‘It sounds like you see your hypochondria as more of an asset than a handicap.’
‘Yes and no, of course. All handicaps come with some benefit. In the way that you deaf people are really good at lipreading, for example.’
‘I’m not deaf,’ said Eskilsson, baffled and verging on annoyed.
‘Oh no? But then how come you are so good at reading lips.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You said you were before,’ said Hanell with a blank expression. He spoke with the nonchalance that belongs to only the supremely confident.
‘No, I didn’t, it was you who said that.’
Hanell chuckled superciliously. ‘How could I know that you are good at lipreading if you hadn’t said so yourself?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You were the one who said it,’ said Eskilsson.
Hanell buckled under Eskilsson’s persistence. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Still, strange. My memory’s playing tricks on me, it’s probably the onset of Alzheimer’s.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Do you think so?’ Hanell looked worriedly at Eskilsson.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Eskilsson smiled convincingly.
‘No, I thought as much. Extremely clear-sighted of you. Extremely clear-sighted.’
Hanell squeezed the tennis ball with an increasing frequency. For a moment there was silence, and the synthetic sound of the ball being scrunched together and then expanding, scrunched together and expanding filled the room.
‘You have substantial experience of top positions with various interest groups. Why does this role interest you? You would be able to get a job anywhere, from what I can understand.’
‘It fascinates me, this hypochondria. It’s somehow in the grey zone between… I don’t know, you’re different, quite simply. I see it as a major challenge. You’ve surely got a way to go? To really make a proper breakthrough?’
‘That was diplomatically put. It is true, we are relatively invisible. But we make a big difference for a lot of people, I have to say. We receive a huge number of letters of gratitude. And a number of questions too, from people who experience that they are not taken seriously by healthcare institutions. The other day I received a question from a member who had a swelling of the hallux. In that case we were able to recommend a good doctor for a consultation. That isn’t something we would normally do, but we try to give the best advice possible.’
‘What’s it like giving advice when you yourselves are so deeply, how should I put it, pessimistic?’
‘Realistic,’ corrected Hanell. ‘If there is a ninety-nine percent chance that the condition is harmless, you’ll think that you can rule out the worst. But in my world, one percent is one percent, no more or less. That is the difference between you and me. The problem is that there are lots of one percents. One percent MS here, three percent leukaemia there. You quickly end up over a hundred percent.’
‘Is that a realistic way to look at it, do you think?’
‘Statistics are statistics. There’s nothing I can do about it,’ said Hanell. ‘But in any case. You see this mission as a challenge? What would you do to put hypochondria on the map?’
‘There are many options. It’s about patience, I think. And I would probably want to get a feel for the organisation before giving suggestions for drastic action.’
‘Do you not have any ideas already now?’ Hanell put the ball down and rubbed at his wrist.
Eskilsson felt his way forward. ‘I think that you should be working with a real focus on parliament. Maybe educating caregivers in what hypochondria actually involves. Because I understand from you that there is a lack of knowledge.’
‘Exactly. Very good,’ said Hanell. He lowered his voice. ‘But I should tell you what I think I’ve ended up with. For real.’ He looked distraught.
‘Yes?’ said Eskilsson.
‘Carcinoma. Cancer, as you laypeople say. Of the pancreas.’ He stroked his belly.
‘What makes you think that?’ said Eskilsson.
‘Nothing really. That’s the problem. The sinister thing about this illness is that you’re completely asymptomatic for a long time. And that’s just what it’s like, I feel absolutely healthy, have done for much longer than usual. I don’t have any symptoms. Yet. Apart from that thing with my nuts.’
‘But you can’t look at it like that?’ said Eskilsson. He looked around. ‘That’s the same as if I pointed at that chair and said that if there was an invisible cat there, then the chair would look empty. The chair looks empty – therefore there’s an invisible cat sitting on it!’
Hanell’s expression contorted in fear. He flew up out of his seat, jumped up and stood on it.
