‘Listen to this! “Sleep deprivation can be used as a method of torture and has also been used to bring about visions in certain religious circumstances”.’
Sofia was curled up on her bed, her laptop balanced on her legs, Googling ‘sleep deprivation’. She recalled students at the university who could hardly go one night without sleep; it would wreck them for the rest of the week. At ViaTerra, functioning without sleep was a daily reality.
It was hard to remember what it felt like to be well-rested. Her body was always wrapped in a fuzzy, uncomfortable buzzing that made each motion seem to take forever to complete. It was hard to focus her gaze and there was a metallic taste in her mouth from all the toxins her body couldn’t manage to get rid of.
Benjamin groaned loudly from under the blanket.
‘Sofia, please, can’t we go to sleep now? You’re only torturing yourself with this stuff. And by the way, didn’t we agree you would only use the laptop in emergencies?’
But she didn’t stop reading.
‘“In the long term, severe sleep deprivation can result in psychotic reactions or epileptic seizures. Acute effects of sleep deprivation include drowsiness and problems concentrating and learning”.’
He sat up in bed and gently removed her hands from the keyboard. He looked at her with those lovely eyes, eyes that had once been so alert, had seemed to see through all the hypocrisy and lies, but now just seemed tired and sad. She wondered if he truly saw with them anymore.
‘Sofia, I understand how you feel,’ he said. ‘But shouldn’t we turn out the light now so we can get some sleep for once? It seems like everything is going to get better.’
Better? Maybe. But she wasn’t so sure. She had felt uneasy in recent days, full of an unpleasant, anxious feeling she couldn’t shake. Perhaps it was due to the lack of sleep, but deep down she was sure it was something else. That Oswald was up to something.
It had started with the number of guests dwindling as Oswald stopped giving lectures on the mainland. One evening when she peeked into the dining room she noticed that only three guests were at dinner. Something wasn’t right. She didn’t dare to ask Oswald; she was afraid it had something to do with their bad reputation in the media. That it had become more difficult to tempt people to visit the island.
A second worry was Penance, which just kept growing. Twenty people were running around in red caps by now — almost half the staff. All the women who had flirted with Alvin were in ‘Penance Squared.’ They wore red caps and black scarves and weren’t allowed to talk to anyone, not even those in regular Penance. Now that half the workforce was missing, it was hard to get everything done.
And then there was the escape attempt, which happened one afternoon right after lunch. Sofia had been in the office with Oswald, who was working on something on his computer. Whatever it was, it must have been secret, because he had shifted the screen so she couldn’t see it.
It was raining outside, a heavy, persistent rain that washed the windows clean.
Suddenly, an alarm blared — something had touched the fence. At first she thought the rain had set it off, or that a squirrel had tried to jump over and got zapped to death. But then she heard a furious scream from the courtyard.
Angry voices. Motorcycles. The sounds reminded her of the time Ellis had shown up. She went to the window but couldn’t see anything through the sheets of rain. The alarm was still sounding.
Oswald stood up.
‘Can you see what’s going on down there?’
‘No, but there are people. And motorcycles.’
The rain was beating against the window now; they had to raise their voices.
‘You’d better go down and see what’s up,’ he shouted.
She ran down the stairs, stopped by her room to grab her raincoat, and hurried out to the courtyard. At first, all she could see was a few figures by the wall. The rain was falling hard enough to kick up pieces of gravel. As she approached, she saw that Benny and Sten were holding onto Mira, who was screaming, kicking, and trying to yank her arms loose. Bosse stood before them, trying to reason with her. He looked up and noticed Sofia.
‘She was trying to run away! But we stopped her!’ he called triumphantly.
Oswald had come out as well. He was standing behind Sofia in a big, black rain poncho and staring at Mira. The very sight of him made her recoil and stop kicking. She was shivering and shaking, soaking wet. Her jeans were ripped and blood was flowing from one bared knee.
‘So you were on your way to Alvin,’ Oswald said. ‘What a little idiot you are. He’s not interested in you; don’t you know that?’
‘She tried to go over the fence,’ Bosse said. ‘But she got caught on the barbed wire. I suppose we’ll have to fix up that cut.’
Oswald didn’t seem to care about her wound, but he switched to a milder tone.
‘You know why you wanted to escape, don’t you, Mira?’
