Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Other texts were about power, darkness, drugs and moon shadows. Jan listened and listened all summer until he knew the words by heart; he felt as if Rami was singing to him. Why not? She even had a song on the album with the name ‘Jan’ in it.

In the middle of August a number of new children started at the nursery. One of them was special. A little boy with blond, curly hair.

Jan was standing by the entrance to Lynx when the boy appeared. He actually saw the boy’s mother first; Jan thought he recognized her. A celebrity or an old acquaintance? Perhaps it was just that the mother looked older — between thirty-five and forty, quite old to have a child at nursery.

Then Jan caught sight of the boy — small and as thin as a rake, but with big blue eyes. Five or six years old. He had golden-blond hair, just like Jan had had at his age, and he was wearing a tight red jacket. He walked towards the nursery holding his mother’s hand, but they went past Lynx and headed for the door leading to Brown Bear.

He thought they were an ill-matched pair: the mother was tall and slim, dressed in a light brown leather jacket with a fur collar, while her son was so small he barely came up to her knees. He was having to trot along with short, scampering steps just to keep up with his mother’s strides.

The boy’s outdoor clothes looked inadequate in the autumn chill. He could do with new ones.

Jan had opened the door of Lynx, on his way into the warmth with half a dozen children in front of him, but he stopped and watched when he saw the mother and child. The boy kept his eyes fixed on the ground, but the mother gave Jan a passing glance and an impersonal nod. He was a stranger to her, an anonymous classroom assistant. Jan nodded back and remained in the doorway long enough to see them walk up the slope and open the door to Brown Bear.

On the outside of the door was a dark-brown bear cut out of chipboard, and on the door Jan had just opened was a yellow lynx. Two forest carnivores. Ever since he had started at the nursery the previous summer, Jan had thought the names sounded wrong; after all, bears and lynx were no ordinary animals. They were predators.

The boy and his mother had disappeared. Jan couldn’t stand here in the doorway, he had work to do. He went to join his own group of children, but he couldn’t forget the brief encounter.

The registers for all the nursery classes were held on the computer, and before Jan set off home accompanied by Rami’s music, he sneaked into the office to find out what the new boy at Brown Bear was called.

He found the name straight away: William Halevi, son of Roland and Emma Halevi.

‘Coffee, Jan?’ asks Marie-Louise.

‘Yes please.’

‘A drop of milk?’

‘No thanks.’

Marie-Louise is the supervisor at the Dell. She is between fifty and sixty years old, with light-grey curly hair and deep laughter lines around her eyes; she smiles a great deal and seems to want everyone around her to feel comfortable, whether they are big or small.

And Jan actually does feel comfortable. He doesn’t know what he expected the pre-school to be like, but in here there is no hint of the high concrete wall just a few metres away.

After St Patricia’s bare corridors and Högsmed’s white office, Jan has entered a rainbow world where vibrant children’s drawings cover the walls, where green and yellow wellingtons are lined up in the entrance hall, and where big boxes in the playroom overflow with cuddly toys and picture books. The air in here is slightly warm and heavy, just as it always is in a room where children have been playing.

Jan has been in many bright and clean pre-schools over the years, but the Dell made him feel calm as soon as he walked in. There is harmony in this little place — it feels cosy .

At the moment it is very quiet, because the children are having their nap in the snuggle room. This means that all the staff are free to meet.

There are three younger colleagues at the table with Marie-Louise. Two of them are women. Lilian, who has dark-red hair piled on top of her head, is about thirty-five. She has a sorrowful look in her eyes which she tries to hide; Lilian talks a great deal, moves nervously and laughs just a little too loudly. Hanna, who has straight blonde hair, is perhaps ten years younger; she is wearing a white blouse and pink jeans. Pretty blue eyes; she doesn’t say much.

Lilian and Hanna are not alike, but they do have one interest in common. In the middle of their coffee break they go outside for a cigarette just on the other side of the fence surrounding the Dell; they seem to be very close. Lilian whispers something and Hanna nods.

As Marie-Louise looks out of the window at the two smokers, a small furrow appears between her eyebrows. Then they come back inside, and she is smiling again.

Marie-Louise smiles even more frequently at the fourth employee: Andreas. He doesn’t smoke, he just takes snuff, and with his broad shoulders he looks more like a builder than a classroom assistant. There is something reassuring about Andreas; nothing seems to bother him.

Dr Högsmed is also sitting at the kitchen table. He began by introducing Jan, referring to him as ‘the male candidate’ — which gave away the fact that there was at least one other person under consideration for the post — but since then he has left the staff to do the talking.

But what can they talk about? Jan has just read the rules and regulations, and has no intention of breaking them, not today. So he can’t ask any questions about the hospital, and he can’t talk about the children. He searches for a topic of conversation. ‘Who was St Patricia?’ he asks eventually.

The doctor looks at him. ‘A saint, of course.’

‘But what did she do? Where did she live?’

The only response is silence and shaking heads.

‘We don’t have much to do with saints here,’ says Högsmed with a grim smile.

The room falls silent again, so Jan asks Marie-Louise about working hours.

‘The Dell is staffed around the clock at the moment,’ she replies. ‘We have three children who don’t have placements in foster care for the time being, so they are staying here overnight.’ She pauses. ‘Would that be a problem for you, Jan, having sole responsibility for the children overnight?’

‘Not at all.’

There is a tentative tapping on the kitchen window next to Jan, and when he turns his head he sees that it has begun to rain. Soon heavy drops are spattering against the glass. Beyond the curtain of rain he can just make out the wall and the hospital. He gazes out at the hospital until Lilian asks a question:

‘Do you have any family, Jan?’

That’s a new question. Is Lilian particularly interested in families? He gives her an involuntary smile. ‘My younger brother is studying medicine in London, and my mother lives up in Nordbro. But I’m not married... and I don’t have any children of my own.’

‘What about a girlfriend?’ Lilian says quickly.

Jan slowly opens his mouth, but Marie-Louise leans forward, her expression slightly troubled, and says quietly, ‘That’s personal, Lilian.’

Jan notices that neither Lilian nor Hanna is wearing a ring on her left hand. He shakes his head briefly. No . That could mean either that he’s single, or that he doesn’t want to answer.

‘So what do you do in your spare time, Jan?’ The question comes from Dr Högsmed this time.

‘Oh, this and that,’ he replies. ‘I’m interested in music, I play the drums a bit... and I enjoy drawing.’

‘And what kind of thing do you draw?’

Jan hesitates before replying — this is also beginning to feel rather personal. ‘I’m working on a kind of comic strip... An old dream project.’