Is there a fate waiting for me that will leave new marks on my hands? A new country, new people. I can be anyone here. I have started writing in earnest.
I tear the paper tablecloth between us into tiny, tiny pieces. The words are to be found in the pieces. I pull them apart. I’m shaking and restless, stand up then sit down. Bang my head on the table, repeatedly. Then I think of something. ‘I’m good at skiing. All categories,’ I tell them. I want to save myself. ‘Your friend here says that you haven’t slept for three nights, is that right?’ I nod, gather up a handful of what was once the tablecloth between us and cram the pieces into my mouth.
I have to stay at the hospital. I just want to get some sleeping pills and go back to the folk high school. Have got hung up on the words ‘something to help you sleep’. But they’ll only give me sleeping pills if I stay. I’m ushered into the day room. Think it’s empty, but the TV is on, in the middle of a Norén play. The words boom out of the actor’s mouth. I haven’t a clue what he’s saying, but I’m drawn in and copy him. I move my mouth and say the words slowly. ‘How are you?’ ‘Like normal, only worse.’ I copy their voices and there are no words in my head other than those that belong to the actors. They shout and I shout. I don’t know why. One day I’m going to write a play myself.
I start to hit the TV. I start to kick. The room is filled with nurses and I’m hauled out.
There are more patients in the dormitory. Sleeping lumps under duvets. Then they wake up and walk around and talk manically or cry. There are nurses in the room all the time. See through. I am the only one alive. I am half deaf. Don’t know if anyone is talking to me. I’m in a secret, unreal space, like a dream. ‘How are you?’ ‘Like normal, just worse.’ I grin. No one knows me and I recognise no one. Are the others real? Is everything a stage set, a play where I’m supposed to feel uncertain?
They take a blood test and a urine test. I deny that I’ve smoked hash and say nothing about the fact that I’ve also taken LSD. They whisper and say that they know. What do they know about me? I’m surprised that everyone is speaking Swedish and that I’ve moved here. They don’t understand my Norwegian. I wave my poems around, but don’t find any readers. I’ve got sores in my armpits. Think it’s due to all the drinking. I pick off the scabs and the sores persist. Every day a nurse cleans them with alcohol. I’m not even allowed to touch the bottle. They pour it onto some cotton wool, then lock away the bottle immediately. I feel like a ghost, I exist but I’m not visible.
At breakfast, food is served to everyone individually on a metal tray with separate sections, like when you fly with Aeroflot. I get buttermilk for breakfast. I’m used to having bread. Notice that some other patients get eggs. I take the buttermilk for a week before I ask why I don’t even get a small slice of bread for breakfast, or perhaps an egg. Even the dining room smells like the inside of an Aeroflot plane. Maybe I’m on my way somewhere.
‘You filled out a breakfast menu when you were admitted,’ is the answer. I feel upset and unsure. Didn’t even know my own eating habits when I was admitted. How could I have ticked something I don’t like? I haven’t been with myself at all. I don’t know who I am and I can’t trust myself. But I get bread and an egg the next day.
I’m sectioned and put in a locked ward. The others’ inner life disturbs me. The patients and staff scarcely move and I don’t know who’s who. I also move very slowly. My thoughts get jammed and seem to stick together only then to be reshuffled. Sentences are broken into pieces. Cut in two. All sounds are amplified and bombard me as if they were messengers of doom. One beautiful day we’ll all come loose from everything.
I don’t talk much. And not many people talk to me. I sit beside a young guy who tells me that he’s there for an amphetamine detox. Am I on some kind of detox? No one has told me. He spends days drawing Chinese characters with elegant hand movements. One day he’s suddenly gone.
I don’t know who to sit beside with my metal tray in the dining room. Then an old man with a beard and kind blue eyes comes and sits down beside me. His good-natured appearance reminds me a little of my father. But is he as unpredictable as him?
‘We’ve met before,’ he says. ‘Don’t think so,’ I reply. ‘I don’t know anyone in Sweden.’
‘I lived a normal life with my wife and children before I got the third eye.’
