Authors: Johan Theorin
Where does Lars Rettig live? What’s his telephone number? Jan can’t find him in the directory, and he can think of only one way of getting hold of him, so that evening after work he goes into town. First of all he calls in at Bill’s Bar, but the Bohemos are not playing tonight.
Jan doesn’t give up; he carries on to the place where they rehearsed the other day. The door is closed, but he can hear the sound of guitars coming from inside, and the beat of the snare drum. It makes Jan feel forgotten, excluded.
He knocks, but nothing happens.
Then he bangs on the door with the flat of his hand, but the music continues. In the end he opens the door and sticks his head inside.
The music stops. First the guitars, then the drums. Four heads turn towards him.
‘Hi, Jan.’ Lars Rettig has decided to acknowledge him, after a brief silence.
‘Hi, Lars. Could we have a quick word, please?’
‘Sure – come on in.’
‘I meant … just the two of us.’
Jan feels as if they are all staring at him. The musicians behind Rettig have stopped in mid-movement; they are ready to carry on playing as soon as Jan leaves. Carl, the drummer, is a new face, but Jan thinks he has seen him somewhere before.
‘OK,’ Rettig says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
The Gang of Four
, Jan thinks. Perhaps the members of the Bohemos all work at St Psycho’s.
He recognizes Carl now. The guard dog with the big jaws. He was the one who met little Josefine as she came out of the lift, with a canister of tear gas on his belt.
Carl is staring at the door, his expression grim. Jan moves back, but no doubt Carl has already seen him.
Rettig comes over. ‘I haven’t got much time, Jan, just a couple of minutes … Let’s go outside.’
They walk along the deserted pavement for about ten metres before Rettig stops. ‘OK, we can talk here.’
Jan finds confrontation difficult, but he pulls himself together. ‘Who died last night?’
Rettig just looks at him. ‘Who
died
?’
‘We heard this morning, they said someone had died at St Patricia’s.’
Rettig seems to hesitate, but eventually he replies. ‘It was a patient.’
‘A man or a woman?’
‘A man.’
‘One of the letter-writers?’
Rettig looks around, then leans closer. ‘Don’t mention the letters.’ He smiles at Jan, but it is a tense smile.
Jan wonders if Rettig knows that he slipped an extra letter into the envelope, a message for the patient he thinks is Alice Rami. There is always that risk.
‘I just want to know what this business with the letters is all about,’ he says. ‘Why they’re important to you. Can you tell me?’
At first Rettig doesn’t answer, but then he lowers his gaze. ‘My brother is inside,’ he says. ‘My half-brother, Tomas.’
‘At St Patricia’s?’
Rettig shakes his head. ‘Prison. Tomas is in Kumla, he got eight years for robbery with violence. And
he
would really like to receive letters, lots of letters … but most are stopped. And I’m not allowed to have any contact with him at all, or that’s the end of my job.’ He sighs. ‘So I’m doing something on the sly for those poor bastards in St Patricia’s instead.’
Jan nods. Perhaps this is true. ‘But the person who died … was he one of the letter-writers?’ he asks again. ‘Or someone who got a letter last night?’
‘No.’ Rettig sounds weary as he replies. ‘He was a paedophile who was in there because he’d been sectioned; he certainly didn’t have any pen friends. He only had one friend left, and that was an extra head attached to his left shoulder. He was quiet and pleasant, but his extra head wasn’t nice at all. Of course he was the only one who could see it … but he said it was the head that made him want to do things to little girls. He had no contact with anyone outside the hospital; even his lawyer couldn’t bring himself to visit him, so he just got more and more depressed.’
‘What did he do?’
Rettig shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, this morning he got a fresh burst of energy. He and his extra head managed to get into a room
without
any bars at the window, then they threw themselves out, straight down on to the stone terrace from the fifth floor.’
‘This morning?’
Rettig begins to move back towards the rehearsal room. ‘Yup. We found him at half past six, but the doctor thought he’d probably jumped at around four. That’s when the loneliness gets to us the most, don’t you find?’
Jan has no answer to that; just hearing about the suicide is making him feel bad, as if it were his fault. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m asleep then.’
26
THE CONCRETE WALL
by the pre-school carries with it a feeling of hopelessness. Hopelessness and brutality. Sometimes Jan is filled with those feelings when he stares at the wall, so when he is out in the playground with the children he often looks across at the school’s other neighbours, the rows of terraced houses.
Everyday life goes on over there – cars come and go, children walk to school, lights are switched on in bedrooms on dark mornings and switched off at night. The people in the houses have their daily routines, just as everyone in the pre-school does.
