The Hypnotist

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