A Fool, Free

by Beate Grimsrud

  Kassandra isn’t answering her mobile phone or my text messages. I start to wonder if she’s alive. I text her again and again just to give me a sign of life, she doesn’t need to say how she is. After a month, I get an answer: ‘Hi Eli, feel a bit guilty that I haven’t said so before, but you’re sending texts to the wrong person. I’m from Stavanger and I’m alive.’ I send a ‘thank you’ to the stranger from Stavanger who’s received all my worried texts. I’ve changed mobile phone and had to put in all the new numbers and addresses myself. I check on my old mobile, I’ve put a seven in the country code instead of a six and ended up in Norway instead of Sweden.

  It’s midnight and I write a long text to Kassandra, explaining everything. And again, ask for a sign of life. Not long after there’s a pling on my phone. Another text from the stranger. ‘Where in Sweden do you live?’ I reply that I’ve been living in Stockholm for over twenty years now. I go and get ready for bed, it’s nearly one o’clock. Another pling. Maybe it’s Kassandra? It’s the stranger. ‘What do you do?’ ‘Writer,’ I reply. ‘And you?’ Not long after, another pling. I’m not expecting it to be Kassandra any more. Curious, I open the text. ‘Hi Eli, been working for a Norwegian oil company for twenty years.’ It’s nearly two o’clock now.

  I don’t know what to reply. What are your favourite books? Which football team do you support? I support Tottenham. My body is hopping. Maybe this is the person for me. I don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman. Which is good. I can’t express myself. Have you read Dostoevsky, Beckett, Woolf, Janet Frame, Djuna Barnes? I like male dancers. I’ve got it now. I write: ‘Do you ski?’ I don’t have to wait long for the answer: ‘Yes, downhill. But not very often. Do you?’ I reply: ‘Cross-country, downhill and jump. I’ve slept in a snow cave many times.’ The stranger writes: ‘I’ve never slept in a snow cave.’ S/he didn’t ask any questions, so I’ll have to do the asking. It’s nearly three in the morning now. I lie there, making up questions and answers. I should take the initiative. But what does that look like?

  Perhaps I could invite him/her to come on a snow cave adventure. Should I take Torvald with us? He can remember how to make a safe snow cave. Hild used to take us, her little brothers and sisters, with her when she went on a date. But they never worked out. I don’t send any more texts, or receive any. But have saved the number in case of future sleepless Saturday nights.

  Sometimes, everything in your flat breaks at the same time. Even my new mobile phone. Have to go back to the shop and complain. I’ve just had my hair dyed black at the hairdresser, and the colour has ruined my pillow case. I have to go back and complain. I can’t cope. Everything builds up into a storm inside me. It’s night-time. They’re only small things, but they gnaw at me. I can’t sleep. The bulb has blown. I can’t seem to get a single channel on TV. I can’t cope.

  I get the blue glasses and start to smash them on the kitchen floor. The first glass doesn’t break, I have to throw it again with more force. Then I sit on the floor in the middle of all the shards and cut my wrist. Along the vein. The pieces of glass are thick and sharp. I go into the bathroom and look for a razor blade, find a razor but can’t get the blade out. I only manage seven superficial cuts, but the blood still seeps through my sleeve.

  I ring the unit. I need someone to talk to. Jonathan, my therapist, is on holiday in Cape Town. I can’t cope. One of the night staff, who I know well, answers the phone. He’s normally pretty calm, but either something I say or the way I say it makes him uneasy. He asks me to come in. I don’t want to. ‘You come here instead.’ ‘You need to see a doctor.’ ‘I don’t need to see a doctor.’ He calls back fifteen minutes later. ‘Come in,’ he says.

  I go out into the night. My white top is now dark with blood. It turns out that it’s Manne, my doctor, who’s on duty. I say that I can’t stay because I want to smash the glass doors between the kitchen and dining room with a chair. If I stay, I’ll just break something. I feel the need with my whole body. ‘I would rather not have to section you. But if you don’t stay here of your own free will, I’ll have to. We’ll give you a Zpyrexa injection.’ ‘I don’t want one.’ Eventually I agree to have the injection if I can break one of the glass doors. I have to break something so I can get through to the other side.

  As I understand it, he agrees, but the injection is given with some force. The nurses hold me down so I can’t free myself and break something. They hold me until the Zyprexa takes effect and I fall asleep. I’m much calmer in the morning. But I was tricked, and I didn’t get to break the glass pane.

