The Asylum (30 page)

The Unit

After more than a week in the Unit Jan started to talk about why he had jumped in the pond. Not to some psychologist, but to Rami. It was a long story, told behind the closed door of her room.

Rami was restless that evening. She jumped up on to her unmade bed, then lay down with the pillow over her face. Then she got up again, grabbed her guitar and stood right at the edge of the mattress facing the black curtains, as if she could see an audience out there in front of her.

‘I love
chaos
,’ she said. ‘Chaos is
freedom
. I want to sing in praise of insecurity … as if I’m standing on the very edge of the stage, and sometimes I just fall off.’

Jan was sitting on the floor, but said nothing.

Rami didn’t look at him, she just went on: ‘If I ever get to record an album, it will be like a suicide note. But without the suicide.’

Jan looked at the floor for a while, then said, ‘I’ve done that.’

Rami struck a chord on the guitar, fierce and dark. ‘Done what?’ she said.

‘I tried to kill myself,’ Jan said. ‘Last week.’

Rami played another chord. ‘People should die for music,’ she said. ‘A song should be so good that people want to
die
when they hear it.’

‘I wanted to die before I came here … And I almost managed it.’

Now it was Rami’s turn to be quiet; she seemed to be listening at last. She took a couple of steps backwards and leaned against the wall. ‘You wanted to
die?
For real?’

Jan nodded slowly. ‘Yes … I would have died anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They would have killed me.’

‘Who would?’

Jan held his breath and didn’t look at Rami. Talking about what had happened was difficult, even though the door was closed, even though the fence was protecting him. He felt as if Torgny Fridman were sitting on the other side of the wall, listening.

‘A gang,’ he said eventually. ‘A gang of lads at my school … They’re in the year above me and they call themselves the Gang of Four, or maybe that’s just what everybody else calls them. They rule the place – in the corridors, anyway. The teachers haven’t got a clue. They don’t do anything about it … Everybody just does whatever these lads say.’

‘But not you?’

‘I was stupid, I didn’t think,’ Jan says. ‘One day in the lunch queue, Torgny Fridman told me to move out of the way. He wanted to go in front of me, but I wouldn’t let him in … I stayed put, and in the end one of the teachers came and spoke to him and sent him right to the back of the queue. He never forgot it.’ Jan sighed. ‘From then on it was just a campaign of terror; it was war between me and Torgny. He used to have a go at me every time he saw me, either by shouting out what a worthless little shit I was, or by knocking me over.’

Jan paused.

‘So I kept away from the gang. I counted the days, and I thought I might just make it.’

Friday afternoon, a bitterly cold day in March. Jan’s last lesson today was PE, and now it’s over. It’s the end of the school week, and it’s actually been pretty quiet. No fights
.

He is the last person in the boys’ changing room. He might even be the last person in the sports hall. It is a few hundred metres away from the rest of the school, and everyone else has gone. All the boys in his class waited for their friends. No one waited for Jan
.

It’s OK, it’s always the same
.

He picks up his flimsy towel, winds it around his waist and heads for the showers, where the dripping water echoes in the four small cubicles. He hangs up his towel and goes into the cubicle next to the pine door of the sauna
.

He turns on the hot water, stands under the shower and begins to rub shower gel over his body
.

‘I was just standing there in the shower; my legs were tired after PE, and my head was completely empty,’ Jan told Rami. ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything at all … Sometimes when you’re having a hot shower it’s as if you’re dreaming, you know what I mean? I might have been thinking about the weekend; I was going to be on my own at home because Mum and Dad were going away somewhere … When I finished and turned to reach for my towel, I suddenly smelled cigarette smoke in the air. And then I saw that someone was standing outside the shower. It was Torgny Fridman.’

Torgny is fully dressed, wearing jeans, a denim jacket, and boots
.

He is standing by the shower cubicle, blocking the doorway. He looks at Jan and smiles
.

Torgny is not the leader of the gang, but he is the one who most wants to impress Peter Malm. Peter is the leader; he has never bothered with Jan. But Torgny is dangerous
.

He seems delighted to have a naked Year 10 pupil in front of him
.

Jan stares back at him. He doesn’t do anything else. He might possibly be able to straighten up and push his way past Torgny, but in that case he would have to be someone else, not Jan Hauger
.

So Jan stays where he is, and smiles
.

He always smiles in threatening situations, even though he doesn’t want to. The more frightened he is, the more he smiles
.

Torgny is actually smiling too, a victorious smile. He shows his teeth, grinning broadly at Jan. Then he turns his head to the right and calls to someone. He carries on smiling and calls out several names, and when he has finished there is silence for a few seconds
.

Then the door of the sauna opens and his three friends emerge. The pack, the Gang of Four. Each of them is holding a glowing cigarette
.

Could he push his way past them and escape?

Too late
.

‘So they were sitting in the sauna?’ Rami said. ‘Why?’

