The Hypnotist (35 page)

She nodded sadly and I knew she could hear me; she was following my words and was no longer able to distinguish between actual reality and the reality of hypnosis. It was as if she were watching a film in which she herself took part. She was both audience and actor, united as one.

“Don’t be cross,” she whispered. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. I will console you, I promise, I will console you.”

We were in the haunted house. I knew we had reached Charlotte’s dangerous rooms and I wanted her to stop; I wanted her to have the strength to look up from the floor and see something, to catch a glimpse of the thing she was so afraid of. I could hear the group breathing around me. I wanted to help her, but I had no intention of forcing the pace this time; I was not about to repeat last week’s mistake.

“It’s cold in Grandfather’s gym,” Charlotte said suddenly.

“Can you see anything?”

“Long floorboards, a bucket, a cable,” she said, almost inaudibly.

I could see her eyelids quivering. Fresh tears seeped through her eyelashes. Her open hands were nested in her lap, palms up, like an old woman.

“You know you can leave the room whenever you want to.”

“Can I?”

“Whenever you want.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

She fell silent, lifted her chin, then slowly turned her head, her mouth half open like a child’s.

“I’ll stay a little while longer ,” she said.

“Are you alone in there?”

She shook her head. “I can hear him,” she murmured, “but I can’t see him.” She frowned, as if she were trying to see something that was out of focus. “There’s an animal here,” she said suddenly.

“What kind of animal?” I asked. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

“Daddy has a big dog . . .”

“Is your daddy there?”

“Yes, he’s here, he’s standing in the corner; he’s upset, I can see his eyes. I’ve hurt Daddy, he says. Daddy is upset.”

“And the dog?”

“The dog is moving about in front of his legs, sniffing. It comes closer, moves back. Now it is standing quietly beside him, panting. Daddy says the dog is to guard me. I don’t want that, it shouldn’t be allowed to do that; it isn’t— ”

Charlotte gasped for breath. A dreadful shadow passed over her face. I thought it was best to come up out of the trance, up out of the black sea. She ran the risk of wrenching herself out of the hypnosis if she moved forward too quickly. We had found the dog; she had stayed and looked at it. This was an enormous step forward. In time we would solve the riddle of who the dog actually was.

As we floated up through the water, I saw Marek part his lips and bare his teeth at Charlotte. Lydia reached out through a dark green cloud of seaweed, trying to stroke Pierre’s cheek; Sibel and Jussi closed their eyes and drifted upward. We met Eva Blau hovering just beneath the surface.

We were almost awake. The dividing line where reality dissolves into the influence of hypnosis is always unclear, and the same is true during the reverse journey, back to the territory of consciousness.

“We’ll take a break now,” I said, and turned to Charlotte. “Good idea?”

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes.

Marek got up, asked Sibel for a cigarette, and went outside with her. Pierre remained in his seat next to Jussi. Lydia stood up slowly, stretched her arms languidly above her head, and yawned. I thought I would tell Charlotte I was pleased she had chosen to stay a little while longer in her haunted house, but she had left the room.

I had picked up my pad to make a few quick notes when Lydia came over to me. Her heavy jewellery clinked softly, and I could smell her perfume as she stood next to me. “Isn’t it my turn soon?”

“Next time,” I replied, without looking up from my notepad.

“Why not today?”

I put my pen down and met her gaze. “Because I was intending to continue with Charlotte.”

“But if she doesn’t come back,” Lydia persisted.

“Lydia, I try to help all my patients.”

She tilted her head to one side. “But you’re not going to succeed, are you?”

“What makes you think that?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Statistically, one of us will commit suicide, a couple will end up in an institution, and— ”

“You can’t reason like that.”

“Yes, I can,” she said, “because I want to be one of those who makes it.” She took a step closer to me and her eyes gleamed with unexpected cruelty as she lowered her voice. “I think Charlotte will be the one who takes her own life.”

Before I had time to respond, she simply sighed and said, “At least she hasn’t got any children.”