I look at him, see two eyes, but incredibly also perceive the third eye. Perhaps it’s grown over, I think. ‘Ended in divorce,’ he says. ‘I’ve got the third eye and the shaman’s touch. The psychiatrists don’t understand it. It’s an unusual diagnosis which they change all the time.’
I get up in the middle of his story. I want to listen, but can’t. ‘Keep on fighting,’ he says. I keep on fighting.
He sits down next to me again the next morning.
‘Have you heard about the Mayan Calendar?’ I think I know, but don’t know. ‘It runs until 2012. After that there’s something new. Then things will get sorted.’ He laughs a little. ‘Things will get sorted is something I’ve decided, you see.’
The nurse comes round with the medicine and interrupts us. I take what she gives me and swallow. When she’s gone, the man spits out his pills. ‘They’ll have to think of something other than pills. I just keep them under my tongue and then spit them out as soon as the nurse has gone again. What do you take?’ ‘Haldol and Trilafon and Cisordinol.’ ‘Do you know what Trilafon is often called? Trill ifrån, or roll away. Watch out. Keep your Norwegian accent. It will make you well again.’
I think about the Norwegian Samí who read my palms and terrified me. This man doesn’t frighten me. He can have as many eyes as he likes. He still doesn’t threaten me. He doesn’t claim to know anything about me that I don’t know. I’m sure he’s just like my dad, kind and funny, ill and well.
He sits opposite me at breakfast the next day and the next again. His eyes are heavy and his body is heavy. ‘I dreamt I was out in space last night. New stars were being lit,’ he says in a thick voice. Then the tears fall. They slip silently down his old face. ‘The scientists don’t understand. They know too little about spirituality.’
I reach out my hand and take his. He squeezes my hand with the hand he’s just dried his tears with. I get some of his wet tears in my hand. But can’t cry myself. Don’t understand what’s so sad.
I’m shaking. Jonathan asks me to lie down on the sofa. He sits down beside me on a chair. I close my eyes. ‘Concentrate on your toes,’ he says. ‘Just be there. Then your feet. Then your ankles, knees. Buttocks, thighs, abdomen. Fingers, palms.’
He goes through my entire body and I feel small parts of myself one by one. ‘You can do this yourself before you go to sleep. Focus. Relax.’
I get up slowly and I’m not shaking any more.
I don’t see the autumn that is blazing outside. But then there is suddenly the opportunity of an outing. I can go swimming with the others. I’ve been inside for over a month and not been allowed out. Except for some short walks in the grounds with staff.
No one knows that I’m here. Not even me. I weigh nothing on the inside. I listen and practise speaking Swedish. New words creep in. I get stuck on fåtölj, hoj and doja. I’m sleeping better and better. Even though I wake up every morning and wonder where I am, everything is a little clearer now.
We drive into Uppsala in one of the hospital cars. I think that we’re going to the library. It says BAD in big letters on the wall of the building, which transforms into ABC in my mind. I’m going to be forced to borrow a book. An easy reader, like in primary school. We hire swimsuits, but mine is far too big. I dive in and my breasts jump out. I quickly get out of the water, say to one of the nurses that I want to swap swimsuit and run down to the changing rooms. There, I get dressed and then leave the building that I still think is the library.
I walk for several blocks. I wander for hours, doing the same circuit. When it gets dark, I go into a restaurant. I have no money, order a glass of water and say that I’m waiting
for a friend. I sit next to a family that are celebrating someone’s engagement. They’re laughing and having fun. After a while they ask if I want to move a bit closer. And I want to. They ask if I would like anything to eat. ‘I’m called Eli,’ I say. And yes, I am hungry. They have ordered a selection of small dishes that everyone can just help themselves to. They come from Poland. ‘Would you like a beer?’ ‘Yes, please.’ One more? Yes, please.
I drink and chat with the Polish family. I sit beside the mother. She’s fat and wearing a flowery dress and pearl necklace. She speaks broken Swedish, but smiles good-naturedly. ‘Marek, Marek,’ she says and blows a kiss. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’ Marek is her son. He radiates bliss from where he sits next to his pretty fiancée and orders more beers for the whole table. When the restaurant closes, they say goodbye to me outside. Everyone gives me a hug. I’m not used to being hugged.
