Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Jan stiffened in his bed. No shower . He shook his head.

‘OK... Try to get a little more sleep then, Jan.’

Jörgen floated backwards, away from the bed and out of the shimmering room.

Time passed. Jan heard a clicking sound. When he moved his head he could see that the door of his room was ajar. Something was moving out there. An animal? No. A pale face was looking in at him: a tall, slender girl of about his own age, with chalk-white hair and brown eyes. She stood there staring at him, her expression neither friendly nor malicious.

Jan swallowed; his mouth was dry. He tried to raise his head. ‘Where am I?’

‘In the Psych Unit.’

‘In the what?’

The girl looked at him meaningfully. ‘The Unit.’

Jan said nothing. He didn’t understand. The girl didn’t say anything more either; she just carried on looking at him, then suddenly she raised her arms and pointed a little black box at him. There was a pop and a flash.

He blinked. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Hang on a minute.’ She pulled a square of paper out of the camera, took two steps into the room and threw it down next to his pillow. ‘There you go,’ she said quietly.

Jan looked at the piece of paper, picked it up and watched as a picture started to appear. It was one of those photographs that developed itself, and he saw a pale face and a thin body gradually beginning to take shape. It was him, lonely and afraid in a hospital bed.

‘Thanks,’ he said. But when he looked up at the door, the girl had disappeared.

There was silence for a minute or so, and then the guitar began to play again.

Jan was feeling slightly better, and sat up. The main light was switched off and the blinds were closed, but he could see that the bed was standing in a small, bare room — almost a cell — with a desk and a chair on which his jeans and T-shirt lay neatly folded. His shoes were on the floor, but somebody had removed the laces.

His arms were itchy; he touched them and felt the bandages. They were wrapped around his forearms, as if he were an Egyptian mummy.

Someone had saved him and now he had woken up, even though he wanted to go on sleeping. Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping in the Unit.

The Unit?

He found out a couple of days later that it was an abbreviation, a nickname. At some point the full name, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit , had been shortened to save time.

Whatever it was called, the Unit was a place for those who were disturbed and those who were lost.

Jan had led the small group of police officers and nursery staff straight up into the forest, but after a few hundred metres he had veered off, moving further and further away from the place where the game of hide-and-seek had started.

The officer in charge was standing on the path with his legs apart; Jan thought he had hard eyes. ‘Is this where he disappeared?’

Jan nodded.

‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

The officer was at least one metre ninety, dressed in black boots and dark blue overalls. He had five colleagues with him. They had arrived in three patrol cars and parked on the road down below the forest.

William’s father hadn’t joined the search party; he had gone to fetch his wife. Jan had caught a glimpse of his face outside the nursery; it was stiff and terrified.

The police officer was still staring at Jan. ‘So you had nine children when you started the game just here... and eight when you finished it?’

Jan nodded again. ‘That’s right. Nine boys to begin with.’

‘Didn’t you notice that one of them was missing?’

Jan glanced sideways, avoiding the policeman’s gaze. He didn’t need to pretend to be nervous now — he was nervous. ‘No, unfortunately I didn’t... The group was very boisterous, both when we walked up into the forest and on the way home. And this boy, William, he wasn’t a Lynx.’

‘ A lynx? What are you talking about?’

‘That’s the name of my section of the nursery — Lynx.’

‘But surely you were responsible for him today, during the excursion?’

‘Well, yes,’ Jan conceded, his expression resigned. ‘Me and Sigrid.’

He glanced over at her. Sigrid Jansson was standing among the fir trees about ten metres away, her eyes red from weeping. When the police had arrived at the nursery and started to ask questions, she had more or less broken down, which was why the officer in charge had turned his attention to Jan.

‘And when William went off to hide, which direction did he go in?’

‘That way.’ Jan pointed south. Even though the lake wasn’t visible from here, he knew that it lay in that direction — in exactly the opposite direction from the one William had taken.

The police officer straightened up. He sent one man down to search in and around the nursery, then looked at the others. ‘OK, let’s move!’

The group spread out and began to search, but they all knew time was short. It was ten past five, the autumn sun had already set — it was dark and grey among the trees. In half an hour the light would fade, and in an hour it would be pitch dark.

Jan followed as straight a route as possible through the trees, appearing to search as carefully as everyone else. He called for William and looked around, but of course he knew they were searching in completely the wrong place. He shouted, but all the time he was thinking about how thick the concrete walls of the bunker were.

It’s a few days before Rettig delivers another envelope to Jan. But by then Jan has met the nocturnal visitor to the pre-school.

The sun shines on these October days, and life is looking better and better; the shadows from the Unit and Lynx are slowly fading. In Jan’s opinion he is a totally reliable colleague at this stage, popular with both the children and the other members of staff. The letters he smuggles into St Psycho’s cannot alter the fact that he is an extremely conscientious pre-school teacher.

After all, he likes the children. Perhaps it is a sense of guilt, or the fear of being found out, that makes him work so hard for the welfare and security of the children, building a solid foundation for lifelong learning and enabling them to develop into responsible and ethically aware citizens , and all the other excellent aims he learned about during his professional training.

The other members of staff sneak out occasionally for a bit of fresh air or a quick smoke, but Jan remains with the children all the time. He jokes with them, listens to them, calms them down, dries their tears and sorts out all their little arguments. He spends a great deal of time with Leo, trying to gain his trust.

Sometimes when he is in the middle of a game he can see no difference between himself and the children. The years fall away, he is five or six years old and able to live completely in the present. No demands, no worries about the future, no anguish because of his loneliness. Just cheerful shouts and a warm feeling of total involvement. Life is going on here and now .

But sometimes he catches a glimpse of someone moving behind the perimeter fence at St Patricia’s, and he abandons the game for a moment and thinks of Rami.

Rami the animal lady, Rami like an animal in a cage.

In a safari park the predators are enclosed together with the herbivores. But the difference between the dangerous animals and those that are harmless is always difficult to see.

The squirrel wants to be free , Rami wrote. And he wants to get inside St Psycho’s to see her. He wants to talk to her, just like before.

‘Jan!’ the children shout. ‘Look, Jan!’