I watched Lydia go and sit down. When I glanced at the time, I realized more than fifteen minutes had passed. Pierre, Lydia, and Jussi had returned to their seats. I called Marek in; he was wandering around in the hall, talking to himself. Sibel was standing in the doorway, smoking, and giggled wearily when I asked her to come in.

Lydia’s expression was smug when I finally had to admit that Charlotte hadn’t returned.

“Right,” I said, bringing my hands together. “Let’s continue.”

I saw their faces before me. They were ready. In fact, the sessions were always better after the break; it was as if they were all longing to return to the depths, as if the lights and the currents down there were whispering to us, inviting us to join them once again.

The effect of the induction was immediate. Lydia sank into a deep hypnosis in just ten minutes.

We were falling. I could feel lukewarm water washing over my skin. The big grey rock was covered with corals. The tentacles of their polyps were waving in the water. I could see every detail, every glowing, vibrant color.

“Lydia,” I said, “where are you?”

She licked her dry lips and tipped her head back; her eyes were just closed, but she had an irritated expression around her mouth, and her brow was furrowed. “I’m taking the knife.” Her voice was dry and rasping.

“What kind of knife is it?” I asked.

“The knife with the serrated edge, the one on the draining-board,” she said in a surprised tone, then sat in silence for a while, her mouth half open.

“A bread knife?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Go on.”

“I cut the pack of ice cream in half. I take one half and a spoon to the sofa in front of the TV.
Oprah Winfrey
. Dr. Phil is sitting in the audience. She asks him a question and he holds up his index finger. There’s a piece of red thread tied around it, and he’s just about to tell us why when Kasper starts yelling. I know he doesn’t want anything, he’s just trying to spite me. He yells because he knows it will upset me. I won’t tolerate bad behaviour in my house.”

“What is he yelling?”

“He knows I want to hear what Dr. Phil says. He knows I enjoy
Oprah
; that’s why he’s yelling.”

“And what is he yelling right now?”

“There are two closed doors between us,” she goes on. “But I can hear him yelling.”

“What is he saying?”

“Horrible words. He’s yelling
cunt, cunt, cunt
.” Lydia’s cheeks were red, and her forehead was beaded with sweat.

“What do you do?” I asked.

She licked her lips again, her breathing heavy. “I turn up the TV,” she said, her voice subdued. “It thunders out, the applause makes the set rattle, but it feels wrong, it’s no good any more. I’m not enjoying it. He’s ruined it. That’s how it is, but I ought to explain it to him.”

She smiled faintly with her lips pressed together; her face had now lost all its colour. The water shimmered in metallic rolls over her forehead.

“Is that what you do?” I asked.

“What?”

“What do you do, Lydia?”

“I . . . I go past the pantry and down into the rec room in the basement. I can hear whistling and strange buzzing noises from Kasper’s room . . . I don’t know what he’s up to. I just want to go back upstairs and watch TV, but I keep going to Kasper’s room. I open the door and go in.” She fell silent. The water was forced out through her half-closed lips.

“You go in,” I repeated. “What do you walk in on, Lydia?”

Her lips were moving slightly. The air bubbles sparkled and disappeared upward.

“What do you see?” I asked cautiously.

“He’s pretending to be asleep when I walk in,” she said slowly. “He’s ripped up the photo of Grandmother! He promised to be careful if I let him borrow the picture, and now he’s destroyed it! It’s the only one I’ve got. And he’s just lying there, pretending to be asleep. I need to have a serious talk with Kasper on Sunday; that’s when we go through how we have behaved toward s each other during the past week. I wonder what advice Dr. Phil would give me. I look down and see that I still have the spoon in my hand, but when I look at it I see a teddy bear reflected in the metal. It must be hanging from the ceiling . . .”

Lydia suddenly grimaced, as if she were in pain. She tried to laugh, but only strange noises came out. She tried again, but it still didn’t sound like laughter.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I look,” she said, turning her face upward.

Suddenly she slid off her chair, banging the back of her head on the seat. I rushed over. She sat on the floor, still under hypnosis, but no longer as deeply. She stared at me with terrified eyes as I spoke reassuringly to her.

I left the waiting room and walked down the hallway towards my office. The hospital lobby was empty, apart from a few elderly women waiting for transport. It was so beautiful out, I thought I ought to go for a run tonight as soon as I finished work.