‘Oh Jesus, oh Jesus.’ He was hyperventilating. ‘To think that I’ve never thought of that. Get it out! Get it out!’
‘Take it easy,’ said Eskilsson. ‘That’s exactly what I was trying to say, that you can’t reason like that.’
‘Out! Out! Schoo!’ Hanell grabbed a large pencil sharpener, one of those with a crank, and threw it at the chair but missed. ‘I’m not sitting down again before you’ve made sure that it’s gone.’
Eskilsson sighed and went over to the chair, slowly. ‘Sch, sch, sch,’ he reached out his hand, crept forward. With a swift movement, he grabbed the invisible cat.
‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes, I’ve got it! Can you open the door?’
Hanell went past Eskilsson and the cat sideways with his back to the wall, the whole time with an eye on the invisible beast which was apparently trying to escape from Eskilsson’s grasp. Hanell lifted his foot and kicked the door handle so that the door opened. Eskilsson carried the cat out, put it down outside, backed into the room again and quickly shut the door. They sat down again.
‘I hate cats. Thank you for your quick thinking,’ said Hanell. ‘How long can it have been sitting there, do you think?’
Eskilsson shrugged. ‘A week, tops.’
‘A week? Good grief! But not longer, right?’
‘No, not longer, I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’
Hanell started laughing, relieved that the danger had been averted. Then he pointed at Eskilsson. ‘You should have seen your scared face when you caught it! Haha!’
Esikilsson also forced out a laugh. Hanell reached his hands out in a cat catcher gesture and tried to look terrified. ‘Sch, sch, sch, hahaha!’ He breathed out, ‘Dear, oh dear… no I really shouldn’t laugh at you. I have a certain understanding for how it could have been unpleasant. I was also a little on edge if I’m honest.’
‘Were you really?’ said Eskilsson, not without irony.
‘It was mainly that it was so unexpected.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a good quality, that,’ said Hanell and pointed at Eskilsson. ‘That you have the ability to see things that are not entirely obvious. You’ve really got your head screwed on.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’ll be important here. Where were we?’
‘You were talking about being asymptomatic.’
Hanell immediately looked crestfallen. ‘Oh. Yes, right. I maybe have a year left, possibly two. I just wish I could achieve something of value in that time.’
‘I’m sure you have plenty of good years left.’
Hanell laughed sarcastically. ‘Yeah, right. Your optimism is really infectious. Infectious like Ebola.’ He softened his tone. ‘Which is of course a terrible illness,’ he muttered and made a note.
He took a napkin out of a dispenser on the table and blew his nose, blowing several times before he moved the tissue away from his face and studied its contents. First from a distance, then up close. ‘But what the hell?’ he whispered. His eyes were only centimetres from the tissue, he looked like he was trying to read the smallest print on a bank note. Without folding the tissue together, he laid it on the table, with the contents facing up, slid open a desk drawer and pulled out a square, w
hite metal box with a red cross on. He took the lid off and started to dig around in the box, took out a nasal spray, held it in front of himself and stared at it. Looked at the snotty paper on the table, then back at the spray again. He sighed and put it back in the box, continued to root around until he found a new nasal spray, a smaller bottle this time, in lighter material. He read the label for a few seconds, took the stopper out and pressed twice in each nostril, put the spray back, the lid on and the box back in the desk drawer.
Eskilsson had been studying Hanell’s ritual. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no, nothing, probably. Nothing at all. Haha.’ His laugh seemed mainly intended to be for the purpose of calming Hanell himself.
‘Can I ask you something?’ said Eskilsson. ‘What is it you are afraid of, really, I mean? Deep down?’
‘Afraid?’ said Hanell.
‘Yes. You’re afraid of dying, I assume? A hypochondriac is presumably never afraid of getting, I don’t know, a common cold, for example? It’s always serious illnesses that you are worried about?’
‘We all have to walk that path. There is nothing strange about that,’ said Hanell and folded his arms. He looked past Eskilsson.
