Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Jan clears his throat. ‘Can you tell me a bit about the patients?’

‘Which ones?’

Jan doesn’t want to mention Rami’s name, not yet. ‘I’ve seen an old woman up there,’ he says. ‘Grey hair, dressed in a black coat. She goes around sweeping up the leaves just inside the fence... I wondered if she works at St Patricia’s, or if she’s a patient.’

Rettig has stopped smiling. ‘She’s a patient,’ he says quietly. ‘Her name is Margit. But she’s not as old as you might think.’

‘Really? I’ve seen her standing by the fence, watching the children.’

‘She’s done that ever since the pre-school opened,’ says Rettig. ‘Whenever she’s allowed outside she goes and stands by the fence.’

‘Does she like children?’

Rettig doesn’t answer at first. ‘Margit had three children of her own,’ he says eventually. ‘She was married to a potato farmer in Blekinge... This was twenty-five years ago. Her husband used to leave the farm on Fridays and go into town to meet customers. But one day Margit found out from a neighbour that he had a room in a hotel in town, a room where he used to entertain his girlfriend... maybe several girlfriends. So she went to the gun cupboard and took out his shotgun.’

Jan looks at him. ‘She went to the hotel and shot him?’

Rettig shakes his head. ‘She took the children out to the barn and shot them . First of all the two oldest, then she reloaded and shot the little one.’ He sighs. ‘She’s been locked up in St Patricia’s ever since.’

The room is now deathly quiet.

Rettig has stopped eating. He shakes himself, as if he wants to forget what he has said, then goes on: ‘But Margit is kept well away from your children, there’s no need to worry... She’s kept away from all children.’

Jan slowly opens his mouth. ‘I don’t think I wanted to know that.’

‘Well, now you do know,’ Rettig says. ‘There’s a lot we don’t want to know about the people around us... I know way too much, personally.’

‘About the patients?’

‘About everyone.’

Jan nods slowly. He is thinking about the children’s books hidden in his kitchen. He has secrets of his own.

‘And it’s only letters you want me to take in? Nothing else?’

‘No drugs, no weapons, just letters,’ Rettig insists. ‘Think about it, Jan. I work there. Do you think I want people like Ivan Rössel to get their hands on drugs or knives?’

Jan stares at him. ‘Is Ivan Rössel in there?’ He recognizes the name from the newspapers and TV. And the taxi driver mentioned him too.

‘He is.’

‘Ivan Rössel the serial killer?’

‘That’s right,’ Rettig answers in a subdued voice. ‘We’ve got quite a few celebrities among the guests at our establishment... If you only knew.’

Alice Rami , Jan thinks. But out loud he simply asks, ‘So when do you want an answer about the letters?’

‘Preferably now.’

‘I need to give it some thought.’

Rettig leans forward. ‘There’s a place down by the harbour; we use one of the rooms for our rehearsals. We can meet up there, do some jamming with the Bohemos... and afterwards we can have a chat. How about that?’

Jan isn’t sure, but he accepts the invitation anyway.

‘Come down there tomorrow, about seven. It’ll be cool, as they say.’

When Rettig has gone and Jan has locked the front door, he immediately regrets his decision. Why did he agree to play with the Bohemos? He’s heard them, and they’re too good for him.

He glances over at his drums, wanting to sit down and practise right away, but it’s too late at night. Instead he goes into the kitchen and gets out the four hidden books: The Animal Lady, The Princess with a Hundred Hands, The Witch Who Was Poorly, Viveca’s House of Stone . He almost knows the stories off by heart now. He knows the princess shouts, ‘I’m not unhappy, I just like unhappiness !’ when she first arrives in the village, and he knows that the first symptom of the witch’s illness is that her hair melts.

So why does he keep on reading the books, over and over again? Perhaps he is searching for some kind of hidden message. If these are Rami’s books, she must have had some ulterior motive when she asked Josefine to hide them in the pre-school.

And perhaps he finds a message in the end, because as he leafs through The Animal Lady for perhaps the fiftieth time, he suddenly sees a little patch of ink right in the bottom right-hand corner of the first page, below the text. There’s nothing odd about that, but there is a similar mark on the next page, the same size and in almost exactly the same place. And on the next page.

Jan looks more closely; he has been concentrating on the pages with the pictures, and hasn’t noticed this mark in the margin before.

It looks like a little animal. A squirrel?

He flicks through the pages, and the squirrel begins to move. It’s an illusion created by the movement of the pages: the squirrel scampers along, all the way through the book.

He goes through the books over and over again, and eventually he gets them in the right order. The marks on the hundred or so pages of the four books form a short animated film. The black squirrel first appears in the bottom corner of the first page of The Animal Lady , then skitters up across the pages of The Princess with a Hundred Hands and Viveca’s House of Stone , before finally disappearing into space at the top of the penultimate page of The Witch Who Was Poorly .

Jan stares at the squirrel’s progress.

A sign. That’s what it feels like, a sign especially for him.

The room where the Bohemos rehearse smells of sweat and dreams. It’s not far from the harbour, just a few blocks away from Bill’s Bar. The room is as bare as a scruffy youth centre — apart from the egg boxes. Hundreds of egg boxes have been stuck to the walls in order to reduce the echo.

Jan is sitting behind the drum kit, establishing the rhythm and being swept along by it at the same time. The Bohemos started with the classic ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, with a steady four-stroke beat which Jan was able to follow with no problem. That got them going, and now they have been playing old rock songs for almost an hour.

From time to time Rettig has turned around from his place at the microphone and nodded to Jan; he seems pleased. ‘A bit softer on the snare, Jan!’

Jan nods and obliges. After all those years of sitting alone at home accompanying bands on his stereo, it’s a strange feeling to be playing with real live musicians. He was a bit shaky at first, but he’s getting better and better.

The drum kit he’s using is an old Tama, not quite as good as his own; the skin on the bass and snare is worn and almost split in places. But it means he can be a bit less careful as he provides the backing.

‘Good,’ says Rettig. ‘Tighter and tighter.’

Two other members of the Bohemos have turned up. The bass guitarist is called Anders, and the rhythm guitarist is Rasmus. They are both about the same age as Rettig, and play without speaking. Jan has no idea what they think of the fact that he has taken over from Carl, the usual drummer; they haven’t said a word to him all evening, just glanced over at the drums occasionally.

Jan wonders whether Carl, Anders or Rasmus are also care workers at the hospital.

At quarter past eight they stop and start packing away. The two other band members leave immediately with their guitar cases, but Rettig hangs around. Jan stays too; he knows that Rettig is waiting for an answer.

‘You play well,’ Rettig says. ‘A bit of an African vibe going on there.’