Authors: Johan Theorin
The Asylum (5 page)
He carries on wandering around the centre of Valla and sees lots of imposing shop windows, but no church. And no churchyard either.
There is a very good local-history museum by the river, with a little café. Jan goes in and buys a sandwich. He sits down by the window and gazes out towards the bus station.
He doesn’t know one single person in Valla – is that frightening or liberating? On the plus side, a stranger can start a completely new life, and choose which details to share if someone should ask where he comes from. The fewer answers the better. He doesn’t need to say a word about his former life. Not a word about Alice Rami.
But it is thanks to his adoration of her that Jan is sitting here.
He first heard about St Patricia’s Hospital at the beginning of June, when his last temporary post at a pre-school in Gothenburg was just coming to an end. It was quite an enjoyable evening; he was almost feeling happy.
He was the only man in a group of women, as usual. His
colleagues
invited him out for a meal to thank him for his work, and he accepted. Afterwards he did something he had never done before – he asked them back to his small apartment in Johanneberg, a cramped one-room flat which he had taken on as a sublet.
What could he offer them? He rarely drank alcohol; he couldn’t really cope with the taste.
‘I think I might have some crisps at home if you’d like to come back with me.’
His five colleagues were delighted, but Jan had already begun to regret the invitation as he led them up the stairs and unlocked the door.
‘I’m afraid it’s not very tidy …’
‘That doesn’t matter!’ they shouted, giggling and tipsy.
Jan let them in.
His diary was hidden in a desk drawer, along with his drawings of
The Secret Avenger
. So he had nothing else to hide, apart from the pictures of Alice Rami. If he had known about this visit he would probably have hidden those too, but as his colleagues walked in they saw the framed record sleeve in the hallway, of course, plus a concert poster in the kitchen, and the big poster that had been given away with a music magazine ten years ago, pinned up next to the bookcase.
It was a black and white picture of Rami, standing on a little stage with her electric guitar, legs apart, her spiky hair illuminated by the spotlights, the rest of the band like blurred ghosts behind her. Her eyes were closed, she was twenty years old, and she looked as if she was growling into the microphone. It was the only pin-up of her he had ever found, which was why he had kept it all these years.
One of his colleagues, a few years older than Jan, stopped to look at it. ‘Rami?’ she said. ‘Do you like her?’
‘Sure,’ said Jan. ‘Her music, I mean … Have you heard her sing?’
His colleague answered, her eyes fixed on Rami, ‘I used to listen to her when the first album came out, but that was a long time ago. She never released a follow-up, did she?’
‘No,’ Jan said quietly.
‘And now they’ve put her away.’
Jan looked at her. This was news to him. ‘Put her away? What do you mean?’
‘She’s in some kind of mental hospital. St Patrick’s, on the west coast.’
Jan held his breath. Alice Rami in a mental hospital? He tried to picture it.
Yes, he could see it. ‘How do you know?’ he asked.
His colleague shrugged her shoulders. ‘I heard it somewhere a few years ago, I don’t really remember … it was just gossip.’
‘Do you know why … Why she ended up in there?’
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘But I assume she must have done something stupid.’
Jan nodded without speaking.
St Patrick’s Hospital
. He wanted to ask more questions, but didn’t want to appear obsessed with Rami. From time to time over the years he had joined various forums on the internet to search for news of Rami, but had never found anything. This was the best lead so far.
Then nothing happened; the summer drifted by and Jan drifted along with it, out of work. For several weeks he’d been scanning the local ads for jobs in pre-schools in
Göteborgs-Posten
and had found quite a few to apply for.
Then at the beginning of July the ad from the Dell had appeared. It was very similar to all the rest, but it was the address of the contact person that made Jan cut it out: Dr Patrik Högsmed, Admin Department, St Patricia’s Regional Psychiatric Hospital in the town of Valla, just an hour by train from Gothenburg.
Jan read the advert over and over again.
A pre-school at a psychiatric hospital?
Why?
Then he remembered the rumour: Alice Rami was supposed to be locked up in ‘St Patrick’s Hospital, on the west coast’. St Patrick could be a distortion of St Patricia.
That was when he sat down and picked up the phone to call Dr Högsmed.
Jan had already applied for a dozen jobs at pre-schools in and around Gothenburg, without success. He might as well apply for one more.
6
JAN’S TELEPHONE RINGS
at quarter past eight on the following Thursday morning, while he is lying in bed. He crawls out and answers; there is a male voice on the other end.
‘Good morning, Jan! Patrik Högsmed at St Patricia’s here. Did I wake you?’ The doctor’s voice is full of energy.
‘No … it’s fine.’