I have no idea what to do or where to go. I know no one in Uppsala, have no home to go to. The folk high school is miles away. I walk in a circle, as I did earlier in the day, or rather, a large square. I look at the people who belong here. How will I get out? I change route. Only one part of the town exists for me at any one time. I have to take possession of it. Maybe the whole of Uppsala collapsed and was raised again as a labyrinth while I was eating and drinking.
I can’t sit down on this cold November night. I have to save myself. But how? God, where are you? What should I pray for? The wind blows. The streets are empty now. And in the midst of a whirl of leaves and rubbish, I see what I think is an animal do a somersault. I’m frightened, don’t know which direction to run. It’s a white plastic bag. I kick it. Pick up a branch and wave the bag around in the air. It frightened me and now I’m going to hurt it. It doesn’t work.
I want to go home, somewhere. Everything is so eerily silent. As if I was walking amongst paintings. It’s the witching hour. I’m completely exhausted. I haven’t seen anyone for ages. I turn into a side street. There’s a lone taxi standing there and the light on the roof is on.
I go up to the car and ask the driver if he can take me to the mental hospital for free. I’m a patient there, but don’t know where I am and have no money. He’s an immigrant like me, and at first I don’t understand when he says I should jump in. He just looks at me. I’m shaking. ‘Could you just point out which direction I should go?’ I try. Then he opens the door. I hesitate, he’s opened the door to the passenger seat. Should I sit in the back? ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’m just sitting here resting. Not a good night. Not for you either, eh?’ ‘Yeah, not bad.’
My right leg is shaking. It won’t stop. And I whisper: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ It’s Erik who’s talking. He’s saying: ‘Get out of the car. It might get lost.’ I stay where I am. It’s good to be sitting in the warmth. The driver looks at me. ‘I ran over a fox cub,’ he says. ‘Flat as a pancake, it was. Its guts had kind of spilled out and lay in a bloody pile on the road. It was so small. And now you.’
He starts the car. ‘The mental hospital,’ he says. ‘Do they look after you there?’ ‘Yes,’ I reply. Look after me. I don’t know what that means. I’m just there. ‘In Gambia, where I come from, we look after any mad people in the family ourselves. What does your mum say?’ ‘She doesn’t know that I’m there.’ The dark, kind man looks at me. He takes one hand off the wheel and puts it on my shoulder. ‘Then you should tell her,’ he says. ‘You should tell your mother.’ I stiffen. He removes his hand, but it was good while it was there.
When we arrive at the mental hospital, I don’t know where we should stop, in front of which building. I’ve only been inside. I get out and say thank you. The taxi drives off. I watch the lights disappear.
All the doors are locked. I start at the first building and ring on the bell. The voice that answers doesn’t recognise me and won’t let me in. It’s cold. It’ll soon be dawn. Finally a door opens and a nurse comes down to get me. At first he says that he shouldn’t really let me in, as he can smell on my breath that I’ve been drinking. Then he says that I’ve been sectioned and that I left the swimming pool without permission.
We take the lift up to a unit I recognise. ‘You ran away,’ he says. I nod. ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know. I wanted to get out.’ ‘You’ll get no more leave for a while now.’
I go into the smoking room. There are two nurses there, playing chess. I want them to talk to me. I try to say something, they don’t give me much attention. But they sit staring at a chess board with great concentration. I am just air. I look out through the window, see the day dawning. I smoke a cigarette and stand beside the nurses. There’s a strange silence. As if someone invisible has come into the room. Something is going to happen.
Then I kick the chess board and send all the pieces flying. The air can do that. To see if anyone is alive. I grab a chair and try to smash the glass door out onto the corridor. It’s unbreakable. I hit it and hit it, but it doesn’t even crack. I throw myself at the door with the chair in my arms. The alarm goes off. Suddenly a whole lot of nurses appear and tackle me to the floor. I hit and kick. I’m not going to end up like the little fox cub, beside myself in a pool of blood.
