sweat from his brow. 'Excuse me, but I'm sitting right in the sun. Would you mind if I move?'
She nodded and he went over to an armchair near her desk. As he did so, he caught sight of a toad. It was dozing behind a stack of papers. It was big and fat, greyish brown on top and lighter underneath. It didn't move, of course, because it wasn't real, but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had started to hop, it looked so alive. Feeling curious, he lifted it up. She watched him and smiled as he placed it in his hand. The toad was strangely cold, in spite of the heat in the room. He squeezed it carefully. Inside was a jelly-like substance that made it possible for him to squeeze it into different shapes, which he proceeded to do, quite cautiously. He squeezed the contents of the body into the thin legs. It immediately became deformed and looked like a monster. He kept on squeezing, feeling it grow warmer in his hand.
The toad's eyes stared at him. They were pale green, with a black streak. Its back was rippled and uneven, but underneath it was smooth. He began squeezing the lower part, pressing all of the contents into the upper part of the body. Now it looked highly athletic, with big shoulders and a swelling chest.
Next he tried another variation, with the contents pushed down into the stomach so the head hung to the side, as slack as a patch of skin. He put the toad down on the desk. The jelly didn't slide back into place on its own as he had expected it to. He picked it up again and began pressing it back into shape as best he could. When he thought it looked like a toad again, he put it back down.
'That's clever,' he said.
'Useful,' said Dr Struel, running her finger along the toad's back.
'What's it for?'
'For picking up, just as you did. The way you handled it tells me something about who you are.'
He shook his head. 'I don't believe that.'
She gave him an almost maternal smile. 'Oh yes, absolutely. It tells me something about the way in which every single person approaches things. You, too.'
He listened unimpressed, but at the same time he was intrigued.
'You picked it up quite tentatively and paused for a moment before squeezing it. When you saw that it could change shape, you had to try all of the possibilities, one by one. Many people think it's disgusting, but you didn't. The way you tilted your head to one side as you looked into its eyes tells me that you confront life's surprises with an open and empathetic mind. You squeezed it carefully, almost tenderly, as if you were afraid it might split open. But it won't – or at least it has a warranty from the manufacturer, provided you don't have fiendishly sharp fingernails. You put it down relatively quickly, as if you thought it might develop into a dangerous game. And last but not least, you squeezed it meticulously back into a toad shape before you set it down.'
She paused for a moment and gave him a long look. 'It tells me that you're a cautious man, but not lacking in curiosity. You're also a little old-fashioned and afraid of new, unfamiliar shapes. You like things to look the way they're supposed to look, to stay the way they are, to be something that you recognise and know about.'
He laughed uncertainly. Her voice was making him malleable in a strange way. He felt jelly-like.
'With the help of the toad, along with thousands of other little things, other games and tasks, and above all over time, I can end up knowing more about you than you do yourself.'
You're not lacking in self-confidence, he thought.
'Has Errki seen it?' he asked her.
'Of course. It's always here.'
'What did he do with it?'
'He said, 'Get rid of that disgusting, repulsive animal before I bite its head off and spray the contents all over the desk.''
'Did you believe he would?'
'He has never lied.'
'But you say that he's not violent?'
Suddenly she grabbed the toad and began yanking on all of its legs as hard as she could. They stretched out like rubber bands, and the sight made Sejer feel almost sorry for the toad. And then she tied them in knots, first the front legs, then the back ones. Then she put the toad on its back on the desk. Its utter helplessness was painful to look at. When she saw his expression, she laughed out loud.
'Let me show you his room.'
'Aren't you going to untie the knots?' he asked uneasily.
'No,' she said, giving him a teasing smile.
A huge wave surged inside him. He registered it amazed.
They looked at Errki's room. It was simply furnished, with a bed, a dresser, a sink and a mirror with a piece of newspaper hanging over it. Perhaps he wanted to avoid looking at himself. The window, high and narrow, was open. Otherwise the room was bare. Nothing on the floor or the walls.
'It looks similar to what we have to offer,' Sejer said thoughtfully. 'A cell, no more, no less.'
'We don't lock the doors.'
He went in and stood leaning against the wall. 'What made you go into psychiatry?'
He studied her name tag. Dr S. Struel. He wondered what the 'S' stood for. Maybe Solveig. Or Sylvia.
'Because,' she began, as she closed her eyes, 'because ordinary people…' She enunciated the word 'ordinary' as if it were derogatory. 'I mean, those who are successful, the well-equipped, goal-oriented people who follow all the rules, who achieve their objectives without difficulty, who have perfect social antennae, who navigate with the greatest ease, who get where they want to go, who acquire what they want to have – is there anything the least bit interesting about them?'
The question was formulated in such a droll way that Sejer couldn't help but smile.
'The only interesting people in the world are the losers,' she said. 'Or rather, those we call losers. Every type of deviation contains an element of rebellion. And I've never been able to understand a lack of rebelliousness.'
'What about you?' he said. 'Aren't you one of those successful and goal-oriented people? Are you rebelling?'
'No,' she admitted. 'And I can't understand it, because I'm – deep down – full of despair.'
'Full of despair? Why so?'
'Aren't you?' She gave him a long look. 'You can't be an enlightened, intelligent, involved human being on this earth without at the same time being full of despair. It's just not possible.'
Am I full of despair? Sejer wondered.
'Besides it's the sterling personalities that do best in this society,' she said. 'Whole, absolutely confident and consistent people. You know – people with strength of character!'
He couldn't hold back his laughter any longer.
'Here we have room for rebellion, and we're not afraid of trouble. We're not afraid of failure either.' She brushed her fringe back from her face. 'And I probably couldn't have existed in any community other than this one.'
He was fascinated by the way that she expressed her thoughts so openly, even though he was a stranger. At the same time, he didn't feel like a stranger.
'What's it like where you work?' she asked.
'Where I work?' He thought for a moment. 'Where I work we have order and structure and plenty of disgusting, sterling personalities.'
He tried to change his tone, which was becoming a bit too lively. 'Not much room for improvisation or imagination. A large part of the job involves searching for tiny little physical things, such as hair, prints, or traces of blood. Tracks from shoes or car tyres. But later comes the psychological part, and even though it never gets much space in our reports, it's still there. And of course that's the only thing about the job that's truly exciting. If there wasn't any room for that, I would have done something else.'
'And what about the people you haul in and lock up in cages?'
He looked at her in dismay. 'That's not exactly how we would describe it.'
Now she's trying to provoke me, he thought. Maybe she's so preoccupied with rebellion that she feels she doesn't have to comply with the normal rules of courtesy.
'I would like to send them somewhere else,' he said calmly.
He was so fascinated by this woman, by her wide, fair face and her dark eyes with light rings around the pupils, that he was almost nervous about what he might say.
