The Devil's Sanctuary Read Free

thought the idea made sense, she gave in. They decided that the boys should be separated for the summer, when their father was on vacation and could look after Max at home in Göteborg while their mother took Daniel to visit her parents in Uppsala. And according to the doctor, the summer was when children develop fastest and are most open to change.
    Both boys spent the first week crying in despair with their respective parent in their respective city.
    By the second week Daniel moved into a calmer phase. He seemed to realize the advantages of being an only child and began to enjoy the undivided attention of his mother and grandparents.
    Max, on the other hand, went on crying. Day and night. His father, who was a novice when it came to looking after children, sounded more and more desperate in his phone calls to Uppsala. Their mother thought they should abandon the experiment and called the pediatrician, who encouraged them to carry on with it. But the father would need the help of a nanny.
    Getting hold of a nanny in the middle of the summer turned out to be tricky. And the mother obviously didn’t want to hand her son over to just anyone. There was no way she was going to accept a sloppy, immature teenager desperate to earn a bit of money over the summer.
    “I’ll see what I can do,” the doctor said when the mother explained her concerns, and a couple of days later she called to recommend an Anna Rupke for the job. She was thirty-two years old and had experience nursing children with physical handicaps, but she had become so interested in children’s mental development that she had gone on to study psychology and pedagogy and was now working on her doctoral thesis. The pediatrician had supervised her in an independent study course, and Anna’s talent and engagement had made a lasting impression on her. Of course she lived in Uppsala, but if the family could arrange accommodation for her in Göteborg she was prepared to move down there for the summer to look after Max.
    Two days later Anna Rupke moved into the guest bedroom of the family home. Her presence made life considerably easier for the boys’ father. The young woman seemed quite unaffected by the child’s cries and could sit and calmly read an interesting research article while Max sat on the floor howling loud enough to make the walls shake. Now and then the boys’ father would pad into the nursery and ask if this really was normal. Maybe the boy was seriously ill? Anna shook her head with an expert’s smile.
    But surely he must be hungry? He hasn’t eaten anything all day.
    Without looking up from the report, Anna gestured toward a Singoalla cookie placed on a footstool a few feet away from the boy. Max loved Singoalla cookies. His father resisted the instinct to get the cookie and give it to him. He left the room and put up with the screaming for another hour or so from his office upstairs, then, just as he couldn’t bear it for another second, there was silence. He hurried downstairs, worried that the boy had passed out from exhaustion or hunger.
    When he reached the nursery he saw his son half shuffling, half crawling toward the stool, his eyes fixed on the cookie, concentrating hard, and extremely angry. Max got hold of the stool, and with a furious jerk he heaved himself up and grabbed the cookie. He took a big bite, and with his mouth full he turned round with a triumphant grin that was so wide that half the mouthful fell out again.
    Anna Rupke gave his father a pointed look, then went back to her reading.
    The following week was intense. With the help of strategically positioned Singoalla cookies, Max raced through the stages of shuffling, crawling, standing, and walking.
    The next week Anna got to work on speech. To start with Max communicated in his usual way, which meant pointing and screaming. But instead of rushing round and desperately trying different things that Max might possibly want, Anna sat there calmly with one of her books. Only