Someone to Watch Over Me

CHAPTER 26 Monday, 18 January 2010

‘I’m not making this up, Halli. I would have thought you’d understand that.’ Berglind clamped the phone between her shoulder and ear so that she could fold the washing. ‘The clothes smelled disgusting; I washed them three times using more and more detergent but the smell won’t go away.’

‘Please, Begga, not now.’ Halli sounded tired. ‘Of course I believe you, but there has to be some explanation. Maybe a neighbour’s cat just sprayed the clothes?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? This isn’t the odour of cat urine. I don’t know what it could be. Something spoiled or rotten.’

‘Then maybe the cat just ran into the washing with a dead animal, I don’t know.’

‘The washing doesn’t hang down to the ground, Halli. And even if it did, cats don’t carry prey that’s rotten.’ Berglind immediately regretted having said this. She realized how unreasonable she must sound to her husband.

‘Begga. I’ve got to go to work. I know nothing about this and it seems anything I say will just annoy you more. Throw the damn stuff in a bag and I’ll take a look at it when I get home. If the stink is as bad as you say, then it’ll still smell this evening.’ He didn’t heave a sigh as he said this, but he might as well have done.

‘Fine.’ Berglind put down a white T-shirt that was spark-lingly clean but smelled as if it had recently been dug up from a damp grave. ‘See you later. Sorry to disturb you.’ This wasn’t meant to sound bitter or sarcastic, but it did anyway.

‘Okay,’ said Halli. There was a brief silence, which she found herself unable to fill. ‘Don’t hang the clothes outside, Begga. Use the dryer.’

‘I will.’ There was such a lot that Berglind wanted to say to him, but she could neither put it into words nor expect him to appreciate the timing. ‘Come home early.’ He didn’t acquiesce immediately, as she had hoped he would. ‘Please.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘I’ll try’ was the same as ‘maybe’. Both were polite ways of saying no. The smell seemed worse when the conversation finished; Berglind turned from the table, grabbed a plastic bag and hurriedly stuffed the washing into it. Then she tied a knot at the top and put the bag into a corner of the little utility room. She hurried out and shut the door behind her, determined not to think about the stench any more or to let it put her off her chores. There was plenty to do and it would soon be time to feed her son. ‘Pési, darling? Are you hungry?’ she called. No answer. The silence made the house seem empty, as though she wasn’t even there herself. ‘Pési? Where are you, sweetie?’ Still no answer. Berglind rushed to the hallway on the ground floor where she could see into the kitchen and the living room, but Pési wasn’t in either of them. Upstairs also appeared to be empty, but that didn’t really mean anything: Pési was still so little that he didn’t make much noise. He was probably doing a puzzle in his room or messing around with something. All the same, Berglind dashed up the stairs, two steps at a time. Her worries weren’t assuaged when she found her son’s room empty – as, it transpired, were all the other upstairs rooms.

On her way back down the stairs it crossed her mind that Pési might have wandered outside while she was on the phone; maybe he got bored in the house and missed preschool. Berglind’s decision at the end of last week to let him stay at home for a while had, in retrospect, perhaps not been a good one, and every time he asked to be allowed to return she’d had to face the fact that Pési’s absence from class wasn’t just for his sake but for hers as well. She felt so much better having him at home and not being alone in the house while she was on this ludicrous so-called sick leave. It was an absurd thing to call it. Physically she was perfectly healthy, and mentally she was a little bruised at worst. No holiday from work was going to heal those particular wounds, and sometimes she thought her absence was mainly for her colleagues’ benefit. She felt guilty at this thought; her boss’s suggestion had been made out of concern. An unusual level of concern, come to think of it. It would have been nice if her closest relatives had been as understanding and had displayed as much genuine interest in her problems. Her disappointment at Halli’s reaction on the phone still smarted. ‘Pési?’ Silence. He must have gone outside.

The front door was kept locked and Pési had never quite been able to open it by himself. Naturally, he grew bigger and stronger every day, so it could just be that this was the first time he’d managed it. Berglind opened the door and was hit by an ice-cold gust of wind. The weekend’s fine weather was well and truly over. Her coat hung on a hook in the hall, with Pési’s jacket next to it. If he had gone out, he was inadequately dressed, even ignoring the fact that he was too young to be wandering around alone. Instead of putting on her coat, Berglind ran back to check whether he’d been messing about in the garden. He could sometimes manage the sliding door if he pulled with all his might, and he was used to playing outside – though he’d rarely gone out there in the sleet of recent months. It was also possible that she’d left the door half open. She couldn’t remember whether she’d shut it behind her when she took the clothes from the line, irritated at foolishly letting the fine weekend weather dupe her into hanging the washing outside. Mind you, it was cold out and there was no chance that the door had stood open all that time. When she entered the room she saw the curtains moving in the breeze.