There are too many of them. My trousers are pulled down. I’m given several injections while I’m lying on the floor. I’m lifted up and restrained on a bed. Thick leather straps round my arms and legs and stomach.
I don’t wake up for forty-eight hours. When I try to open my eyes, everything feels glued. My throat is dry and my jaw is stiff. I can’t talk properly, my tongue keeps getting in the way. I’m terrified. This has happened to me, this has happened to me, echoes round and round my head. My whole body is stiff. I’ve been broken and changed. They’ve injected me into a permanently different state. A strange unknown body. I will never be like normal again.
A girl is lying whimpering in the bed beside me. Her father is there the whole time. I think she’s tried to commit suicide. The telephone out in the corridor starts to ring. I think it’s Mum. Something jumps inside me. What if she can see through the receiver? She mustn’t know about anything. I’m invisible and alone. It has to be that way. I’ve been changed forever.
It was Erik who wanted to break the glass door. He told me to do it. But I can’t get out of bed. I try, but I’m unsteady. Lie down again. A broken glass door would replace the pain. What is inside would flow out into the shards of glass. That’s what he thought. But now it’s me who aches all over. Who has been broken. It’s almost like the first time I saw a child who was drunk. A twelve-year-old girl. I couldn’t imagine that she would ever be sober and normal again.
The doctor apologises and says that in the chaos that ensued, someone managed to give me too high a dose, but that I’ll be given something for the side effects. I get more injections. I don’t understand why I can’t use my muscles like I usually do.
Why does no one tell me that I will be normal again? That I’ll regain the ability to speak and move again. I lie petrified in my bed and wonder how I am going to explain to the others at home that I’ve changed. That I fought like a baby fox against a car and ended up outside myself.
In my dream I’m doing an enormous jigsaw puzzle. I’m at home with Mum. She says that maths is the queen of all science. ‘Some people think there’s no use for maths. But I think that in the same way that we solve maths problems at school, we can later solve all problems in life. Remember, there’s always a solution. With a bit of effort and patience, you’ll find it. It’s the same with everything, even a jigsaw puzzle,’ she says.
We each put down one piece at a time. Pictures grow in the picture. From all my most secret nightmares. Things that I don’t want to tell Mum about. We don’t say anything. I see what it’s going to depict, it grows into a picture of a bound-up girl. I try to put down another piece. One that will protect and conceal. But it too fits, fits perfectly into the awful whole.
‘My advice for sorting the pieces is to divide them up into corner pieces, side pieces and normal pieces,’ Mum explains. ‘They’re t
he ones there are most of. Then there are all the irregular pieces. And there might be some even stranger pieces, thicker and thinner. I think of them as odd.’
I look around the living room, at all the things that we children have made. My drawing from the newspaper of the four faces from different parts of the world that became a stamp and the front page.
‘It’s you who’s odd,’ says Erik. ‘It’s you who sits there and is different. The body is the I’s outside.’ I say nothing. Mum says nothing. I put down the last piece and the picture is complete. ‘Now we can destroy it,’ I say.
‘Hearing voices is not sick, in itself. It’s about how you deal with them. People have heard voices since time immemorial. Philosophers, wise people, and artists,’ Jonathan says.
‘And mad people,’ I say.
Jonathan laughs. ‘I’ve got a much freer attitude to voices than you. I don’t think it’s sick,’ he says.
‘It’s your job,’ I say.
I stay in hospital for a few weeks more. Am given Antabuse for my alcoholism and anti-psychotic medication. I ask for talking therapy, but don’t get it. I really feel that I need to talk to someone. I both want to and don’t want to. There’s something I don’t understand. Something that’s there, pressing me, confusing me.
Back at the folk high school, a girl gives me all her attention. She’s there all the time. She’s from Stockholm, popular, smart and the most attractive person at the school. What does she want with me? She asks what I did in hospital, what it was like and how I am now. Her name is Lolo and she tells me that she’s started to dream about me.
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