Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

‘Now she’ll think you’re a troublemaker,’ he says quietly.

Hanna sighs. ‘I care about Lilian. Don’t you?’

‘Well yes... obviously.’

‘So why does she drink so much? Have you given it any thought?’

Jan hasn’t given it any thought. ‘To get drunk,’ he says eventually.

‘But why does she want to get drunk?’

Jan shrugs. ‘I suppose she’s unhappy. But there’s unhappiness everywhere, isn’t there?’

‘You don’t know anything... you just don’t understand,’ Hanna says, getting to her feet.

Jan stands up too. It feels good to leave the table, and equally good to think that he can soon go home. This has not been a pleasant Monday morning; the feelgood meeting was more about feeling bad.

He just wants to go home and get some sleep. He wants to be normal. He wants to look to the future, make a life for himself.

Never to be shut in again , he thinks.

He has no one to make a life with. Perhaps that is the worst thing of all. Not having someone to listen.

Rami had climbed off her bed and sat down on the floor next to Jan. In the end his story about the Gang of Four had captured her attention.

‘Had they locked you in the sauna?’

‘Not locked... there was no lock,’ he said. ‘But they’d jammed something up against the door. I didn’t know what it was, but it wouldn’t move. It was rock-solid.’

‘So you were trapped in the heat,’ Rami said.

He nodded.

‘How did you get out, then?’

‘I didn’t,’ Jan said. ‘It was Friday... Everyone had gone home.’

The silence in the sauna goes on and on. No doors slam. No caretaker pokes his head around the door and shouts ‘Hello?’ into the empty shower room .

The door refuses to move .

And the sauna is hot now. The air could get hotter, but it is hot enough already. As hot as the desert. Forty degrees perhaps, or fifty .

All he can do is grope around in the darkness, feeling his way across the pine floorboards. His hand touches a plastic bucket; he hears the water lapping against the sides .

There is wood everywhere inside a sauna. Bare wood on the floor and on the walls, with long planks fixed to the walls at two different levels. That is where you sit when you are having a sauna, or a crafty smoke .

Jan sits on the lower plank for a while. He is sweating now .

Someone is bound to come .

Then he stops thinking for a while; his head feels kind of empty. The skin on his bottom is a bit sore, but he is calmer now. The Gang of Four have gone .

No one else comes. There isn’t a sound outside the door .

And it just keeps on getting hotter and hotter .

Jan was sitting on the floor in Rami’s room with his head bowed. She was holding his hand and he could feel her beside him, but in his mind he was alone. He was still inside the sauna.

‘I was unlucky,’ he said. ‘It was Friday, and the gym wasn’t due to open again until Monday.’

‘So what happened?’ Rami asked.

Jan looked at her. ‘I don’t know.’

He didn’t really remember very much, but now he started to think back. What did he actually do? How do you survive several days in a hot sauna?

Bang on the door. Keep on banging and banging, until you are quite sure that no one is coming. Peter Malm and his gang won’t be coming back. They have jammed the door and cleared off; they have already forgotten you .

Then you can try shouting and banging on the door for a little bit longer, until you eventually give up. Your hands are aching and smarting; they are full of splinters from the coarse wood of the sauna door .

Fumble around and realize that you can actually see a little bit in the darkness — a faint strip of light is showing underneath the door, and there is a tiny shimmering patch in an air vent just below the ceiling. So you are not completely blind. You can see your hands in front of you like patches of pale grey .

You reach out and climb upwards. The heat increases as you get closer to the ceiling. Suddenly your fingers are touching something, something cylindrical, with a smooth metallic surface .

A beer can. Here in the near darkness it is impossible to see what brand it is, but you can hear the liquid slopping about when you pick it up. It feels as if it is about half full, but when you bring it up to your nose a sour, disgusting smell emanates from the little hole in the top. Someone has left it on the bench in the sauna; it could have been there for days, or even weeks .

Put the can down. Sit on the top bench and think. Try to think. How are you going to get out?

Don’t expect anyone in the Gang of Four to come back and open the door; that’s not going to happen .

Don’t expect your parents to come looking for you either. They were supposed to be going away with your younger brother, to stay with some aunt. They might ring you, but when you don’t answer they will just assume you are at a friend’s house — even though you don’t have any friends that you might visit. They live in a dream world where their son is happy at school, and you don’t want to wake them from their dream .

No. You just have to assume that you are trapped in here, presumably until Monday morning. At least it was meatballs with mashed potato for lunch in the school canteen today, and you sat at a table all by yourself and ate ten of them .

You won’t get any more food until Monday .

You should be pleased that you don’t have any clothes. Standing naked in the shower room was horrible, you felt like a little frozen piglet out there, naked and surrounded by the Gang of Four in their new sweatshirts and expensive jeans. But in here you won’t miss your clothes at all .

It is pretty hot up on the wooden bench. Frying tonight. The heat rises, and you are sweating more and more .

Climb down and sit on the lower level with your feet on the floor. It’s a little bit cooler down here .

Sit there and bow your head .

Don’t think, just wait .

Close your eyes .

Carry on waiting .

Raise your head and wonder whether you might run out of air. It is difficult to breathe... is that because of the heat, or is there some other reason? You once read a story about someone who was buried alive in a coffin, and almost died from lack of oxygen. A sauna is a kind of coffin .

You take a deep breath and sniff the air — does it smell bad? Not yet. Fresh air is probably coming in through the gap at the bottom of the door, and through the vent up by the ceiling. Not much, but you hope it will be enough .

Lie down on the bench .

Close your eyes .

Don’t think .

Just wait .

Wait...

Wake up with a start!

Have you been asleep?

It is still dark. How much time has passed since they shut you in? You have no idea. You have a watch with a luminous face that your grandmother gave you for your tenth birthday, but it is in the pocket of your trousers in the changing room .

Unless of course the Gang of Four really did take your boots and clothes with them and chucked them in the pond .

The sauna is still switched on .

The sweat is pouring off your body in the heat. You are incredibly thirsty .

Slide down on to the floor and crawl over to the bucket; it is there so that people can throw water on to the hot stones and fill the sauna with steam. There is actually a little water left in the bottom .