Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Jan had stood there gazing at his former schoolmate for a minute or so; once upon a time he had been terrified of Christer. Then he had gone on his way, feeling neither joy nor sorrow.

When he reaches the main square he goes into Fridman’s ironmongery, as he has done a couple of times in the past. Torgny Fridman, the owner’s son, has taken over, and this Saturday afternoon Torgny himself is standing behind the counter. He is a slim man of about thirty, with short, pale-red hair.

Jan goes towards the back of the shop to look at axes. He has no wood to chop, but still he picks up several different types of axe, weighing them in his hands and swinging them experimentally through the air.

At the same time he keeps glancing over at the till. Torgny Fridman has acquired a dark-red beard. He is standing behind the counter chatting to his customers, a family with children. He doesn’t look in Jan’s direction. Fifteen years have gone by, and Torgny seems to have forgotten him. Why should he remember? It is only Jan who remembers.

He picks up the biggest axe, which is almost a metre in length.

The bell on the shop door pings.

‘Daddy!’ A little boy in a white jumper and jeans which are too big comes racing in, hurtling towards the counter. Behind him is a woman, smiling broadly.

Torgny greets the boy with outstretched arms, picks him up and whirls him around. For a moment he is just a father delighted to see his son, not an ironmonger.

Jan stares at them for a few seconds. The axe is heavy, heavy and perfectly balanced. Raise it above your head, higher, higher...

He puts it down and leaves the shop without saying hello. He and Torgny were never friends, and they never will be.

The last stop on Jan’s tour is Lynx.

The nursery where he worked as a twenty-year-old lies a couple of kilometres from the town centre. He wonders if he really wants to go there, but in the end he does.

The place is all closed up; it is Saturday, after all. He stops by the main door and looks at the wooden building; not much has changed. It is still coated with a brown oil-based paint, but it seems smaller than when he was last here. The painted lynx that used to be on the door has gone; maybe the name has been changed to something gentler now, like Wood Anemone or Mountain Hare. Or the Dell, perhaps.

So this is where he worked, all those years ago. In many ways he was still a lost child when he was at Lynx, even if he didn’t realize it at the time. He wonders if anyone from those days is still here. Nina, the supervisor? Sigrid Jansson definitely isn’t — she left at approximately the same time as him.

She was broken by that stage. During their last few weeks at the nursery they had avoided one another when they were out in the playground at the same time; there was a strange atmosphere every time Sigrid looked at him. Perhaps it was just a lingering sorrow over everything that had happened, but to him her silence seemed cold and dismissive, or possibly even full of mistrust.

He had often wondered if Sigrid suspected anything, if she had worked out how Jan had made his preparations on the day William disappeared.

Finally, before he goes back to his mother’s house, Jan wanders down to the Nordbro pond. It lies below his family home like an almost circular cauldron, and Jan knows the black water well. At night it looks like dark blood.

Fifteen years earlier he was on his way to the bottom of that pond, on his way down through whirling bubbles to the final great coldness — until a neighbour jumped in and pulled him out at the very last moment.

When Jan’s parents came to visit him in the Unit, the words attempted suicide hovered between them like a black cloud, but they were never mentioned.

It was hardly possible to make any sort of conversation at all. Jan lay beneath the covers, staring at his parents in silence. He suddenly noticed that his brother wasn’t with them.

‘Where’s Magnus?’

‘At a friend’s,’ his mother said, adding hastily, ‘He... he doesn’t know anything.’

‘ Nobody knows about this,’ said his father.

Jan nodded. Eventually his mother went on, keeping her voice low: ‘We’ve spoken to your doctor, Jan.’

His father scowled. ‘He wasn’t a doctor, he was a psychologist .’

His father didn’t like psychologists. At the dinner table the previous year he had talked about a colleague at work who was seeing a therapist, and had called it ‘tragic’.

His mother chimed in, ‘That’s right, he’s a psychologist. Anyway, he said you’d be in here for a few weeks. Maybe four, or maybe a little bit longer. Is that OK, Jan?’

‘Mm.’

The room fell silent again. Jan suddenly noticed there were tears running down his mother’s cheeks. She quickly wiped them away, just as his father asked, ‘Have they spoken to you yet, the psychologists?’

Jan shook his head.

‘You don’t have to speak to them, you know,’ said his father. ‘You don’t have to answer any questions, or tell them anything.’

‘I know.’

When had he last seen his mother cry? Probably at his grandmother’s funeral the previous year. The atmosphere in this room was very similar to the atmosphere in the chapel, when they were all sitting there staring at the coffin.

His mother blew her nose and attempted to smile. ‘Have you got to know anyone in here?’

Jan shook his head again. He didn’t want to get to know anyone, he just wanted to be left in peace.

His mother didn’t say much after that. She didn’t cry any more, but she sighed wearily a few times.

His father didn’t say another word; he just sat there in his grey suit, rocking back and forth on his chair as if he wanted to get up. From time to time he looked at his watch. Jan knew he had a lot of work, and wanted to get home. When he looked at his son, his expression was irritated and impatient.

That look made Jan nervous, it made him want to get out of bed and forget everything that had happened, just go home and be normal .

His mother suddenly raised her head. ‘Who’s that playing?’

Jan listened too, and heard the sound of soft guitar music coming from the room next door. He knew who was playing. ‘It’s my neighbour... Some girl.’

‘There are girls in here too?’

Jan nodded. ‘It’s mostly girls, I think.’

His father looked at his watch again and got up. ‘Shall we make a move, then?’

Jan looked at his mother. ‘You go... I’ll be fine.’

His mother stood up too. She reached out to touch his cheek, but her hand didn’t quite get there. ‘Yes, I suppose we’d better go,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got long left on our parking ticket.’

Nobody said anything else until his mother turned back in the doorway. ‘I nearly forgot... Somebody rang you yesterday, Jan. A friend of yours.’

‘A friend?’

‘He wanted to know how you were... I gave him the number of this place.’

Jan just nodded. A friend? He couldn’t think of a single friend who might have phoned. Someone from his class? Presumably.

When his parents had left he felt as if he could breathe again. He sat up and slowly climbed out of bed. He went over to the desk and looked out of the window. There was a wide grassy area out there, wet after the winter — and beyond it a high fence with barbed wire along the top. He looked at it for a long time.

The Unit was no ordinary hospital, Jan realized.

He was a prisoner here.

Jan is back in Valla. He has cleaned his flat: he is expecting a visit from Hanna.

It was his idea to meet up this evening; when he went back to work at the Dell after his long weekend off, Hanna was also on duty, and when the staffroom was empty he stuck a note in her jacket pocket, with his address and a question: COFFEE AT MINE, 8 O’CLOCK? JAN H.