It is the middle of October, and dark clouds come scudding across from the coast. The children are playing outside, but suddenly icy raindrops begin to spatter the ground, and Jan quickly takes everyone into the playroom. It will soon be time for their health assessment anyway. Hanna Aronsson, who turns out to have trained as a nurse in the past, calls the children into the staffroom one by one and checks them over, examining their pupils and measuring their blood pressure and heart rate.
‘Fit as fleas,’ she says afterwards.
They gather in the snuggle room, where Marie-Louise leads the weekly suggestion session. The children always have lots of requests.
‘I’d like a pet,’ says Mira.
‘Me too!’ Josefine shouts.
‘But why?’ asks Marie-Louise. ‘You’ve got your cuddly toys, haven’t you?’
‘We want
real
animals!’
‘Animals that move!’
Mira looks at Marie-Louise and Jan, her eyes pleading. ‘Please … please can we have a pet?’
‘I want stick insects!’ Leo shouts. ‘Lots of stick insects!’
‘A hamster,’ Hugo says.
‘No, I want a cat,’ says Matilda.
The children are excited, but Marie-Louise is not smiling. ‘Animals have to be looked after,’ she says.
‘But we
will
look after them!’
‘They have to be looked after all the time. And what happens when there’s nobody here?’
‘Then they can live here on their own, in a cage,’ says Matilda with a smile. ‘We’ll just lock them in with loads of food and water!’
Marie-Louise still isn’t smiling; she shakes her head. ‘Animals shouldn’t be left locked up.’
That evening Jan is alone with two of the children, and they both fall asleep quickly. From this week it is only Leo and Mira who will be staying overnight; Matilda now has a foster family who pick her up at five o’clock each day. There is an elderly woman and a man in a grey cap; they seem friendly and reliable. Jan can only hope this is true. But how can you know? He thinks back to Rettig’s comment on the patient who killed himself:
He was quiet and pleasant, but his extra head wasn’t nice at all
.
We have to be brave enough to trust people. Don’t we? Jan is very trustworthy – except for those few minutes at night when he leaves the sleeping children alone and takes the lift up to the hospital.
He does it again this evening, his heart pounding. The memory of hearing someone coming down in the lift and walking out through the pre-school lingers on, but nothing has happened since, and he is trying hard to forget that night.
His pulse rate increases in the empty visitors’ room, because there is a new envelope waiting for him under the sofa cushions with the
instruction
OPEN THIS AND POST CONTENTS! Jan would like to open the envelope in the staffroom at the Dell, but he can’t take the risk; it’s twenty to ten, and any minute now Hanna will be arriving to take over.
Sure enough, she comes in from the cold at ten to ten.
‘Everything OK?’ Strands of blonde hair have escaped from beneath her woolly hat, and her cheeks are glowing; she seems unusually exhilarated.
Jan just nods to her and pulls on his jacket. ‘They went off at about half-seven. Things are much calmer with just the two of them.’
He has nothing more to say to Hanna, and picks up his rucksack containing the hidden envelope – but suddenly he realizes he still has one of the key cards in his back pocket. He closed the door leading to the basement when he came back from the visitors’ room, but forgot to return it to the kitchen drawer.
Idiot
.
He turns around. ‘I think I forgot something …’
‘What?’ Hanna asks.
But he is already in the kitchen.
‘Did you forget to put back the card?’ Hanna is right behind him, still wearing her leather coat and woolly hat. Her cheeks are not quite so red now.
‘Yes …’ Jan closes the drawer and straightens up. ‘This afternoon, after the last handover.’
‘I’ve done that too.’
Jan doesn’t know if she really believes him, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He wishes her goodnight and sets off home. At least he hasn’t forgotten the envelope from the hospital; it is safely hidden in his bag.
As soon as he gets in his fingers rip open the envelope. His hands are trembling as he sorts through the letters on the kitchen table. It isn’t nerves, but anticipation. He dare not believe that there will be a reply from Rami already, but—
Yes, there is a letter addressed to Jan Larsson, at his old address. Rettig has let it through, if he noticed it at all.
Jan picks it up and puts it to one side. He gathers up the remaining twenty-three letters and places them on the hall table; he will go out and post them late tonight. But first of all he opens his own letter.
There is just one sheet of white paper inside, with three sentences firmly printed in pencil, and no signature:
THE SQUIRREL WANTS TO GET OVER THE FENCE.
THE SQUIRREL WANTS TO JUMP OFF THE WHEEL.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Jan places the letter on the table in front of him. Then he fetches a sheet of paper and sits down to write a reply. But what should he call her? Alice? Maria? Or Rami? In the end he writes just a few short sentences, as neatly and legibly as possible:
I want to be free, I want to be a sunbeam you can hang a clean sheet on. I am a mouse hiding in the forest, I am a lighthouse-keeper in a building made of stone, I am a shepherd who cares for lost children
.
