Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

At last Jan can relax, or try to. He shouldn’t go across to deliver the letters this evening — what if Dr Högsmed calls in again? But he doesn’t want them sitting in his locker either.

The time passes slowly but at last it’s evening. Most of the children are picked up, the staff go home. Jan warms up a stew with dill and potatoes for the three children who are left, then he reads them a story and eventually manages to get them to sleep.

By this stage it is quarter to nine. Rettig told him to go up to the hospital later than this, but Jan is too impatient. He has just about an hour before Andreas arrives to take over; that’s plenty of time.

He waits for a little while, checks on the sleeping children one last time, then heads down into the basement with the Angel attached to his belt and the envelope hidden underneath his jumper.

Quickly, a postman has to work quickly.

The lift is waiting for him. He takes a deep breath and travels up to the visitors’ room. Everything is quiet; it is deserted and in darkness. Jan quickly makes his way over to the sofa, lifts up the cushion and stops — there is already an envelope lying there. But it isn’t the one he left a few days ago. This one is larger and thicker, and there are five words scrawled on the front: OPEN THIS AND POST CONTENTS!

A reply from St Psycho’s. Jan stares at the envelope. Then he grabs it, tucks it under his jumper and puts the big yellow envelope in its place.

When Jan gets back to the Dell, everything is still perfectly quiet. Thirty minutes later the outside door opens. Jan gives a start, but it is only Andreas, cheerful and calm as usual. Andreas is a steady character, apparently with no worries in his life. ‘Hi, Jan. Everything OK?’

‘Everything’s fine. All our little friends are fast asleep.’

Jan smiles and puts on his jacket, then opens up his locker and takes out his rucksack, where he has hidden the new envelope. He is full of anticipation; it almost feels like Christmas Eve.

‘Good luck, Andreas. See you tomorrow.’

When Jan gets home he is still thinking about Dr Högsmed. He locks the door behind him and pulls down the kitchen blinds. Then he takes out the envelope and opens it.

Forty-seven letters come tumbling out — almost a full deck of cards of large and small letters, all neatly stamped and addressed to various people in Sweden, apart from two. One is destined for Hamburg, and one is going all the way to Bahia in Brazil. There is no sender’s name on any of them.

Jan is fascinated; he lays out the letters in front of him like a game of solitaire. He moves them around on the kitchen table, studying the handwriting; some of it is very controlled and deliberate, some spiky and scrawled. Eventually he gathers them all up.

He is in charge of them now. He could throw them away.

When he is lying in bed an hour later, he wonders which patients have written all those letters. Ivan Rössel, perhaps. He got a lot of letters last time; does he reply to those who write to him?

And has Rami written to anyone? At least there is a letter from him up in the visitors’ room, waiting for her...

Jan falls asleep and is quickly back in the same warm dream he had before. He remembers it clearly now: he is with Alice Rami. She and Jan are living together out in the country, on a farm with no fences of any kind. They are striding along a meandering gravel track, free and unafraid, with all of life’s mistakes far behind them. Rami has a large brown dog on a lead. A St Bernard, or a Rottweiler. It is a guard dog, of course, but it’s a nice dog, and Rami is totally in control of it.

Sigrid walked into Lynx at twenty past four; Jan saw her out of the corner of his eye. They had been back from the forest for over half an hour by that stage, and the nursery was just in the process of closing.

Everything had gone well on the way home — apart from the fact that there had been sixteen children in the group instead of seventeen. But Jan hadn’t mentioned it, and neither Sigrid nor any of the children had noticed that William was missing.

Personally, he could hardly think of anything else.

A short while ago he had taken a break, an apparently completely normal break to which he was entitled. He had popped out of the nursery for ten minutes and walked to the nearest postbox. It was three blocks away from Lynx, and on the way there he stopped in a dark doorway and took out William’s hat.

The previous evening he had prepared a stamped addressed envelope. He pushed the hat inside, sealed the envelope and dropped it in the postbox. Then he quickly walked back to work.

When Sigrid arrived at the nursery Jan was standing in the cloakroom chatting to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember at that particular moment — but she was Max Karlsson’s mother, and she had come to pick him up.

Sigrid came over and interrupted the conversation, her voice low and anxious. ‘Sorry, Jan... could I have a quick word?’

‘Of course, what is it?’

She drew him slightly to one side. ‘Have you got any extra children here?’

He looked at her, pretending to be surprised. ‘No, we’ve only got four left; the rest have already been collected. Why do you ask?’

Sigrid looked around the cloakroom. ‘It’s William, little William Halevi... His dad is waiting over at Brown Bear, he’s come to pick William up... but he’s not there.’

‘Not there?’

She shook her head. ‘Is it OK if I just have a look around here, in the other rooms?’

‘Of course.’

Jan nodded and Sigrid went into the nursery. Meanwhile Jan opened the door for Max and his mother and waved them off.

Three minutes later, Sigrid was back, biting her lip and looking even more worried. ‘I don’t know where he is...’ She ran a hand over her spiky hair. ‘I don’t remember if William was with us when we left the forest... I mean, he was definitely there on the way up, I remember that, but I don’t know if... I’m not sure if he was with us on the way back. Do you remember?’

Jan furrowed his brow, as if thinking deeply. He had a vivid mental picture of William running along the ravine, but he answered quietly, ‘Sorry... I wasn’t really keeping a tally of the children from Brown Bear.’

Sigrid didn’t say anything. They looked at one another and she rubbed her face, as if she was trying to wake up. ‘I’d better get back to his dad. But I think... I think we’re going to have to call the police.’

‘OK,’ said Jan. He felt a hard icicle drop down somewhere between his lungs, spreading its chill right through his belly.

We’re going to have to call the police .

It had begun. And Jan was no longer in control.

Like a criminal, a spy or a secret courier, Jan is careful not to run any risks with the letters from St Psycho’s. He takes a long detour on his journey to work the next morning and quickly stuffs the whole lot in a postbox on a deserted street. Good luck . Forty-seven letters from patients, on their way out into the world.

Frost and patches of ice are starting to appear on the roads now; he will have to stop cycling soon if he wants to avoid skidding. It’s lethal.

Small feet come racing up to him in the cloakroom when he arrives at the Dell. It’s Matilda, and her eyes are shining. ‘The police are here!’

She’s joking, of course.

‘Oh yes?’ Jan says calmly, unbuttoning his jacket. ‘And what do they want? Have they come to have a glass of squash with us?’

Matilda looks confused until he winks at her. Pre-school children can say just about anything; they find it difficult to distinguish between what is true and false, between reality and fantasy.