His own voice is hoarse and slow; he slept heavily, with weird dreams. Was Alice Rami in them? There was definitely a woman, wearing a dark fur coat and standing on a stage, she had climbed into a big box …
The doctor brings him back to the present. ‘I just wanted to let you know that we had a little chat after you left the day before yesterday, the staff at the Dell and I. It was a very productive discussion. Then I went back to the office and gave the matter some thought, and had a word with the hospital management. And now we’ve made our decision.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘So I was wondering if we could go over the terms of your contract now? With a view to you starting work here next Monday?’
Life can change so quickly. A day later Jan is back in Valla, his new home town. But he has no home here yet, so this afternoon he is gazing into a narrow hallway full of furniture and cardboard
boxes.
He is looking at a flat in a big apartment block, north of the town centre and to the west of St Patricia’s.
A silver-haired old lady in a grey cardigan picks her way through the piled-up boxes; she is so small that they seem to be looming over her.
‘Most of the people who live here are getting on a bit,’ she says. ‘Hardly any families with children, so there’s no noise.’
‘Good,’ says Jan, making his way into the apartment.
‘The rent as a sublet is four thousand one hundred,’ the old lady says, looking sideways at Jan with a slightly embarrassed expression. ‘I’ve hardly added anything to the original rent, so there’s no point in haggling … but it is fully furnished.’ ‘OK.’
Fully furnished? Jan has never seen so much furniture in one flat. Chairs, cupboards and chests of drawers are piled up along the walls. It looks more like a storage facility than a home, and in a way that’s exactly what it is. The furniture and the boxes belong to the woman’s son, who is living in Sundsvall at the moment.
Jan opens a kitchen cupboard and sees rows and rows of bottles on the shelves – rum, vodka, brandy and various liqueurs. All empty.
‘Those aren’t mine,’ the old lady says quickly. ‘The last tenant left them behind.’
Jan closes the door.
‘Is there a loft?’
‘The grandchildren’s bikes are up there. So, are you interested?’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
He has already checked with the housing department in Valla; there are no empty apartments this month, and the waiting time for a rental contract that isn’t a sublet would be at least six months. Under TO RENT in the local paper there was nothing but this furnished three-room flat.
‘I’ll take it,’ he says.
After a late lunch that same day he catches the train back to Gothenburg, picks up his old Volvo from the garage and buys a
few
cardboard packing cases. Over the weekend he loads his own furniture on to a trailer and drives it to the local tip. Jan is almost thirty, but he owns very little, and feels an attachment to even less. There is a kind of freedom in not having too many possessions.
He moves into the three-room apartment and stows away as many of the old lady’s boxes as possible; he tries to hide all the rubbish in the wardrobes and behind the sofa. Now he has a home of sorts.
He has brought with him his drawing board and the comic strip he calls
The Secret Avenger
, which is almost two hundred pages long. He has been working on it for fifteen years, but promises himself that he will finish it here in Valla. The finale will of course be a major apocalyptic battle between the Secret Avenger and his enemies, the Gang of Four.
Monday 19 September is a beautiful autumn day; the sun is shining on the trees and streets, and on the big concrete wall surrounding St Patricia’s. At quarter past eight Jan passes through the gate for the second time and meets Dr Högsmed by the security guard’s office in reception.
They shake hands. The doctor’s eyes are clear now. Sharp. ‘Congratulations, Jan.’
‘Thank you, doct— Patrik. Thank you for having confidence in me.’
‘It’s not a question of confidence. You were the best candidate.’
They walk through all the locked doors, meet the head of human resources, and Jan signs his name on various documents. He is a part of the hospital now.
‘Right, that’s it,’ says Högsmed. ‘Shall we head over to your new place of work, then?’
‘Excellent.’
They make their way out of the gate and into the road, but Jan can’t help looking sideways at St Patricia’s.
Högsmed gives him a short lecture: ‘The institution was built at the end of the nineteenth century. Initially it was meant for those who were retarded, to use the terminology of the day, and later
it
became a mental hospital where compulsory sterilization and lobotomies were carried out on a regular basis … but of course it’s been refurbished since then. Modernized.’
Jan nods, but as they move away from the wall he can see the barred windows again. He thinks about Rami, then about the name the taxi driver mentioned: Ivan Rössel, the serial killer.
‘Are all the patients on the upper floors?’ he asks. ‘Or are they in different parts of the hospital?’
Högsmed raises his hand to stop Jan. ‘We never discuss the patients.’
‘I understand that,’ Jan says quickly. ‘I don’t want to know anything about a particular individual; I was just wondering how many patients there are?’
‘About a hundred.’ The doctor walks on in silence for a few seconds, before continuing in a slightly gentler tone of voice: ‘I know you’re curious about what goes on inside St Patricia’s – it’s only human. Not many people have been anywhere near a psychiatric hospital.’
