‘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.’
CHAPTER 27
Monday, 18 January 2010