Translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner
In the evenings they get away from the hospital. As the electric gates open and let the car through, the first bottle is uncorked in the back seat, always champagne that has been chilling in the cellar during the day. Edvard drives across the bridges in the direction of the city, through sleeping residential areas and streets. Sometimes a girl from the unit is already waiting in the back: sometimes it’s Sabina, sometimes it’s someone else, often half-comatose with medication. The birch trees shimmer in the twilight; Indian ink skies dappled with pink and yellow, stray wisps of cloud, birds, a haphazard drawing of the heavens. Edvard is convinced it’s good for the patients to get out of the unit every so often.
“One night beyond the confines of the hospital makes you human again,” he says.
Jim is given a crystal glass and in the glove compartment there’s a new shirt and a little bag of something that will make the night go faster. He sees the city pass by outside, men on their way home to their families, single women walking slowly along the streets, and sometimes, when they have stopped at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change, he’ll find that he’s looking into the face of an old friend or colleague who’s standing there, waiting. Once, by a crossing outside the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, he looks straight into Lone’s face, before the car accelerates away and drives on through the light streaming out of the clubs that have just opened their doors to the night.
Once in a while a girl has a breakdown during the night in the apartment on Lill-Jans Plan and then she has to go back with them to the hospital at daybreak. “Winterson’s toys” they’re called, the girls who drift aimlessly around these parties, sometimes taking payment for their company, and, when they fall over, going back with Edvard in the car. They wake up later in an all-white room with his face hovering above them.