Jan remains silent.
‘There’s only one thing I can say about what we do,’ the doctor goes on. ‘It’s nowhere near as dramatic as people think. It’s business as usual almost all the time. Most of the patients have suffered serious mental disturbances, with various kinds of trauma and obsessive-compulsive disorders. That’s why they’re here.
But
’ – Högsmed holds up a finger – ‘that doesn’t mean that the hospital is full of bellowing lunatics. The patients are often calm and completely capable of interaction. They
know
why they’re here, and they’re … well, almost grateful. They have no desire to escape.’ He falls silent, then adds, ‘Not all of them, but the majority.’
He opens the little gate leading to the pre-school.
‘I can tell you one final thing about the patients: a number of them have been involved in various kinds of substance abuse, and for that reason there is a strict ban on drugs on the wards.’
‘Does that include medication?’
‘Medication is another matter; that’s all controlled by the doctors. But people can’t be allowed to start self-medicating. And
we
also have restrictions when it comes to using the telephone and watching TV.’
‘So all entertainment is banned?’
‘Absolutely not,’ says the doctor as they approach the nursery door. ‘There’s plenty of paper, pens and pencils for those who want to write or draw, there are radios and lots of books … and we have a great deal of music.’
Jan immediately thinks of Rami with her guitar.
Högsmed goes on: ‘And, of course, if the patient is a parent, we encourage regular contact with the child. Both the patients and their children need security and routine. This is often something they have lacked earlier in life.’
The doctor opens the door and holds up his index finger one last time. ‘Fixed routines are critical in life. So you are doing a very important job here.’
Jan nods.
An important job with fixed routines
.
He can hear the sound of cheerful shouts and laughter through the open door, and he strides purposefully into the classroom.
He is feeling good now; he is calm. Jan always feels good when he is about to meet children.
Lynx
Jan used to have an apartment a few kilometres from the Lynx nursery, west of Nordbro town centre. There was an extensive park between the area where he lived and the nursery itself – several kilometres of coniferous forest, with rocks and low hills around a big lake with plenty of birds, all of which created the illusion of wild, remote countryside. He usually cycled to work, but whenever he had time he would walk through the forest, and sometimes he went for walks there when he wasn’t working. He got to know the paths and tracks, and sometimes he turned off to climb on to an area of flat rock, gazing out at the lake and the birds.
One autumn morning as he was strolling to work he discovered the old bunker.
It had been cut into a hillside, with a view across the water. No paths or tracks ran past it, and at this time of year it was very difficult to spot; it resembled nothing more than a large heap of earth, hidden by branches and needles and sycamore leaves. But the rusty metal door stood invitingly ajar as Jan walked by, and it made him stop and scramble up the bank to take a closer look.
He leaned forward; it was pitch dark inside. The walls seemed to be a good twenty centimetres thick. The cement floor looked dry, so he got down on all fours like a potholer and crawled inside. The internal space was bigger than the concrete shell, as it had been dug out of the hillside.
Someone had been enjoying themselves in there, but not recently.
Yellowed
newspapers and empty beer cans lay tossed in one corner, but apart from that the place was completely empty. There were actually a couple of windows, Jan noticed, but they were no more than long, narrow gaps just below the ceiling, almost completely blocked by earth and leaves. He guessed that the bunker had been used by the army as some kind of observation post – a relic of the Cold War.
He crawled back outside and stood on the slope. He listened. The wind was soughing gently in the trees. There was no sign of anyone at all.
Down below the bunker there was a flat, level expanse of gravel, partly covered by grass and undergrowth. There were no metal tracks, but it could have been the remains of an old railway line that had run along here decades earlier. Perhaps it had been used while the bunker was being built.
Jan clambered down and headed south. The gravelled track led to a narrow gap between two huge rocks. At the end of this gap there was a rusty gate; it was closed, but Jan managed to get it open. He walked up a gentle slope and found himself overlooking the lake about half a kilometre away, and suddenly he knew where he was. The children from Lynx had come up here on a little excursion last summer, just after he started work. No doubt they would be coming here again.
He stopped and thought.
The forest was dense here, but Jan found a path and walked a few hundred metres until he saw the nursery and the green fence surrounding the playground. The early birds from Lynx and Brown Bear were already there, playing outside. He saw little William Halevi sitting at the top of the climbing frame, raising his arms to show everyone that he was brave enough to let go.
William was a courageous boy; Jan had noticed this when the two groups were playing together. In spite of the fact that he was small and skinny, he would always climb the highest and run the fastest.
Jan looked at William, and thought about the bunker in the forest.
And that was how it began; not as a fully fledged plan to lure away a child in the forest, but mostly as a mind game. A pastime which Jan kept to himself.