‘Pési?’ Berglind drew them back and was relieved to see her son out in the garden. She pushed her way out through the half-open door. Her son had his back to her, and appeared not to hear her. Fortunately, he was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, but he still had far too few clothes on for the middle of winter. His blond hair fluttered in the wind, reminding Berglind that he was well overdue for a haircut. ‘Pési? You can’t go out like this without letting Mummy know.’ He remained absolutely motionless, giving no indication that he was aware of her. He stood directly underneath the line where the white washing had been hanging that morning. It could be that he’d found the dead animal Halli had been talking about, which would explain the stench. That would definitely scare him; she didn’t know whether Pési had ever seen anything dead. ‘Come on, Pési, darling. You’ll catch cold if you stay out for long dressed like this.’ She went over to him and spoke calmly, so as not to startle him when she took his shoulder. It was rare for him to be so distracted; it did happen from time to time, of course, but always in the evenings when he was very tired.

‘Bad smell here, Mummy.’ He didn’t turn around.

Berglind felt a stabbing pain in her heart; he was the only one who knew that it wasn’t her imagination. ‘I know, darling. Let’s go inside.’ She had nearly reached him when he moved slightly, pawing at the grass with his bare feet. ‘Your feet must be like blocks of ice, Pési, sweetheart. I think I’ll need to make you some hot chocolate if we want to get them warm again.’

‘I don’t want hot chocolate. I want to be outside.’ He finally turned around and looked at his mother with sad eyes. His hair still blew in the wind a little, but suddenly it looked almost as if it was being smoothed down somehow; protected from the gusts by invisible means.

‘Come on, Pési.’ Berglind gave up trying to seem bright and cheerful; instead her voice was full of urgency and unease. ‘Let’s go inside.’ The air was tinged with a familiar metallic tang. ‘It’s too cold to be outside.’

He didn’t reply, but stared at her as if he didn’t recognize his own mother. Berglind wasn’t even sure if he could see her. But he couldn’t be looking at something in between them, since there was nothing there. ‘What are you looking at? My jumper?’ At moments like these it was better to talk, even though no one might be listening except you.

‘I want to go in now.’ Pési continued to stare straight ahead, hypnotized, his expression unaltered. He was even paler than usual; the only colour in his face was two red spots high on his cheekbones. The ghostly white hands sticking out from his thin sleeves looked as if they belonged to an overgrown porcelain doll.

‘Come on, then.’ She held out her hand, but it failed to draw him out of his hypnotized state. ‘Let’s go in, Pési.’ She went up to him, bent down and took his little, ice-cold palm. Then she felt her shoulder-length hair electrify and rise slightly. Brittle, fragile leaves were lifted into the air and blew across the grass.

‘Who was driving, Mummy?’

Berglind squeezed his small hand. She was desperate to pull him inside with her, get away from the oppressive stench that lingered under the washing line and stand with him in the kitchen, surrounded by the fragrance of hot cocoa. There they could chat together comfortably about everything but the terrible event that had destroyed their lives. She would do anything to free herself from this burden, but didn’t know what this ‘anything’ might be. She and Halli hadn’t realized until too late what a good life they’d had before. They were broke, their journey to work was too long, Pési was ill too often, she was always getting split ends, the weather was awful… these complaints sounded ridiculous now, compared to what was to come after. A year ago she would have been at work, not standing half dressed out in her garden like an idiot, trying to coax her son back inside. Once again she wondered why things had escalated so slowly before becoming unbearable; although the spirit had manifested itself immediately after the accident, it wasn’t until around the time of the financial crash that they had begun to feel as if they couldn’t stand it any more and had turned to the church for help. In other words, nearly a year after the actual accident. Berglind had the feeling that something had pushed the haunting to another level, but it was difficult to say what that might have been. Nothing had changed in her and Halli’s behaviour during that time, and Pési had continued to be the same little angel, following a routine that developed gradually with his increasing maturity. Whatever had caused it, it must have been something external. The best Berglind could come up with was that the changes were connected to Magga’s family, but when she had spoken to their neighbour, who knew their circumstances, the woman hadn’t known anything useful. Magga’s family were still overwhelmed by grief and trying to come to terms with what had happened.

Suddenly Pési appeared to jump start. All at once he seemed to feel the cold, because when he started speaking his teeth chattered. ‘There was someone in the garden, Mummy. I saw them earlier.’