‘They were hiding from the teachers,’ Jan explained. ‘They were having a secret smoke. The sauna was turned off, so they sat in there smoking and waiting for the weekend to begin. There was Torgny, Niklas, Christer, and Peter Malm. And they all walked out of the sauna, and when I saw them I moved backwards.’

But where can Jan go? He is standing in a shower cubicle, naked, in a puddle of cold water. He can’t back away through a wall
.

Torgny says just one word: ‘Hauger
.’

His name sounds like an accusation
.

‘
What are you doing here, Hauger? Are you spying on us?
’

Jan doesn’t reply; he just keeps on smiling at Torgny to show that he is completely harmless. And he is, of course. Four fifteen-year-olds against one fourteen-year-old. That’s about the right level of opposition for the gang
.

Torgny was the one who discovered their prey, and now he is the one who brings it down. He places his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, grabs hold of Jan’s arm and delivers a sharp kick to his shin. Jan crumples on to the tiles. Into the cold water
.

He tries to get up, but feels hands on his body, holding him firmly. Not Peter Malm – he doesn’t bother – but all the others. Three pairs of hands are pushing him down
.

Through the fear Jan knows that Peter is the leader. He is the master, the others are his savage dogs. Jan tries to make eye contact
.

Don’t let them loose, he thinks
.

‘
What shall we do with him?’ Torgny asks
.

‘
Do something cool,’ says Peter
.

Torgny nods; he has an idea: ‘We’ll stub out our fags on him!
’

Peter stands back and carries on smoking as his subordinates put out
their
cigarettes. One by one, on Jan’s skin. It turns into a competition to find the best place
.

Christer stubs out his cigarette on Jan’s chest, between the nipples
.

Niklas goes for a testicle. ‘Did you hear that?’ he shouts. ‘It made a hissing noise! Did you hear it?
’

Peter Malm nods and takes another drag on his cigarette
.

Torgny smiles and takes his time
.

Eventually he chooses the place where the skin is thinnest, on the throat
.

At that point Jan closes his eyes
.

‘The worst thing isn’t the pain,’ Jan said to Rami. ‘I mean, of course it hurts, it’s a bit like a nail going through your skin … but that passes.’

‘So what is the worst thing?’

‘It’s the smell. It kind of lingers. You can smell burnt flesh … and it’s your own.’

As he talked about it the smell was there again, as if it were still inside his nostrils after a whole week.

He had known he was going to die there in the shower. Alone with the Gang of Four – there was no hope for him.

The cigarettes have been stubbed out. Jan has brownish-red circles on his skin, like fresh birthmarks. The hands holding him down loosen their grip slightly; the fingers are beginning to tire
.

Soon. Soon it will be over, he thinks. They’ll go in a minute
.

But then Peter Malm issues a new order: ‘Chuck him in the sauna
.’

‘
Fanfuckingtastic!’says Torgny. ‘We’ll lock him in!
’

‘
What are you talking about?’ says Niklas. ‘There’s no lock
.’

Disappointed silence. Jan keeps quiet too
.

‘
Chuck him in there anyway,’ says Peter; it is obvious from the tone of his voice that he is starting to get bored. ‘Chuck him in and we’ll get out of here
.’

The grip on Jan’s arms tightens once more. They are assuming he will fight back, and he does. This is the final battle, but he loses it in no time. Six hands drag him towards the sauna, and Peter holds the door open
.

For just a second Jan’s thigh presses against Torgny as they struggle, and he realizes that Torgny has a rock-hard erection
.

Then Jan is hurled into the sauna. He lands on his back on the duckboards, and the door slams shut
.

Silence
.

The light is on inside the sauna, and a faint smell of cigarette smoke still lingers in the air
.

Jan can hear their laughter through the door
.

‘
Time to turn up the heat, Hauger!
’

The light goes out. The Gang of Four have switched it off
.

Torgny is still shouting. ‘We’re taking your clothes
.’

Niklas chips in, ‘We’re going to chuck them in the pond, Hauger, so everybody will think you’ve drowned!
’

Jan doesn’t respond. He lies there like a mouse in the darkness. Silent, waiting
.

He knows that the Gang of Four are holding the door shut, but they’re bound to leave at some point. Sooner or later torturing a little Year 10 kid is going to get boring, it’s going to start feeling like hard work, and then they’ll give up. That’s what he’s waiting for
.

The black metal heater inside the sauna begins to make a series of clicking noises, and he realizes they’ve actually done it; they’ve turned the control outside the door from OFF to ON. But how high have they set the temperature? Fifty degrees? Sixty? Or much hotter?

It doesn’t matter. They’ll go soon
.

Eventually everything goes quiet outside the door, and Jan feels brave enough to move
.

He gets to his feet. The sauna is already warmer. Not hot, but warm
.

He listens again, places the palm of his hand against the door, and pushes
.

‘I couldn’t open it,’ he said to Rami. ‘It should have just swung open, but it wouldn’t move. They’d jammed it somehow. So I was locked inside the sauna, and the heater was clicking away … It was getting hotter and hotter.’