by Lars Kepler
“What do you mean?”
“It’s good, because I long to have a child, a son, a boy to suck at my breast.”
“Eva,” I said, “why do you think you’re here?”
She brought her hand from behind her back and slowly opened her clenched fist. Despite myself, I was leaning forward with curiosity.
The hand was empty; she turned it over several times. “Do you want to examine my cunt?” she whispered. She grasped the lapels of her raincoat with both hands, as if to part them again.
I felt I had to leave the room or call someone in. But Eva Blau stood up quickly.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m just scared you’re going to hate me. Please don’t hate me. I want to stay. I need help.”
“Eva, I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. As you know, the plan is for you to join my hypnosis group. Dr Ohlson said you were positive about the idea, that you wanted to give it a try.”
She nodded soberly, then reached out and knocked my coffee cup to the floor. “Sorry,” she said again.
When Eva Blau had gone, I gathered up my papers from the floor and sat down at the desk. A light rain was falling outside the window, and it occurred to me that Benjamin was on an outing with his nursery school today, and both Simone and I had forgotten to send his rain gear with him.
I wondered if I ought to call the school and ask them to let Benjamin stay indoors. Every outing terrified me. I didn’t even like the fact that he had to go down two flights of stairs to get to the dining room. In my mind’s eye, I saw other children bumping into him, someone letting a heavy door swing back in his face. I saw him tripping over the shoes stacked in grubby heaps. I give him his injections, I thought. The medication means he won’t bleed to death from a little cut. But he’s still far more vulnerable than the other children.
I remember the sunlight the following morning, penetrating the dark grey curtains. Simone was sleeping naked next to me. Her mouth was half open, her hair a jumbled mess. I admired her shoulders and breasts, covered with small pale freckles. Goose pimples suddenly appeared on her arm, and I pulled the duvet over her.
Benjamin coughed faintly. He sometimes crept in at night and lay down on the mattress on the floor if he was having nightmares, and I would lie uncomfortably beside him, holding his hand until he went back to sleep. I hadn’t noticed him come in last night, though. I saw that it was six o’clock, rolled over, closed my eyes, and thought how nice it would be to have just a few more hours of sleep.
“Daddy?” Benjamin whispered all of a sudden.
“Go back to sleep for a little while,” I said quietly.
He sat up, looked at me, and said in his high, clear voice, “Daddy, you were lying on top of Mummy last night.”
“Was I?” I said, and felt Simone wake up beside me.
“Yes, you were lying under the duvet rocking on top of her.”
“That sounds a bit silly,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Mm.”
Simone giggled and hid her head under the pillow.
“Maybe I was having a dream,” I said evasively.
Simone was now shaking with laughter underneath the pillow.
“Did you dream you were rocking?”
“Well—”
Simone looked up with a big grin. “Go on, answer the question,” she said, her voice perfectly controlled. “Did you dream you were rocking?”
“Daddy?”
“I must have.”
“But,” Simone went on with a laugh, “why were you lying on top of me when you—”
“Time for breakfast,” I said.
I saw Benjamin grimace as he got up. The mornings were always the worst. His joints had been immobile for several hours, which often led to spontaneous bleeds.
“How are you feeling?”
He held on to the wall for support as he stood.
“Just a minute, little man, I’ll give you a massage.”
Benjamin sighed as he lay down and let me gently bend and stretch his joints. “I don’t want a shot,” he said dejectedly.
“Not today, Benjamin, the day after tomorrow.”
“Don’t want it, Daddy.”
“Just think about Kalle,” I said. “He’s diabetic. He has to have injections every day.”
“David doesn’t have to,” he complained.
“But maybe there’s something else he finds difficult,” I said.
There was a silence. “His daddy’s dead,” Benjamin whispered.
“See?” I finished massaging his arms and hands.
“Thanks, Daddy,” Benjamin said, getting up slowly.
“Good boy.”
I hugged his slender little body, but as usual I suppressed the urge to hold on until he squirmed to get free.
“Can I watch Pokémon?” he asked.
“Ask your mother,” I replied, and heard Simone shout “Coward!” from the kitchen.
After breakfast I sat down in the study and called Lars Ohlson. His secretary answered, and I chatted with her for a few moments before asking if I could have a word with Lars.
“Just a moment,” she said.
I was intending to ask him not to mention me to Frank Paulsson, if it wasn’t already too late.
After waiting a minute or so, she came back on the line. “Lars isn’t available at the moment.”
“Tell him it’s me.”
“I already did,” she said stiffly.
I hung up without a word, closed my eyes, and realised that something wasn’t right. Perhaps I had been conned; presumably Eva Blau was far more troublesome than Lars Ohlson had told me.
“I can cope,” I told myself.