  I have to go home. It’s my birthday tomorrow and I can’t be here then. My mum will phone. What if she sees me through the telephone’s invisible eye? I go out and sit in the corridor. A real loudmouth walks past. She screams at me. I’m scared, she’s the sort of person you wouldn’t want to meet in the town. The sort you would give a wide berth. The staff are always telling her to be quiet. She’s called Marilyn, she looks like she’s going to a carnival, with soap bubbles in her hair, like a shining crown. A small red dot drawn on her forehead and another on her chin. A yellow shawl, a glittery purple waistcoat and a purple hospital pinafore tied round her waist with the pockets to the back. Big earrings and five necklaces. She storms up to me and grabs my breasts, shouts that I look like a princess or a model. She bows to me and waves her arms in greeting, says she comes from the world’s most famous country. I guess the USA. ‘No, Vietnam.’ Lunatic comes from the word moon. Howling at the moon. But it doesn’t mean that you’re not all there. Just that you express yourself differently. Marilyn talks like a lunatic, dresses like a lunatic, moves like a lunatic. What can she do? How can I and the others in the unit rest and get well when there’s a loudmouth like her around?

  But after only half a day I learn to listen to what she’s actually saying. Her sentences have meaning. In the smoking room, in particular, all the patients are a bit better. There, it’s us and them. There’s no staff watching and we can talk to each other. I’m no longer scared by her flapping movements and invasive hugs. I like her in all her madness, think that she’s quite fun. She’s constantly changing her clothes, creative and colourful combinations, with warpaint on her face.

  She screeches around and the staff are constantly telling her to shush, then she whispers a few words, only to shout again after. She spits and blows her nose in her hands then wipes them on the plants. Then she wants a hug. I have to learn to say no. When we sit on the bench by reception waiting for our night medicine, and the staff have tried to get Marilyn to bed five times, she whispers loudly in my ear, almost spits, that she wants to buy my clothes under the table. I laugh. Three nurses follow her to her room and try once again to get the wired woman to bed. I think how lucky it is that Marilyn is not out in the wind and snow, talking to the air and being ignored by everyone. She’s safe in here and can be herself until it passes. Because it does. I’ve seen so many people come in here in a sorry state and then leave the unit after some weeks or months as a different person. One thing I’m grateful for after all these years, is that I’m no longer prejudiced and am more open to people who are different. There’s always a healthy mind behind all the confusion, you just have to listen.

  The woman in the hoodie sits opposite me in the dining room. The one who wanted to strangle herself with the cord. She’s put on a few more kilos. She sees the dark patches on my sleeve. ‘Have you been cutting yourself?’ ‘Just a bit.’ ‘I was advised to hold two pieces of ice in my hands when I want to cut myself,’ she says. ‘The pain was bloody awful, all the way up to my elbows.’ ‘Did it help?’ ‘No, I still cut myself. Wanted blood.’

  I’m in the smoking room. I’m so scared of the transition from day to night that I make sleep impossible. Deliberately. It’s four in the morning. See that someone has stubbed out a cigarette on the ceiling. A woman in her sixties comes in. She emanates melancholy. ‘I recognise you from the hospital years ago,’ she says. ‘You’re the one who made the bust from medicine cups.’ �
��I recognise you too,’ I say. She sits down. ‘You’ve become an author and film-maker, haven’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘What kind of books do you write?’ ‘Adult fiction.’ ‘You mean porn?’ I laugh. If only I could. ‘And you?’ ‘I live in a collective in the country. If you can call it living. I was going to hang myself the day before yesterday. I had a long scarf, made a noose, got a chair, put the noose round my neck and tied the other end of the scarf to the light fitting on the ceiling. I kicked away the chair and then, crash. I and the light fitting fell straight to the floor. An unsuccessful murder.’ ‘Don’t you mean suicide?’ ‘Yes, murder.’ She nods. Suicide sounds kinder, I think. But don’t know why.

  Marilyn has slept well and is full of vigour again the next day. She hasn’t forgotten that she wants to buy my clothes. Only now she doesn’t want to buy them, but rather to swap her rags, half of which come from the hospital, for my brand new designer clothes, so that we can always remember each other.