She shook her head in confusion.
‘It’s your conscience nagging you. If we let you leave, we would truly be doing you a disservice. You haven’t confessed everything, you see. Once you do, you’ll feel better. Do you understand?’
He didn’t wait for her response; instead he turned to Bosse.
‘Keep her under supervision around the clock. Use someone we can trust. Hard labour. And work on her at night. Find out everything she’s done.’
Mira was led off toward the barns. Sofia wondered why she hadn’t just gone to the gate and said she wanted to leave. What would have happened? But she suspected she already knew the answer to that question.
Later that night, the staff gathered for a conversation with Oswald. They met in the staff office for a change; Oswald wanted to be in more relaxed surroundings for his little chat with them. There was even coffee. The people on Penance were there too, but they had to sit in a row at the very back of the room.
As Oswald began to speak, his voice was strangely weak.
‘I can’t do all this work myself,’ he nearly whispered. ‘Get all the guests here, handle the media, and do the dishes at the same time.’
That last bit was probably meant to be a joke, but the group’s laughter was tentative.
‘But let’s be serious now. My life has become unbearable recently. I’ve been responsible for getting every last bastard into the program and made sure they received services. I’ve squeezed in as many lectures as I could and handled inquiries from TV and newspapers. All without any real help from you lot.’
Shame settled over the room.
A couple of girls tried to impress Oswald by taking notes, but they soon thought the better of it.
‘If you don’t put down those pens, I will throw them, and you, out the window.’
Then he continued with a grave monologue about all the hard work he had to do and how worthless the staff were.
An idea began to grow somewhere beyond Sofia’s consciousness, like a little hum, but it soon pulled her along into a stream of questions. Oswald’s voice became a dull rumble in the back of her mind. What did he even do all day long? She knew he had a couple of computer guys who sat around writing nice things about him online all day. He spoke to a private investigator who was shadowing Magnus Strid, whatever that was supposed to lead to. He contacted a law firm now and then. But what else? Aside from the steady stream of instructions and directives he captured on his Dictaphone, she truly had no idea what this back-breaking was made up of. What did he actually do besides spew out words, words, and more words, occasionally sprinkled with curses?
‘Sofia!’
His voice yanked her from her thoughts. For an instant her mind was perfectly empty.
‘Sofia, did you hear what I said?’
Luckily she had left her mental recording device on — it registered everything she heard even if her mind wandered.
‘Yes, sir. You said we absolutely must return to the founding principles of ViaTerra. Bring fresh life back into our goals.’
‘Right! Well done, Sofia.’
He stood up and paced back and forth.
‘How many here have completed the ViaTerra program?’
Seven hands reached for the sky and waved eagerly. The personal advisors, of course, plus Sofia, Benjamin and Madeleine.
Oswald shook his head.
‘This can’t be true! No wonder you’re a bunch of blockheads. You don’t even understand why you’re here!’
Sofia thought it was strange that he didn’t realize no one on staff was studying — they didn’t have time thanks to their insane schedule. He was anything but dumb.
‘We’re going to fix this,’ he said. ‘As you may have noticed, we have almost no guests left. The last two are heading home tomorrow morning. We’ll close guest services for the autumn and winter, and all of you can go through the program. We’re going to create a real team.’
Everyone exchanged mumbles, nods, and looks of agreement. He had ignited a spark of hope.
‘But we have to have peace and quiet while we do it,’ he went on. ‘So write to your parents and friends tonight and say that you’ll be busy for the next few months. That way they won’t have to worry.’
The meeting lasted until one in the morning, and then there were lots of emails to write, and suddenly it was three a.m. Luckily Oswald stuck his head in at two to tell them they could sleep in the next morning.
*
And now she was sitting there like an idiot, Googling ‘sleep deprivation’ when they were finally allowed time to sleep. Benjamin had given up and pulled the covers over his head; he was already breathing heavily. She closed the laptop and stuck it back in the drawer, then crawled under the blankets and pressed herself to Benjamin’s back. She rested her cheek against his neck and inhaled his scent. He murmured softly and contently, and they fell asleep like that, heavy and warm.
*
She woke up early the next morning, then lay gazing up at the ceiling for a while. She tried to go back to sleep, but she felt something drawing her to the courtyard.
