I Can See in the Dark

Chapter 8

I’m taking food, juice and medicine from room to room, checking off that the old people have eaten and drunk and swallowed their tablets. But the truth is rather different. The injections go into the mattress, the food is tipped down the toilet, and ditto the drugs. Then I flush it and cover all traces. Boiled fish or mince disappears into the plumbing system, there to serve, presumably, as nutrition for rats the size of elephants. The old people wave their pale, wrinkled hands helplessly after the vanishing food. No one understands what they’re saying or why they’re fretting. No one at Løkka has discovered my little game. But caution is required. Some relatives enjoy creating a fuss, they watch us like hawks, making sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to. What are we supposed to be doing, I often think, especially on days when I’m feeling very tired. Are we supposed to keep them alive no matter what, by any means, for as long as possible? Even though they’re on the brink of death and are unproductive and useless now, and don’t even afford anyone any pleasure? I can’t cope with all this helplessness, and sometimes my temper turns evil. What’s the point in eating when you’re almost a hundred?

Ebba often comes to the park.

She always brings something she can do with her hands, some crocheting or knitting, a sock or a doily. There are people who can’t sit quietly with their hands in their lap, Ebba is one of them. I’d put her at close to eighty, but she’s upright and strong in body, and fleet of foot. When she comes walking along the path, she often stops to admire Woman Weeping. She stands looking at it for a moment, her head to one side. She’s always well dressed, her hair beautifully coiffured, and her hands work industriously at her knitting or crocheting. I imagine she must have been something like a schoolteacher, a secretary, or a nursing officer in a hospital, or maybe even an accountant, but certainly a career woman. I assume she’s crocheting for her children and grandchildren. Small tablecloths or long lengths destined to become bedspreads. She seems very content, both with herself and the life she leads, she’s certainly not bowed with age, she’s at one with everything. With the bench she’s sitting on, with the earth beneath her feet. Just occasionally, but only very rarely, she lowers her work to her lap. Then she turns her face up to the sun and closes her eyes. But after an instant she’s off again with renewed vigour. The ball of wool on the bench beside her dances its rhythmic jig as she tugs at the yarn.

They say that Nelly Friis is blind.

That she’s been blind for more than thirty years. Her relatives, a son and daughter, say so. On a rare visit to Løkka, one of her grandchildren, sitting helplessly at her bedside and wringing her hands, says that Nelly Friis is blind. Sali Singh says so, too, and Dr Fischer and Sister Anna, but I have my doubts. I’ve heard that supposedly blind people can actually see quite a lot, movement and deep shadow, the brightest light. In addition, they can recognise smells, they can hear voices and register details and fine distinctions, they notice lots of tiny things that escape the sighted. Despite this, I often go to her room. I can’t resist it. She weighs a mere forty kilos, she’s as fragile and grey as paper and, in theory at least, shouldn’t see that it’s me, Riktor, who’s entered. I bend over the bed, take hold of the delicate skin behind her ear with my long, sharp nails, and squeeze as hard as I can. The thin, dry skin is punctured. She hasn’t the voice to scream, nor the strength to avoid me.

I listen to check if anyone’s coming along the corridor. If I’m feeling really bad, I’ll tug the hair at her temples, where I know it hurts the most. She hasn’t got much hair left, there are several bald patches on her scalp, and no one knows that I’m the one responsible. They think its age and decrepitude. No one notices the red sores behind her ears, no one washes that thoroughly, there are so many who require sponging and moving and turning and massaging and a whole lot of other things; old people take a lot of work. I torture her for a good while. I notice an artery pulsing in her neck, I notice her blind, gooseberry-like eyes are filling with liquid. And I don’t know how much she can see. If my face is merely a pale oval in a larger blackness without visible characteristics. If she recognises the smell of my Henley aftershave. It’s not easy to tell. But in the past, Anna and I have been into her room together, and she’d begin to flail her hands with the little strength she had. Anna ran off to fetch Dr Fischer. And he prescribed diazepam, and after that Nelly hadn’t the strength to be anxious. The torture that I inflict gives me a feeling of desperation and delight. A blissful mixture of guilt and superiority. And adrenalin, coursing hotly through my body. Pinching Nelly Friis behind the ears and giving her contusions where no one can see them, causes my own pent-up frustration, my own fear and sorrow, to drain out of my body like pus from a wound.

What a wasteland this world is.

What a misfortune that we live to be so old.

This thought constantly comes into my mind.

If only I had a woman, to soothe and comfort me.

Sometimes Anna follows me down the corridor in her quiet and careful way. Often, as she passes, she’ll put a hand on my shoulder and give it a squeeze.

‘Hi, Riktor, you all right?’ she’ll say, and hurry on without waiting for a reply. It’s only a friendly gesture in passing, a minute distraction. But so strong is the effect of her pleasant greeting, that I’ve known my eyes fill with tears. I am really, moved, and that doesn’t happen often. Anna does things like that and they cost her nothing at all. If only she knew, I think. Nelly Friis is not the only one who’s blind.