A car alarm was going off down the street, and somewhere far away a fan was whirring. Martha blinked and then opened her eyes properly. A ray of sunshine seeped in through the window and her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the faint light. The windows were dirty and needed to be cleaned, and the same could be said about the floral-patterned curtains that she had hung up herself to brighten up the room. Evidently, nobody cared about keeping things clean nowadays, and she certainly couldn’t manage such chores herself anymore. Martha yawned widely, but her thoughts were all confused and she couldn’t really think straight. Oh dear, oh dear, how slow and tired she was feeling. Ever since the party it had felt as if she had small clouds of chewing gum clogging up the inside of her head. Of course, the wine and all the pills she took every day didn’t mix very well. But what fun they had had! If only they had had time to tidy up and return to their rooms … Yes, if only they hadn’t fallen asleep …
Martha sat on the edge of her bed and manoeuvred her feet into her slippers. Oh, it had been so embarrassing, and Director Mattson had shouted at them in such an irascible manner. She glanced at the bedside table. There lay the corkscrew that Brains had given her ‘for future parties’, as he had put it. But, sadly, there’d be no more. After the party, Nurse Barbara had locked them all in their rooms and now they could only leave the residents’ floor if a member of staff accompanied them. And on top of that, they had been given small red pills ‘to calm them down’. How boring life had become!
And talking of pills—why did old people always have to have so many pills? They almost seemed to receive more pills than food. Perhaps that’s what had made them so dull? They always used to play cards and had gone into each other’s rooms after 8 p.m. But since Diamond House had taken over, things like that didn’t happen any more. Nowadays they hardly did anything at all, and if they got the chance to play a hand of cards, they either fell asleep or forgot what they were doing. Christina, who loved her literary classics, didn’t even have the energy to thumb through magazines, and Anna-Greta, who had liked to listen to horn concertos and some of the Swedish popular folk singers, now just stared at her record player and couldn’t muster the energy to get any of her records down from the shelf. Brains hadn’t made any inventions for ages, and Rake didn’t look after his plants properly. Most of the time they just watched TV and nobody did anything special. Something was wrong, really horribly wrong.
Martha got up, supported herself on her walker and went into the bathroom. While she washed her face, brushed her teeth and went about her morning routine, she mulled everything over. Hadn’t she been the one who had intended to protest and make a revolution? But now here she was, doing nothing again. She stared into the mirror and noticed how worn out she looked. Her face was pale and her white hair stood on end. Sighing loudly, she stretched out, reaching for her hairbrush, but in so doing happened to knock the bottle of red pills onto the floor. They scattered across the bathroom floor and lay there like angry red dots by her feet. She didn’t feel like picking them up. Martha snorted and just swept them all down the floor drain with her foot.
She got rid of some of the other pills too, and after a few days, already felt much chirpier. She started knitting again and, having always loved crime thrillers, went back to working her way through the stack of ghastly murders on her bedside table. And her revolutionary zeal had returned.
When Brains heard the knocks, he knew it must be Martha. Three distinct knocks on the door right next to the handle and then silence. That was definitely her. He dragged himself up from the sofa and pulled his sweater down over his round belly. He hadn’t had a visit from Martha for quite some time, and he had wondered if she was OK. Every day he had intended to go and see her in the evening, but instead he always fell asleep in front of the TV. He looked around for an empty cardboard box and quickly tidied away the pile of drawings, chisels and screws from the coffee table into the box before hastily pushing it under his bed. Two blue shirts and some socks with holes in them he hid behind the sofa cushions, and he brushed the breadcrumbs scattered across his side table onto the floor. Having done that, he turned off the TV and went to open the door.
‘Ah, it is you, come in!’
‘Brains, we must have a talk,’ Martha said, striding into his room purposefully.
He nodded and put the kettle on. In the cupboard he found two printed circuit cards, a hammer and some cables before he reached the instant coffee. There were two coffee cups behind the coffee jar. When the water had boiled, he filled the cups and added some coffee granules.
‘I haven’t got any biscuits, I’m afraid, but—’
‘That will do just fine,’ said Martha, accepting the cup of coffee and sitting down on the sofa. ‘You know something, this might sound crazy, but I think they are drugging us. We get too many pills. That is why we have been so lethargic.’
‘Really? Do you mean—’ He discreetly pushed a gutted Grundig radio under the armchair and hoped she hadn’t noticed it.
‘Well, we can’t allow it to go on!’ he said.
‘Exactly! We should have acted when we said we were going to protest.’
He took her hand and patted it lightly.
‘But, my dear, it still isn’t too late.’
Martha’s eyes sparkled and her face lit up.
‘You know what, I’ve been thinking of something. In prison you are allowed out in the fresh air at least once a day, but here we are hardly ever let out at all.’
‘I wonder how fresh the air is around a prison, but yes, I get your point.’
‘Prisoners get out for at least an hour every day, and they are given nourishing food and can take classes in a workshop. In fact, they have it better than we do.’
‘A workshop?’ That got Brains’s attention.
‘You see? I want to live for as long as possible—but I want to live an exciting life for as long as I can too.’ She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Brains raised his eyebrows and shook his head. But Martha didn’t give up.
‘Brains, I have thought this over very carefully …’
‘OK, why not, why not …’ he said. He leaned back in his armchair and burst out laughing.