She pulled her robe on and stuck her bare feet in her shoes, then went downstairs and opened the front door. At first, all she could see was the fog. It was so thick she could hardly make out the annexes.
But then her eyes adjusted and she saw a pair of guests talking to Sten over by the sentry box. They were carrying suitcases and seemed to be saying goodbye. Then they passed through the gate, which closed behind them with a creak.
The last two guests.
The fog grew denser; it seemed alive, floating across the yard and alternately enclosing and releasing the trees and buildings.
All that was still was the sharp points of the barbed-wire fence.
It struck her that they could simply vanish now. The whole staff could go up in smoke, and no one would miss them for a very, very long time.
The island God forgot.
She had begun to think of them as ‘seances,’ Oswald’s drawn out conversations with the staff each evening. They often lasted late into the night. At first she thought he talked about so many things, and so fast, that she would never remember it all. But then she realized he always came to the same conclusions. That ViaTerra was the solution to all the world’s problems, that he was the only one who ever got anything done, and that the staff were all incompetent. She was astounded at his ability to use so many words and yet say so little and wondered if she was the only one having such horrible thoughts.
On this particular night they’d had to wait for Oswald for a while. She stared out the window — the wind was ripping at the trees. They’d lost almost all their leaves, but this was the first time she’d noticed.
Oswald began speaking as soon as he came through the door. Today was about the theses, and he was all fire and brimstone.
About half an hour into his lecture, she noticed that Simon, who worked in the greenhouse, looked unusually tired. He was a large guy, and a bit clumsy. He was difficult to talk to, but he was a genius when it came to gardening and thanks to him they had fresh vegetables year round. Sometimes Sofia stopped by the greenhouse just to watch him work, to see how he tied up the branches of the impressive tomato plants, whistling as he watered and touched the plants so gently with his huge hands. The greenhouse was peaceful in a way that didn’t exist anywhere else at ViaTerra.
Now, Sofia noticed that Simon was nodding off here and there. She caught his eye and shook her head in warning. If there was anything Oswald hated, it was when people fell asleep during his lectures. But Simon couldn’t keep his eyes open. His eyelids fluttered and his head lowered. She knew how it felt when exhaustion tugged at your body while your brain went numb, so she tried to help him, signalling to him to get hold of himself. But then Oswald caught sight of him as his eyes were closed and his chin was resting on his chest.
‘Oh, Simon, do you find this boring?’
Simon started and looked around in shame.
‘No, not really. Just a little sleepy.’
Oswald leaned across the table and fixed his gaze on Simon, who was wide awake by now.
‘Not really? Did you hear this fucking dumbass? Not really! Here I work like an animal, trying to drum a little sense into your brains and this fat pig just sits here snoring.’
Simon’s face had turned bright red. He glared at Oswald, fighting an internal battle to keep a lid on himself, but something wanted out and was about to overflow.
‘You can continue your snoring in Penance,’ Oswald said. ‘Who needs your goddamn plants?’
The whole staff stared at Simon: this was the moment when one usually showed remorse and begged forgiveness. But nothing was usual about Simon that evening.
He jumped to his feet.
‘I quit,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I’m done with this. None of the shit you say makes a lick of sense.’
Everything happened so fast that Sofia’s eyes could hardly keep up. Suddenly Oswald was standing in front of Simon, grabbing him by the collar with both hands. First he shook him, and then his palm flew up and struck Simon’s cheek with a loud crack that echoed in the silent room. Oswald brought his hand down on Simon’s head several more times, hard. The veins on Oswald’s forehead were standing out and his eyes were wild.
‘You fat, disgusting pig!’ he shouted in Simon’s face.
Simon tried to shove him away, but both men lost their balance and were suddenly on the floor in a tangle of arms, legs, and wrinkled clothing.
Oswald had a stranglehold on Simon’s neck, but Simon grabbed Oswald’s hands with his huge paws and pulled them away to get free.
The guys only hesitated for a moment, and then they were in a ring around the two men. Bosse’s whole gang. They grabbed Simon’s arms and legs, holding him fast as Oswald extricated himself and stood up. He adjusted his clothes, his face crimson. Spit flew from his mouth as he screamed at them.
‘Do you see that? This is the kind of shithead who ruins things for the rest of us!’