‘Come on. You’re going to get ill if you stay out a minute longer in this cold.’ Berglind herself was feeling the cold even more now, and she stamped her feet in an attempt to get rid of the chill. It had no effect.

‘There’s a bad smell when someone dies, Mummy.’ He looked at her but instead of staring into her eyes, he looked at her open mouth. ‘Not straight away, though.’

Forgetting her earlier idea of taking him carefully by the arm, Berglind grabbed her son by the shoulders, picked him up and ran inside with him.

The priest couldn’t hide the fact that he was keen to get going. He kept starting his sentences with the phrase Well, then, but then he lost his bottle, repeatedly missing his chance to make an exit. Had he done a better job of concealing his desire to be elsewhere, Jósteinn probably wouldn’t have done anything to delay his departure; but his opportunities to make other people suffer were decreasing, and he fully exploited every single one he came across. ‘I’m just not sure that God exists. And if he does, then I can’t understand the hand I’ve been dealt.’

‘You shouldn’t worry about it. God loves you just as much as those who have done no harm. You simply need to work at realizing that and thinking about what you’ve done. When you recognize how wrong it was, you will repent, and repentance is the first step to letting God into your life.’ It was far too hot in the room, just the way Jósteinn liked it, and small beads of sweat had formed on the priest’s forehead.

‘You misunderstand me. I’m not searching for God. I asked how he came up with the idea of creating a man like me if he’s as perfect as you’re making out.’

‘No one is entirely evil, Jósteinn. We’ve discussed this before.’ The priest glanced sideways at the window and the freedom waiting outside. ‘But we don’t need to go over it again. You’re a smart man, and I know you remember everything I tell you.’

‘So you’re suggesting that your God created me?’ Jósteinn stared down at his lap, at the legs of his ripped velour trousers that had once been dark wine-red but were now almost pink.

‘Yes, I am.’ The priest laid his hands on his knees and prepared to lever himself up from the low couch. ‘Well, then…’

‘But if he has created me and I am the way I am, I don’t understand it.’ Jósteinn shut his eyes and listened carefully. He had read that if one of your senses didn’t work, the others made up for it. He couldn’t hear anything more clearly, just the faint sound of the cook’s radio from out in the corridor, water running in a bathtub further back in the house and the priest’s shallow panting as he suffocated from the heat. Nothing he hadn’t heard while his eyes had been open. ‘Your God is either kind of incompetent, or exceptionally unkind.’

‘We can discuss this when we next meet, Jósteinn. I wasn’t born yesterday and I’m fully aware that you’re trying to provoke me. But it’s completely normal for you to be pondering this and the fact that you are is a good sign, in my view. It shows me that you’re on the right track. Salvation harms no one, believe me, and your heavy burden will be lifted if you seek salvation wholeheartedly.’

‘Oh, I thought you knew. I don’t have a soul to save.’ Jósteinn opened his eyes again and tried pinching his nose. He neither saw nor heard more clearly as a result. ‘Either I never had one, or I lost it somewhere along the way,’ he said nasally. Maybe he would have to do this for longer to experience heightened perception.

‘What nonsense, Jósteinn. Of course you have a soul. Everyone has a soul.’ When there was no answer, the priest’s face lit up like someone who’s glimpsed his opportunity. ‘Well, I think I should visit you more often, Jósteinn. Pay more attention to you. And your soul.’ He stood up.

‘How do you know I have a soul?’ Jósteinn let go of his nose, but continued staring at his knees.

‘Because, Jósteinn, although you attacked your friend Jakob, I understand that you’re helping him, spending your own money to help him and his mother. That’s not the action of a soulless man.’

Jósteinn smiled but didn’t look up. ‘What that is, is a huge misunderstanding.’

‘How so?’ The priest was still standing by the sofa.

‘I’m not doing it to be kind to Jakob. It’s not compassion that motivates me. Far from it.’ He smiled again before trying to cover both his eyes and his ears simultaneously. ‘I’m only doing it in order to inflict pain. To… harm.’ The smile vanished. ‘It’s quite possible to do that without having a knife.’

The priest said nothing. Jósteinn wouldn’t have heard him anyway, now that he had his hands over his ears. He had seen a great deal in his work at Sogn, so Jósteinn’s peculiar behaviour didn’t surprise him, but he did find his declarations more difficult than normal.

‘Sometimes good is bad and bad is good.’ Jósteinn dropped his hands and glanced briefly into the priest’s eyes, for the first time since he’d arrived. ‘But there are also examples of bad being bad, and that’s how it is in this instance. I can promise you that I have only bad intentions.’

