Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Jan catches sight of Leo’s little face looking out of the narrow window. Then the lift makes a clicking sound and begins to move upwards.

‘OK, that’s it, we can head back,’ says Marie-Louise. Her voice sounds calmer now, and she goes on: ‘Someone needs to collect Leo in an hour — perhaps you could do that on your own, Jan?’

‘No problem.’

‘Good.’ Marie-Louise smiles at him. ‘I’ll set the little alarm clock in the kitchen to remind you when it’s time. They send the children down from the visitors’ room on their own dead on the hour, so it’s important that we’re here.’

They go back up the staircase, open the door and they are in the cloakroom once more.

Marie-Louise cups her hand around her mouth and shouts, ‘Time for our fruit, everyone!’

Some of the children pull a face at the word fruit , but most come running, some of them pushing and shoving to get there first. Always a battle.

Everything is just the way it usually is in a pre-school.

But Jan looks at the moving hand on the wall clock several times. He can’t help thinking about little Leo, all alone with his locked-up daddy.

There are no CCTV cameras at the Dell, which is a good thing of course. But Jan can’t see a television either.

‘A TV? No, we only have a radio in here,’ Marie-Louise says seriously. ‘If we had a TV we’d soon end up with a whole pile of cartoons the children would want to watch, and a passive child is an unhappy child.’

The children are having great fun in the playroom; they have laid out the thick crash mats on the floor and are pretending to be shipwrecked sailors drifting along on rafts. Jan joins in the game; it feels good after his subterranean trip.

He spots a notice in Marie-Louise’s neat handwriting up on the wall. The children can’t read yet, of course, but it appears to be meant for them:

Here at the Dell

... we always tell an adult where we’re going

... everyoneis allowed to join in when we are talking or playing

... we never say anything bad about anyone else

... we never fight or quarrel

... we never play with weapons .

Lilian is also playing with the children; they leap from mat to mat in order to escape from the sharks swimming in the sea. Just like Jan she joins in the game wholeheartedly, but from time to time he sees a shadow of sorrow pass across her face when she looks at the children.

After a while they sit down on one of the crash mats to recover; he wants to ask her if something is wrong, but Lilian gets in first: ‘Are you settling in OK, Jan?’

It sounds as if she really cares.

‘In Valla, you mean?’ Jan needs to think about what he’s going to say. ‘Yes, although of course I’ve only just moved here. But it seems like a good place... Lovely surroundings.’

‘What do you do in the evenings?’

‘Not much... I listen to some music.’

‘Haven’t you got any friends here?’

‘No... not yet.’

‘Well, why don’t you come down to Bill’s Bar?’ says Lilian. ‘It’s by the harbour, there’s a good house band...’

‘Bill’s Bar?’

‘I hang out there all the time,’ says Lilian. ‘There are usually a few people from St Patricia’s there too. You’ll get to know plenty of new people at Bill’s.’

Should Jan start going to the pub and being sociable? He’s never done it before, but why not? ‘Maybe,’ he says.

They carry on playing with the shipwrecked children until Jan hears the shrill sound of the alarm clock in the kitchen. Good, he has been waiting for it.

He collects the magnetic card, opens the basement door and heads down the stairs and along the corridor alone.

Nothing is moving down there. The pictures on the wall are still there, hanging in straight lines.

It is five to twelve and the window in the door of the lift is still in darkness; Leo has not been sent down yet.

Jan stops. Go up in the lift , he thinks. Go up and have a look around inside St Psycho’s .

But he stays where he is, waiting for the lift for a minute or so, then he looks over towards the other end of the corridor. Over towards that sharp bend to the right. He is a little curious about what there might be around that corner. Another way into the hospital?

The lift has still not appeared, so Jan walks away slowly. He’s just going to have a quick look to see where the corridor goes.

Around the corner the corridor continues for a little distance, and ends at a massive steel door. It is firmly closed, and has a long iron handle. Jan reads the words SAFE ROOM on a white sign next to the door. And underneath it says: This door must be kept locked at all times!

A safe room — Jan knows what that is. It’s like an underground bunker.

A picture of little William comes into his mind, but he pushes it away and reaches for the iron handle.

It moves. It seems possible to open the door.

But at that moment there is a clicking sound in the corridor behind him. The lift door. Jan quickly lets go of the handle and hurries back.

Leo has been sent down via the sally port. He is trying to push open the heavy door, but can’t quite manage it.

Jan helps him. ‘Have you had a nice time, Leo?’

Leo nods without speaking; Jan takes his hand and they set off back towards the Dell.

‘I think it’ll be sing-along time soon. Do you like singing, Leo?’

‘Mm.’

Perhaps it is Jan’s imagination, but Leo seems a little more subdued than he was before his visit to see his father. Otherwise he looks exactly the same. No bleeding scratches on his face, no ripped clothes. Of course not — why shouldn’t he look the same?

They have reached the foot of the staircase leading up to the Dell. Jan is ready with the magnetic card, but glances at Leo one last time and decides to risk asking a question: ‘Was it nice seeing Daddy today?’

‘Mm.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘We talked,’ said Leo. There is a brief silence, then he goes on: ‘Daddy talks a lot. All the time.’

‘Oh?’

Leo nods again and sets off up the stairs. ‘He says everybody hates him.’

During his first week at the Dell, Jan works from eight until five every day. And every evening he goes home to his dark apartment. He’s used to it, he’s always come home to a silent apartment, but this one isn’t even his. It doesn’t feel like home .

Sometimes in the evening he sits down at his drawing board and continues working on the Secret Avenger’s struggle against the Gang of Four, but if he is tired he just flops down in front of the TV and stays there.

During the day he learns the names of the children, one by one. Leo, Matilda, Mira, Fanny, Katinka, and so on. He gets to know which ones are chatty and which ones are quieter, which ones get cross when they fall over and which ones start crying if someone happens to bump into them. Which ones ask questions and which ones listen.

The children have so much energy. When they’re not under orders to sit still during assembly, they’re always on the move, always heading off somewhere. They crawl, they run, they jump. Out in the playground they dig in the sandpit, climb and swing — and want to join in everything.

‘Me too! Me too!’

The children fight for space, for attention. But Jan makes sure that no one is excluded from a game, that no one is nudged out of the group and ends up on their own, as he often did.

The group of children at the Dell feels harmonious, and it is easy to forget their proximity to St Psycho’s — until the alarm clock rings in the kitchen and someone has to be taken to or collected from the lift beneath the hospital. But the trips along the underground corridor also become routine, in fact — although Jan does keep a slightly closer eye on Leo, whose father sounds somewhat paranoid.