He marched out of the room, stumbled over the doorstep, and vanished into the darkness of the hallway.
Simon was still on the floor, in the grasp of Bosse’s crew.
‘He hit me. That son of a bitch hit me,’ he whimpered.
Bosse stood with his arms crossed, staring down at him.
‘Get up, you bastard!’
Benny and Sten still had hold of his arms. By now the rest of the staff had recovered from their shock and jeers rained down.
‘Traitor!’
‘Rat!’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
Even those in Penance Squared chimed in.
Sofia watched it all from above, as if she had flown to the ceiling when the first blow landed. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t really want to see what was going on, on the floor. So she fled upward, but the ceiling stopped her and she couldn’t get away from the horrors going on below.
It wasn’t just that Simon was standing there, thoroughly degraded. It was also something she had suspected: you couldn’t just walk away. The gate was, and would remain, closed. The barbed wire on the fence was all too real.
Bosse looked to her for support. Oswald wasn’t there, after all. But she just stared at him and shrugged. Simon was led away, and she got a lump in her throat when she saw his hulking body and ruffled hair vanish through the door.
The rest of the staff were starting to leave the room. The show was over.
She knew she should go to the office to ask if Oswald needed anything, but instead she went straight to her room.
Benjamin was sitting on the edge of the bed, getting undressed.
‘I don’t even want to talk about it,’ she said firmly.
‘Talk about what?’
‘For Christ’s sake, he’s started to hit the staff. This is nuts.’
‘It’s not great. But we’re the ones who drive him to it, aren’t we? He works like a dog. And that idiot stands up and says he wants to quit. Plus he fell asleep during the lecture.’
‘So it’s okay to hit him?’
Benjamin sighed. ‘Listen, let’s go to bed. Bring it up with Franz if you don’t like it. You work with him around the clock, after all.’
His last remark made her furious. Mostly because it was true. She didn’t dare talk to Oswald about it.
Benjamin lay down with his back to her and pulled the covers over his head.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring into the darkness, knowing she would never fall asleep. The scene between Oswald and Simon played on repeat in her mind, complete with sound and crystal-clear images.
Then she remembered the diary. The little black journal Wilma had given her.
She turned the light back on. Benjamin grunted under the blankets. The diary was in the top drawer, under her shirts. She opened it and stared at the first, blank page for a while. Then she took a pen from the nightstand and began to write: first the date, then ‘O violent toward Simon.’ She went back in time, writing down everything to the best of her recollection. The first abusive words, the first bans. The first jump from Devil’s Rock. The more she wrote, the better she felt.
Once she’d depleted her memory, she felt almost rested despite not having slept a wink.
It was as if someone had pressed a reset button in her mind.
We’re almost to the top of the hill now, struggling up the last little bit of the slope.
She follows me like a faithful dog.
She insisted on dragging her little cart behind her, with a Barbie doll in it; she has a hard time pulling it, but still she keeps up with me. At the top, we stop to catch our breath.
It’s dusk; the sun is bathing in the sea like a blood orange.
I take the items from my backpack. Bone-dry kindling, gasoline, and matches. She looks at me expectantly, hugging her doll.
‘Are you sure you want to use that doll?’ I ask. ‘I thought it was your best one.’
‘No, I dropped her in the toilet when I was going to wash her hair in the sink. She smells all weird now.’
‘Okay, it’s up to you.’
We build a little pyre at the very top of the slope and place the doll on top.
‘Now she can see all of Antibes,’ I say, ‘and everyone can watch as she is punished.’
She nods gravely.
I take out the plastic bottle of gasoline and show her how to pour it all over the wood and the doll.
‘Can I light it?’ she asks.
Her hands are shaking, and she lets go of the match so quickly it goes out before it reaches the pyre. She lights a new one and this time it catches. The doll burns; soon its hair is charred and its face becomes a black mask. The flames lick at the evening sky.
‘Now she has been punished,’ she says. ‘That dumb doll.’
‘That’s right!’ I say, sitting down in front of her and taking her hands. ‘Sara, you understand, don’t you, that if you tell Mom and Dad about this we can’t play this game anymore.’
The flames are reflected in her eyes. They’re really glowing.
She’s so excited that her chin is trembling.
‘I’ll never say a word,’ she says, pressing her lips into a thin line. ‘Never, ever.’