Maja was waiting by my office door. Her full red lips parted in a broad smile, and a hair clasp in her coal-black hair sparkled as she bowed to me. With her usual playfulness, she said, “I hope you don’t regret the fact that you’ve committed yourself, doctor.”

“Committed myself? That’s a hell of a thing to say to a psychiatrist.” She laughed, but I still felt the need to reassure her. “Of course I don’t regret it,” I said.

I stood next to her to unlock the door, feeling a distinct tingling inside. But when our eyes met, I saw an unexpected seriousness in her expression, and I was able to dismiss the sensation. She passed me and went inside. It was hard not to be self-consciously aware of my own body; my feet, my mouth. Maja blushed as she took out a folder containing her papers, pen, and notebook.

“What’s happened since we last met?” she asked.

I made her a cup of coffee and began to describe the afternoon’s session.

“I think we’ve found Charlotte’s perpetrator,” I said. “The person who victimized her so badly that she attempts suicide over and over again.”

Maja looked at me with a gratifyingly rapt expression. “Who is it?”

“A dog,” I said seriously.

Maja didn’t laugh; she was well versed in my work. The most daring and the most striking of my ideas was based on the ancient structure of the fable: to depict people in animal form, to assign forbidden acts and proscribed behaviour to beasts, is one of the oldest ways to circumvent narrative taboos or simply avoid truths that are too frightening or too tempting.

It was very easy, almost treacherously easy, for me to talk to Maja Swartling. She was familiar with the subject, she asked intelligent questions, and above all she was an excellent listener.

“And Marek Semiovic? How is he getting on?” she asked, sucking the end of her pen as she waited for my response.

“Well, you know his background. He came here as a refugee during the war in Bosnia but was given help only for his physical injuries at the time.”

“Yes.”

“He’s . . . interesting . . . for my research, even if I don’t really understand yet what’s happening with him. When he’s under very deep hypnosis, he always ends up in the same room, with the same memory— he’s being forced to torture people, people he knows, boys he used to play with, shopkeepers he used to buy from, teachers at his school— but then something happens.”

“During the hypnosis?”

“Yes. He refuses to go any further.”

“He refuses?”

“Free will under hypnosis is limited only by the fact that we can’t lie to ourselves.”

Time passed, and it was evening. The hall outside my office was silent and deserted.

Maja put her things away in her briefcase, wound her scarf around her neck, and stood up.

“I don’t know where the time went,” she said apologetically.

“Thanks for listening,” I said, holding out my hand.

She hesitated. “I’m the one who should thank
you
. I wonder if I could buy you a drink this evening to express my gratitude?”

I quickly ran through my plans. Simone and her friends were going to see
Tosca
, and she would be home late. Benjamin was staying with his grandfather, and as far as everyone was concerned, I’d intended to work all evening.

“One drink,” I said, picking up my jacket. I tamped down the feeling that I was overstepping the mark.

“I know a little place on Roslagsgatan,” said Maja, “called Peterson-Berger. It’s very simple but really nice.”

“Good.” I turned off the light and locked the door behind us.

It was about seven-thirty, and there was hardly any traffic. We took our bikes and rode down to Norrtull. The spring quivered in the sound of birdsong in the trees.

When we were met by the restaurant’s smiling proprietress, I grew doubtful. Should I really be here? What would I say if Simone rang and asked what I was doing? A wave of unease rose up, but I justified the outing to myself: Maja was a colleague. We wanted to continue our discussion. Simone, who never hesitated to go out alone with friends, was probably drinking wine right now in the restaurant at the opera house.

“I love their spit-roasted chicken with cumin,” Maja said, leading the way to a table at the far side of the restaurant.

We sat down, and a waitress immediately came over with a jug of water. Maja rested her chin on her hand, gazed at her glass, and said calmly, “If we get fed up with being here, we can always go back to my place.” She looked at me expectantly. For a moment I allowed myself to wonder what she was doing here with me. She was gorgeous, young, and outgoing. I must have been fifteen years older than she was, and I was married.