‘Yes, everyone has to die. Do you struggle to accept that?’
‘Are you a psychologist?’ asked Hanell. ‘Kent Eskilsson, authorised psychologist. You should have a name badge like that.’
‘I am actually a trained therapist, but that’s not why I’m asking.’
‘Well, well,’ said Hanell, still with his arms folded. He rocked in his chair.
‘I’m just trying to learn a bit about you. If I am going to work for your organisation, I want to get some insight into how you operate.’
‘Good. That’s positive,’ admitted Hanell unwillingly. ‘And of course, I have had a luxated left patella a few times and that, I can tell you, hasn’t given me any major concerns, even if the pain was intense. So you do perhaps have a point with that about… you know.’
‘Death?’
‘Call it what you will.’
‘Then I’ll call it death.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Hanell said and waved his hand.
‘What’s it like when others talk about their symptoms? Do you see such severe implications with them as you do with your own ailments? Or can you look at it more objectively?’
‘As I said, I always look at the situation objectively. One percent is one percent. Ten percent is ten percent. It’s really quite incredible that anyone is alive at all, when you think about all the dangers around every corner.’
‘Yes. But the question is what is worst, to fear the thousands of ways in which you can die, or to actually die in one of those ways,’ said Eskilsson.
‘That sounds like a quote.’
‘It probably is,’ said Eskilsson and smiled.
Hanell deepened his voice to sound like a man in a movie trailer. ‘Kent Eskilsson. Authorised psychologist and philosopher.’
Eskilsson looked troubled.
‘No, no,’ said Hanell, ‘don’t take it the wrong way, it was well-meant. I like it.’
‘Thank you.’
But he couldn’t stop himself. ‘The philosopheeer!’ he boomed with an abyssal voice. He stood up and pretended to shoot an m/45 in slow-motion, his body shaking from the force of the violent weapon. ‘G-g-g-g-g-g! The philosopheeer.’ He plucked an imaginary hand grenade from his waist, pulled out the pin with his teeth and threw the grenade, all in slow-motion. A few seconds later the grenade exploded and sent shockwaves through the room. Hanell collapsed down into his chair, as if dead.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Eskilsson. ‘I get it.’
‘No offence,’ laughed Hanell when he came round from his war injuries.
‘It’s fine,’ said Eskilsson. ‘I understand that you struggle to be serious when you’re talking about these matters. Getting to the root of the problem. At an abstract level, it works, life and death and sickness, but when we get to talking about you, it becomes harder. It’s absolutely fine.’
Hanell started to stroke his wispy beard and repeated Eskilsson’s words with an even voice. ‘Get to the root of the problem. Be serious. Life and de-ath.’ He laughed. ‘Chill out a bit, Freud.’
Eskilsson shook his head and smiled. ‘It’s absolutely fine as far as I’m concerned. From my perspective, I can say that I would be happy to work with you. Even if you are a bit crazy. Or maybe because of that. I think I’m needed here.’
‘Never was a truer word spoken!’ said Hanell. ‘We’ve long been looking for a philosopher. Someone who can show us the truth, an enlightened individual. A Plato, a Hegel, a… I don’t know any more philosophers.’
‘Kant? Nietzsche?’
‘A Kant, a Nietzsche! That’s what we are after.’
Eskilsson continued shaking his head. Hanell went quiet. ‘You will have to learn to put up with us,’ said Hanell, back to being serious. ‘I appreciate your honesty. We all have our problems here. But who doesn’t? Everyone is crazy when you start to dig a little.’
‘You’re probably right.’
Hanell stroked his paunch. ‘I’ll put this to the board and hopefully you’ll get an answer within a week. The sooner you can start, the better.’
‘Good. I can probably start straight after the New Year,’ said Eskilsson and got up.
Hanell moved as if to get up but suddenly went white in the face. He pointed in front of him, his eyes wide.
‘The chair!’ he shouted. ‘It still looks empty!’
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