Thóra swore quietly as she waited for the man, not because of the location, which was far from ideal, but because of how upset she was by what had happened. The bustle in the packed café in the Skeifan shopping area wasn’t enough to distract her. It wasn’t until Ægir appeared fifteen minutes late that she managed to direct her thoughts elsewhere. He stood in the entrance, looking around for her, and when she stood up and waved at him, he smiled amiably and threaded his way between the densely arranged tables. Nothing in his bearing suggested a tyrant who might apply severe methods in his therapeutic treatment of autistic patients. On the contrary: he seemed rather gentle, apologizing for the inconvenience to everyone he slid past. His appearance, however, might inspire fear in particularly sensitive individuals, with his pitch-black hair and snow-white face. His eyes, also black, stared out from beneath his floppy fringe, and Thóra even caught the glint of a gold ring in one of his eyebrows.

‘Hi.’ He extended his hand. ‘I assume you’re Thóra.’ She nodded and he sat down at the tiny table that barely accommodated the two cups of coffee Thóra had ordered, assuming the man would turn up on time. Now her cup was empty and the other one had stopped steaming.

‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘No problem.’ Thóra gestured towards the cup. ‘I don’t know whether it’s still drinkable.’

‘Not to worry. I drink tea, but thanks anyway.’ Thóra seriously regretted not having drunk his coffee as well. ‘I understand you want to talk about Tryggvi? I’ve mainly come out of curiosity – it’s been more than a year and a half since he stopped having treatment with me, so I have to admit it’s been a long time since I gave him any thought. Of course I couldn’t stop thinking about him after the fire; that was horrendous. But why do you want to talk about him? Didn’t you say you’re a lawyer?’

Once again Thóra explained her connection to the fire at the residence. She had repeated the story so many times now that she could have done it in her sleep. ‘I particularly wanted to discuss the progress he was making. I can’t imagine anyone knows better than you what this consisted of and how signifi-cant it was. I’ve been hearing some quite contradictory stories about his condition.’

‘Okay, that shouldn’t be a problem.’ Ægir leaned back and folded his arms. ‘Though I do need to point out that in my opinion, he was only in the very early stages of improvement; he could have advanced much further if I hadn’t been asked to stop treating him. I don’t think I’ve ever been as disappointed, professionally.’

‘Can you describe the nature of the improvements?’

‘Oof, where do I begin?’ Ægir exhaled gently. ‘I don’t know how much you know about this level of autism, but broadly speaking, Tryggvi was suffering from a severe developmental disability that hampered his communication to such an extent that he was barely able to express himself to others. He had no social skills, so he played no part in what went on around him beyond that of an indifferent spectator. Few people are autistic to such an extreme degree; many can make themselves understood, even though their ability to communicate is always impaired in some way, as is their social behaviour. Tryggvi could stare at a fan, or anything mechanically repeti-tive, for hours at a time. He could also sometimes fall into patterns of movement for long periods, rocking back and forth or wringing his hands incessantly, for example.’

‘So were you able to overcome all this?’

‘Not to any miraculous degree, but I was able to significantly reduce his repetitive behaviour, and I got him to look people in the eye and accept their presence. As I said, he still had a long way to go.’

‘Tryggvi must have undergone some other forms of treatment before you came along; how did you manage to succeed where others had failed?’

‘It’s not as if his previous teachers or developmental ther-apists didn’t do anything for him – far from it. For example, he spent endless amounts of time browsing illustrated textbooks, though he didn’t read the words. His tendency to inflict harm on himself had also already been suppressed. As a toddler he would bang his head against things whenever he could, even to the point of cracking his skull. So a lot of progress had been made. For any improvement to be possible in people as autistic as Tryggvi, it’s essential that their behavioural therapy begins very early. His parents, particularly his mother, were very concerned that he receive the best treatment available. She watched his diet very closely and followed the newest developments in that area, since in some cases the effects of autism can be reduced by changing a patient’s nutritional intake. For instance, Tryggvi stopped eating both gluten and sugar, and according to his mother it reduced his symptoms. Not that I was able to judge – I didn’t meet him until after they had been removed from his diet. Also, both his parents were very much alert to any developments in autism medication. They were kind of unique, actually, because the parents of autistic children sometimes focus on one particular factor: food, drugs or specific treatments, but few have been so aware of all the different aspects. They were terribly fond of him, but of course the same goes for all the parents of autistic children that I’ve encountered.’

‘So why did they stop the treatment, just when things were starting to look up?’