I wasn’t thinking of Eva Blau as a potentially dangerous person then, at least not primarily. My foremost concern was that she would throw my hypnosis group out of balance. I had assembled a small number of men and women whose problems and backgrounds were completely dissimilar. Some were easily hypnotised, others not. I’d wanted to achieve communication within the group, to help each of them move out of their shells and begin to develop new relationships, both with others and with themselves. The one thing most of them had in common was a feeling of guilt, a burden that had caused them to withdraw. Yet, while they blamed themselves for having been raped or tortured or otherwise abused, their burden was compounded by their having lost all trust in the world. I’d worked hard with them to forge the fragile bond that now existed among them, and I was worried that the addition of Eva Blau might separate them.
During our last session, the group had gone to a deeper level than we’d ever managed before. After our usual opening discussion, I’d made an attempt to put Marek Semiovic under deep hypnosis. All my past efforts had failed; he’d been unfocused and defensive.
In hypnosis, the practitioner may try to find a starting point, often a familiar or idealised place that the subject can imagine and from which he can proceed without fear or anxiety. I hadn’t yet found that starting point with Marek.
“A house? A football pitch? A forest?” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” Marek replied, as usual.
“Well, we have to start somewhere.”
“But where?”
“Try to imagine the place you’d have to return to in order to understand the person you are now,” I suggested.
“Zenica, out in the country,” said Marek, his tone neutral. “Zenica-Doboj.”
“Good,” I said, making a note. “Do you know what happened there?”
“Everything happened there, in a big building made of dark wood, like a castle, a landowner’s house, with a steep roof and turrets and verandas.”
The group was focused now; everyone was listening; they all realised that Marek had suddenly opened a number of inner doors.
“I was sitting in an armchair, I think,” Marek said hesitantly. “Or on some cushions. Anyway, I was smoking a Marlboro while … there must have been hundreds of girls and women from my home town passing by me.”
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“Passing by?”
“Over the course of a few weeks … They would come in through the front door, and then, they were taken up the main staircase to the bedrooms.”
“Was it a brothel?” asked Jussi, in his strong Norrland accent.
“I don’t know what went on there. I don’t know anything, really,” Marek replied quietly.
“Did you ever see the upstairs?” I asked.
He rubbed his face with his hands and took a deep breath. “I have this memory,” he began. “I walk into a little room and I see one of my teachers from high school, and she’s tied to a bed, naked, with bruises on her hips and thighs.”
“What happens?”
“I’m standing just inside the door with a kind of wooden stick in my hand—and I can’t remember anything else.”
“Try,” I said calmly.
“It’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t … I can’t do any more.”
“All right, fine, that’s enough,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and sat without speaking for a long time. Then he sighed, rubbed his face, and stood up.
“Marek?”
“I don’t remember anything!” he said, his voice shrill.
I made a few notes; I could feel Marek watching me all the time.
“I don’t remember, but everything happened in that freaking house,” he said, looking at me intently. I nodded.
“Everything that’s me—it’s in that wooden house!”
“The haunted house,” said Lydia, from her seat beside him.
“Exactly,” he said, “it was a haunted house,” and when he laughed, his face was etched with anguish.
I checked my watch again. In an hour I was to meet with the hospital board to present my research. If they didn’t agree to continue my funding, I would have to start winding down both the research and the therapy. So far, I hadn’t had time to start feeling nervous. I went over to the sink and rinsed my face, then stood for a while looking at myself in the mirror and trying to summon up a smile before I left the bathroom. As I was locking the door of my office, a young woman stopped in the corridor just a few steps away.
“Erik Maria Bark?”
Her dark, thick hair was caught up in a knot at the back of her neck, and when she smiled at me, deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She looked happy and smelled of hyacinth, of tiny flowers. She was wearing a doctor’s coat, and her badge indicated that she was an intern.
“Maja Swartling,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m one of your greatest admirers.”
“I’m honoured,” I said.
“I’d love to have the opportunity to work with you while I’m here,” she said, with an uncommon directness I found appealing.
“Work with me?”
She nodded and blushed. “I find your research to be incredibly exciting.”
“Frankly, I don’t even know if there’s going to be any more research,” I explained. “I hope the board of directors is as enthusiastic as you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“My funding only lasts until the end of the year.” My imminent appearance before the board suddenly loomed up. “Right now I have an important meeting.”
Maja jumped to one side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, smiling at her. “Walk me to the lift.”
She blushed again and we set off together. “Do you think there’ll be a problem renewing your funding?” she asked anxiously.
The usual procedure was for the applicant to talk about his or her research—results, targets, and time frame—but I always found it difficult, because no matter how meticulously I presented my case, I knew I’d inevitably run into difficulties because of the pervasive prejudice against hypnosis.
“If psychotherapy is a soft science, Maja, hypnosis is even softer. By its very nature, even the most exhaustive research in the field leads to relatively inconclusive results,” I said.
“But if they read all your reports, the most amazing patterns are emerging. Even if it is too early to publish anything.”