  I go into my room and lie down on the bed. I’m anxious, have to ask the staff for help. I’m most worried about how I’m going to get back from Umeå, where I had a reading last night. I ask them to help me book a train ticket on the sleeper. I’m scared that I might sleep in and not get off the train in Stockholm. I didn’t the last time. I woke up as the train was pulling out from Stockholm Central. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ they tell me. ‘You’re not in Umeå, so you don’t need a ticket. You’re in the unit.’

  I go into the smoking room again and Marilyn is sitting there shouting. When she sees me, she gets up and comes over and talks right in my face. In the middle of a tirade about where I buy my clothes because she’s going to go there as well, her top dentures fall out. She carries on slurring, standing there with her dentures in her hand. She wants a cigarette and gets one. Her upper lip hangs down, making her look old and sad. Her teeth have been so brilliant and brightened up her face. She wants me to hold her dentures while she smokes two cigarettes at once. My mental health workers have asked me to use Marilyn to practise saying no. It’s not that easy. Because she wants something from me all the time. She always has an answer, like the princess who always had the last word. ‘We’ll give each other each other’s clothes as a gift instead,’ she says. ‘That means good fortune.’ What is good fortune? I want to write. Maybe that’s good fortune.

  Without wanting to, I sit there with her dentures in my hand. I’m still worrying about the train ticket. About how I can get away from here and who will help me to get off at the right station.

  Jonathan is back from Cape Town. It’s good to see him. He’s seen lions. I tell him I was admitted to hospital again, and that it felt like a defeat. ‘Turn it around,’ he says. ‘I can’t turn it around.’ ‘Yes, you can. You went there voluntarily, you weren’t sectioned. How about that?’ ‘Doesn’t help.’ ‘It wasn’t even a week, before it could be months. You’re getting back on your feet again faster,’ he says. ‘Don’t forget that. Now we’re here. Before we were there.’ He indicates a measurement with his hands. ‘I didn’t sleep last night,’ I say. ‘Go to bed when I’ve left and rest on your laurels.’ ‘I don’t want that kind of laurel, I want the Nobel Prize for literature.’

  ‘I don’t know what to wear to Odd’s wedding,’ I blurt out. ‘My little brother, Odd, is getting married for the third time.’ ‘If we therapists knew what women should wear, we’d win the Nobel Prize,’ Jonathan laughs. Then we’re silent for a while.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time now and there’s something I’ve wondered about, that I’ve forgotten to ask.’ What can that be, I wonder. Is he in love with me, maybe? That would be fun.

  ‘Why do you always dress in the way you do?’ he asks. ‘In neon colours and black. With tassels, zips, patches and things everywhere? Like a new romantic, or punk, no, a new romantic.’ ‘I like colours,’ I reply. I’m different, so I have to dress differently. I’ve always had odd clothes. It’s like a conversation piece. Instead of a dog. I’ve got a jacket with valves so it looks like I can be blown up. An elderly lady asked if I got intravenous via my jacket. I have a bag with an electronic panel where the word ‘hello’ appears in blue. I always get comments when I’m in town or on the metro. ‘Write “Kiss Me” instead,’ Jonathan suggests. ‘Most of the people who talk to me, or poke the valves or think my bag is wired to my mobile, are old ladies or drug addicts.’

  I know that I dress in a style that’s younger than my age. I don’t mention the yellow and red football hat that Jonathan often wears. That’s youthful as well, and the bag and the football jacket. He’s not exactly grown up in his style either. We sit in silence. ‘Forever young,’ I say, meaning myself. ‘Painful, but doable.’ A tag for a boy-girl like Eli, who is not allowed to grow up. An angel. ‘Yes, forever young,’ Jonathan says. ‘I think that you can be grown up through and through. If you want to.’ ‘If I dare.’

  Two circles. One sick, one healthy. A figure of eight. An eternity of time and life. I draw it over and over again and end in the healthy circle. They don’t weigh the same. Hope and darkness. I find my way back to the home inside me, like a bird in spring.

  I haven’t dared to be ill. Do I dare to be well again? Do I dare to say what everyone already knows?

  I’m worried about the fact that I’m going to have less help after the reorganisation and cutbacks. I’ve been and talked to the boss about the changes, that my support crew is going to be disbanded. ‘You should be moderately worried,’ he said. He justified the organisation, said that the health service had to be more evidence-based. I realise that that is where the problem lies. In other words, they have to be able to measure what Elsa and Ingemar do when they are with me at home or in the workspace. He concluded by saying that he might perhaps have said something different if we had been sitting chatting in a pub. I understood that the decision did not come from him. I left with a pain in my stomach.