My name is Jan
.
I was your neighbour fifteen years ago
.
Do you remember me?
That is all he writes for now; he can’t send a letter to Rami anyway until it is time for the next delivery.
Rami must remember where they were neighbours, and when. She must remember those days in the Unit.
Jan has worn long-sleeved shirts and jumpers ever since. He pulls up his right sleeve now and looks at the faint pink lines following the veins. His own mark, his memory of his schooldays.
He could just as easily have pulled up his left sleeve; the razor blade has left long scars on both arms.
The Unit
The first thing Jan heard when he woke up was sorrowful music.
Slow guitar chords in a minor key. They sounded close, they were coming from the other side of the wall, and they just kept on and on. Someone was sitting there playing, the same simple chords over and over again.
Jan was lying in a bed, a sturdy bed with rough sheets. He opened his eyes and saw a broad bedstead made of stainless steel. A hospital bed.
The walls around his bed were high and white. He was in a hospital room.
He listened and listened to the guitar music, unable to move; there was no strength in his arms and legs. His stomach and his head were throbbing.
His throat remembered tubes – soft tubes worming their way down to suck out the mess in his guts. The taste of bile, the smell of sour milk.
That’s what happens when you have your stomach pumped
. It was terrible. His empty stomach was aching and felt like a balloon, pushing up towards his throat. He wanted to be sick, but he didn’t have the strength.
He heard voices approaching, but closed his eyes and disappeared once more.
The next time Jan woke up, the guitar music had stopped. He closed his eyes again, and when he eventually looked up a tall man with long hair and a brown beard was leaning over him.
He looked like Jesus, dressed in a T-shirt with a yellow smiley on the front.
‘How are you feeling, Jan?’ His voice echoed in the bare room. ‘My name is Jörgen … Can you hear me?’
‘Jörgen …’ Jan whispered.
‘That’s it, Jörgen. I’m a nurse here. Are you OK?’
He wasn’t OK, but nodded anyway.
‘Your mum and dad have gone home,’ said the man. ‘But they’re coming back. Do you remember their names?’
Jan didn’t say anything; he was thinking. It was strange. He could remember Mum and Dad’s voices going on and on, but not their names.
‘No?’ said Jörgen. ‘What about your name, then? What’s your name?’
‘Jan … Hauger.’
‘Good – well done, Jan. Would you like to have a shower?’
Jan stiffened in his bed.
No shower
. He shook his head.
‘OK … Try to get a little more sleep then, Jan.’
Jörgen floated backwards, away from the bed and out of the shimmering room.
Time passed. Jan heard a clicking sound. When he moved his head he could see that the door of his room was ajar. Something was moving out there. An animal? No. A pale face was looking in at him: a tall, slender girl of about his own age, with chalk-white hair and brown eyes. She stood there staring at him, her expression neither friendly nor malicious.
Jan swallowed; his mouth was dry. He tried to raise his head. ‘Where am I?’
‘In the Psych Unit.’
‘In the what?’
The girl looked at him meaningfully. ‘The Unit.’
Jan said nothing. He didn’t understand. The girl didn’t say
anything
more either; she just carried on looking at him, then suddenly she raised her arms and pointed a little black box at him. There was a pop and a flash.
He blinked. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Hang on a minute.’ She pulled a square of paper out of the camera, took two steps into the room and threw it down next to his pillow. ‘There you go,’ she said quietly.
Jan looked at the piece of paper, picked it up and watched as a picture started to appear. It was one of those photographs that developed itself, and he saw a pale face and a thin body gradually beginning to take shape. It was him, lonely and afraid in a hospital bed.
‘Thanks,’ he said. But when he looked up at the door, the girl had disappeared.
There was silence for a minute or so, and then the guitar began to play again.
Jan was feeling slightly better, and sat up. The main light was switched off and the blinds were closed, but he could see that the bed was standing in a small, bare room – almost a cell – with a desk and a chair on which his jeans and T-shirt lay neatly folded. His shoes were on the floor, but somebody had removed the laces.
His arms were itchy; he touched them and felt the bandages. They were wrapped around his forearms, as if he were an Egyptian mummy.
Someone had saved him and now he had woken up, even though he wanted to go on sleeping. Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping in the Unit.
The Unit?
He found out a couple of days later that it was an abbreviation, a nickname. At some point the full name,
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit
, had been shortened to save time.
Whatever it was called, the Unit was a place for those who were disturbed and those who were lost.