“You’ve read all my reports?” I asked sceptically.
“There are certainly plenty of them,” she replied dryly.
We stopped at the lift.
“What do you think about my ideas relating to engrams?” I said, to test her.
“You’re thinking about the patient with the injured skull?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to hide my surprise.
“Interesting,” she said. “The fact that you’re going against conventional wisdom on the way memory is dispersed throughout the brain.”
“Any thoughts of your own on the subject?”
“I think you should intensify your research into the synapses and concentrate on the amygdala.”
“I’m impressed,” I said, pressing the button for the lift.
“You have to get the funding.”
“I know.”
“What happens if they say no?”
“If I’m lucky, I’ll be given enough time to wind down the therapy and help my patients into other forms of treatment.”
“And your research?”
I shrugged. “I could apply to other universities, see if anyone would take me.”
“Do you have enemies on the board?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
She placed her hand gently on my arm and smiled apologetically. Her cheeks flushed even more. “I know I’m speaking out of turn. But you will get the money, because your work is ground-breaking.” She looked hard at me. “And if they can’t see that, I’ll talk to them. All of them.”
Suddenly I wondered if she was flirting with me. There was something about her obsequiousness, that soft, husky voice. I glanced quickly at her badge to be sure of her name: maja swartling, intern.
“Maja—”
“I’m not easily put off, you know,” she said playfully. “Erik Maria Bark.”
“We’ll discuss this another time,” I said, as the lift doors slid open.
Maja Swartling smiled, revealing dimples; she brought her hands together beneath her chin, bowed deeply and mischievously, and said softly, “Sawadee.”
I realised I was smiling at the Thai greeting as I took the lift up to the director’s office.
Despite the fact that the door was open, I knocked before entering the conference room. Annika Lorentzon was there already, gazing out the picture window at the fantastic view, far out across Northern Cemetery and Haga Park.
“Just gorgeous,” I said.
Annika Lorentzo smiled calmly at me. She was tanned and slim. Once, her beauty had made her runner-up in the Miss Sweden contest, but now a fine network of lines had formed beneath her eyes and on her forehead. She didn’t smell of perfume but rather of cleanliness; a faint hint of exclusive soap surrounded her.
“Mineral water?” she asked, waving in the direction of several bottles.
I shook my head and noticed for the first time that we were alone in the conference room. The others ought to have gathered by now, I thought; my watch showed that the meeting should have begun five minutes earlier.
Annika stood up and explained, as if she’d read my mind, “They’ll be here, Erik. They’ve all gone for a sauna.” She gave a wry smile. “It’s one way of having a meeting without me. Clever, eh?”
At that moment the door opened and five men with bright red faces came in. The collars of their suits were damp from wet hair and wet necks, and they were exuding steamy heat and aftershave.
“Although of course my research is going to be expensive,” I heard Ronny Johansson say.
“Obviously,” Svein Holstein replied, sounding worried.
“It’s just that Bjarne was rambling on about how they were going to start cutting. The finance boys want to slash the research budget right across the board.”
The conversation died away as they came into
the room.
Svein Holstein gave me a firm handshake.
Ronny Johansson, the pharmaceutical representative on the board, just waved half-heartedly at me as he took his seat, while at the same time the local government politician, Peter Mälarstedt, took my hand. He smiled at me, puffing and panting, and I noticed he was still perspiring.
Frank Paulsson barely met my eye; he simply gave me the briefest of nods and then stayed on the far side of the room. Everyone chatted for a while, pouring out glasses of mineral water and admiring the view. For one crystal moment I observed them: these people who held the fate of my research in their hands. They were as sleek, well-groomed, and savvy as my patients were awkward, shabby, and inarticulate. Yet my patients were contained in this moment. Their memories, experiences, and all they had suppressed lay like curls of smoke trapped motionless inside this glass bubble.
Annika softly clapped her hands and invited everyone to take their seats around the conference table. The members of the board settled down, whispered, and fidgeted. Someone jingled coins in his pocket. Another flipped through his calendar. Annika smiled gently and said, “Over to you, Erik.”
“My method,” I began, “involves treating psychological trauma through group hypnosis therapy.”
“So we’ve gathered,” said Ronny Johansson.
I tried to provide an overview of what I’d done thus far. I could hear feet shuffling, chair legs scraping against the floor.
“Unfortunately, I have another commitment,” Rainer Milch said after a while. He got to his feet, shook hands with the men next to him, and left the room. My audience listened without really paying attention.
“I know this material can seem dense, but I did provide a summary in advance. It’s fairly comprehensive, I know, but it’s necessary; I couldn’t make it any shorter.”
“Why not?” asked Peter Mälarstedt.
“Because it’s a little too early to draw any conclusions,” I said.
“But if we move forward two years?” he asked.
“Hard to say, but I am seeing patterns emerge,” I said, despite the fact that I knew I shouldn’t go down that path.