if it is contained within some kind of cauldron; it lies below Jan as he walks back through the residential areas, across the railway and down into the centre where the streets are full of pensioners and teenagers. The young people are standing outside the shops, the elderly are sitting on benches. He sees dogs on leads and small groups of birds gathered around the rubbish bins, but very few children.
The next train to Gothenburg leaves in an hour, so Jan has plenty of time to stroll around. For the first time he wonders what it would be like to live in Valla. Today he is a visitor, but if he gets the job he will have to move here.
As he is walking down Storgatan his mobile suddenly rings. A chilly breeze is blowing up the street; he shelters by a wall and answers.
‘Jan?’ The voice is croaky and weak: his elderly mother. She goes on immediately: ‘What are you doing? Are you in Gothenburg?’
‘No, I’ve been … I’ve been for a job interview.’
He has always found it difficult to tell his mother what he is doing. It has always felt too personal.
‘A job interview, that sounds good. Is it in town?’
‘No, a little way out.’
‘Well, I mustn’t disturb you …’
‘It’s OK, Mum. It went well.’
‘And how’s Alice?’
‘Fine … she’s fine. Still working.’
‘It would be lovely if you came up here some time. Both of you.’
Jan doesn’t reply.
‘A bit later in the autumn, perhaps?’ his mother suggests.
There is no hint of criticism in her voice, as far as Jan can tell; just the quiet wistfulness of a lonely widow.
‘I’ll come up soon,’ Jan promises, ‘and I’ll … I’ll check with Alice.’
‘Lovely. And good luck. Remember you have to be happy with your employer as well.’
Jan says a quick thank you and ends the call.
Alice
. He happened to mention her name to his mother at some point, and slowly she has taken shape and become his girlfriend. There is no Alice in his life, of course, she was just a dream, but now his mother wants to meet her. Eventually he will have to tell her what the situation really is.