Ægir shrugged. ‘God knows. All I can think of is that the methods I was using weren’t to his mother’s liking; I didn’t exactly take the “softly softly” approach. I had to use a great deal of discipline to get results, and you’ve got to bear in mind that in this instance what we had was an individual who shunned human communication and attempted to avoid it by any possible means. So I had no other choice but to force him into acknowledging I was there. It was noisy, and must have been hard to watch. Still, I thought she realized that the end justified the means, but that was clearly a big misunderstanding on my part. It probably didn’t help either that other residents and visitors complained about it. It was a real shame, that’s for sure.’

‘How much progress did Tryggvi make under your guidance?’ The man had yet to answer the question that was really plaguing Thóra.

‘Quite a lot, but again you have to consider that we were starting from zero. He had started to draw more, pictures that seemed to better reflect what was on his mind, and he wasn’t as afraid of everything. I got him to look me in the eye and accept my presence, as well as his mother’s.’

‘But did he move around the building voluntarily? In search of company or food, for example?’

‘No, I very much doubt it.’ Ægir shrugged. ‘I suppose he might have left his apartment on his own, but not in search of either company or food. That would really surprise me.’

‘I know of one instance when he paid a visit to a bedridden girl who lived there. I don’t know why he went to see her, but he walked in and looked at her, in any case.’

‘You see? Progress.’ He rubbed his chin and stared around at the chattering crowd. ‘If it was one of the girls who couldn’t move, I’m not surprised he visited her rather than any of the other residents. A person who couldn’t speak would have suited him well, and maybe he was drawn by the silence in her apartment. I went with him a few times to see the girl in the coma, in order to get him used to the unknown. Obviously she was the most harmless person in the place and I didn’t want to bother those who were conscious, but she couldn’t move a muscle. A couple of times we stopped in her doorway. We had the director’s permission, of course, she was extremely cooperative, and Tryggvi didn’t do anything to the poor girl, just stared at her in fascination, probably because she was so still. Naturally, she didn’t know we were there, since she wasn’t conscious. I wasn’t aware of him ever having visited her without me.’

Thóra didn’t feel like correcting this misunderstanding; it didn’t matter whether Ægir thought it was Lísa or Ragna Tryggvi had visited. ‘How did he express himself with the pictures, anyway? I’ve seen a few of them – on a video recording, admittedly – but I couldn’t work them out at all. In them was a person lying down, and then another person holding onto a large circle which was divided into three. There were also flames in some of them.’

‘Of course the pictures weren’t the same every time, but both figures you describe were frequently involved. The person lying down was probably the girl in the coma, who he was really fascinated with, as I mentioned. She turned up in his drawings when I started my treatment, but she began to appear more and more frequently and by the time I stopped working with him she was in every picture. No matter what the subject of the picture was. As far as the other figure is concerned, it came and went and I think it symbolized his mother; I couldn’t give you a better guess than that. The ring she usually held was a peace symbol, in my opinion, but I couldn’t confirm that for certain any more than anything else in his imaginary world.’

‘And the flames?’

‘They were another thing that fascinated him, but I suspect you’re reading more into them than you should. They’re not related in any way to the fire at the residence. It’s one thing to draw fire, quite another to start one.’

‘But that did actually happen: he was caught doing exactly that some years ago. That’s not to say that he was responsible for the fire, but it certainly raises some questions.’

‘The flames in his drawings symbolized distress and fear. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. He drew fish when he was hungry and a sink when he was thirsty. Why he chose these things and not others, I don’t know. He drew every picture in one go, with one unbroken line, so to speak. And if you examine the drawings very closely, you can see all kinds of things in them that are more important sometimes than the main subject.’

‘What did 08INN or OBINN mean? It was in all the pictures and I wondered whether it was his signature or something like that. Would that fit?’

‘No, I never understood what that meant. He was angry at the letters so he connected them to something bad; he always drew them last, but I’m not sure that they stood for something that we can understand. Maybe it’s something he saw during his life that burned itself into his consciousness. He couldn’t read or write, so he saw it and copied it, in precisely the same way that he drew a house or some equipment that he came across, say. Since the text was in all likelihood a mirror image, like everything else that he put on paper, it’s hard to say what it was supposed to represent; no words begin with NN, for example. It didn’t ring any bells with his parents, either, but you never know, maybe he might have added more letters to the others over time, and the text would have become clearer. Unfortunately, this never happened, because shortly after these letters started appearing in every drawing, his parents decided to terminate the treatment.’

‘Do you still have any of the drawings?’

‘Funny you should ask. I did have a bunch of them, until today. The former director contacted me and asked whether she could have them. She always seemed a decent sort, I said yes. So I don’t have any; I took them to her on my way here and that’s why I was late.’

‘So Glódís has all of the drawings?’

The man nodded. ‘Yes, at least the ones that I had.’