  I phone Mum and tell her that I’ve written a book that I don’t want her to read. Can she promise me that? Until now, she’s read everything I’ve written. She promises, with some misgiving. Then she rings back in the evening. She’s spoken to the woman next door and told her that I’ve written a book that I don’t want her to read. The woman next door has promised that she’ll read it and tell Mum what it’s about. I’m back to square one.

  I find a small cup for my independent-living man, Morgan. He just wants a little coffee. The small cups are at the top of the cupboard. I stretch up and the entire stack of cups topples over. There’s a crash. The vase on the shelf below smashes. A before and an after. A moment. The green and black art deco vase that I got from Lolo at least fifteen years ago is in pieces. Why that one? I’ve got so many other things that could have smashed. Morgan gets some glue, he sees how devastated I am. We put all the pieces on the table. It can’t be fixed. ‘It’s a good sign,’ Morgan says. ‘Things should break, it means good luck. It’s the start of something new.’

  Elsa comes to the workspace. I’m in the process of finishing off the book. Making a hole in the holes so the whole world can hear. Read a bit that I’m pleased with and a bit that I’m not pleased with. I say that I’m going to commit suicide when the book is ready. ‘It’s excruciating for everyone when they finish off a book, isn’t it?’ Elsa says. ‘Isn’t that part of the process?’ ‘Yes,’ I concede. ‘But afterwards, when it’s been published, what then? That’s when I don’t want to live.’ ‘Maybe it will give you a sense of freedom.’ ‘Don’t think so. I’m just a writer,’ I say. ‘That’s not enough.’ We say nothing. ‘I was talking to Olof before I came here,’ Elsa starts. ‘And do you know what we were saying? We see a new strength in you now. The difference from just a few years ago is enormous. You might never be completely well again, but you’ve learnt to deal with your illness so much better.’

  Torvald has left a message on the answerphone. He tells me what his four-year-old son has just said. ‘You’re God, Daddy.’ ‘That’s perhaps a bit of an
exaggeration,’ Torvald had answered. ‘Oh Daddy, you have to believe in yourself,’ his son reprimanded. Torvald always wants to encourage me in my writing. ‘Do you think you can use that?’ He often makes suggestions.

  I go up to the unit to get a depot injection and to collect my prescriptions. Jonathan says that if I don’t take the injections, there’ll be no therapy. I think it’s blackmail, he calls it a deal.

  I sit in the small café on the ground floor where you pick up your medicine. It’s a gathering place for lots of patients who’ve been discharged. Originally, the coffee was free. But some people took too much milk, or simply drank the milk. So they started to use little milk pots instead, one for each cup. Then one day, the coffee wasn’t free any more, we had to pay. On Fridays, the chocolate cake was free. Then they stopped that, as too many sweet-tooths came.

  The woman in the grey hoodie comes over and sits next to me. She’s usually here. And I understand. I’ve got my workspace and my work, but I’m really the only one. ‘It’s the last day today,’ she says. ‘The café’s closing tomorrow.’ ‘Then you’ll have to take a thermos,’ I say. ‘They don’t want us to come here. Patients who’ve been discharged should meet elsewhere. Only I don’t know where.’

  We start to talk about the fire up on the second floor of the unit. ‘I was there when it happened,’ she tells me. ‘It’s incredible that no patients or staff were hurt. No one knows when the unit is going to open again. I was lying on my bed with my headphones on, listening to music,’ she says. ‘Heard all the noise and screaming, but then so much goes on in the unit all the time that you don’t pay much attention. Thought that maybe someone had set fire to a wastepaper basket. But I got up and opened the door. Saw the smoke in the corridor, closed the door, went back to my bed and pulled the duvet over my head. It wasn’t until the door was thrown open by one of the staff and the black smoke billowed in that I realised it was serious. I was dragged from the bed, didn’t have time to take any of my things with me. I was the last person out of the unit. They hadn’t noticed I wasn’t there until they counted all the patients outside. A lot of the patients had been sectioned, but they just stood there. Only the culprit ran for his life. He was a quiet man who called himself Jesus.’