waited. She had a sharp and narrow face and a troubled expression in her eyes, which were heavily made up with blue and pink eyeshadow.
“This is Erik Maria Bark,” said Lars. “He’s a very good doctor, better than I’ll ever be.”
“You’re early,” I said.
“Is that all right?” he asked anxiously.
I nodded and invited them in.
“Erik, I can’t,” he said quietly.
“I think it would be helpful if you were here.”
“I know, but I have to run,” he said, raising his voice again and clapping me on the shoulder. “Call me any time. I’ll pick up, in the middle of the night, any time at all.”
He hurried off and Eva Blau came into my room, closing the door behind her. “Is this yours?” she asked suddenly, holding out a porcelain elephant on the palm of her hand, which was shaking.
“No, that’s not mine.”
“But I saw the way you were looking at it,” she said, in a sneering tone of voice. “You want it, don’t you?”
I took a deep breath. “Why do you think I want it?”
“Don’t you want it?”
“No.”
“Do you want this, then?” she asked.
She yanked open the raincoat. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and her pubic hair had been shaved off.
“Eva, don’t do that,” I said.
“All right,” she said, her lips trembling with nerves.
She was standing far too close to me. She smelled strongly of vanilla.
“Shall we sit down?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
“On top of each other?”
“Why don’t you sit on the couch?”
“The couch,” she said.
“Yes.”
“That would be a real treat, wouldn’t it?” she said. She went over to the desk and sat down in my chair.
“Would you like to tell me something about yourself?” I asked.
“What are you interested in?”
I wondered whether she was a person who would be easy to hypnotise, despite the intense effort she was making to appear hard, or whether she would resist, trying to remain reserved and observant.
“I’m not your enemy,” I explained calmly.
“No?” She pulled open one of the desk drawers.
“Please don’t do that.”
She ignored me and scrabbled carelessly among the papers. I went over, removed her hand, closed the drawer, and said firmly, “You are not to do that. I asked you not to.”
She looked at me defiantly and opened the drawer again. Without taking her eyes off me, she took out a bundle of papers and hurled them on the floor.
“Stop that,” I said harshly.
Her lips began to quiver. Her eyes filled with tears. “You hate me,” she whispered. “I knew it. I knew you’d hate me. Everybody hates me.” She suddenly sounded afraid.
“Eva,” I said carefully, “I just want to talk to you for a bit. You can use my chair if you want or you can sit on the couch.”
She nodded and got up to move. Then she suddenly turned and asked quietly, “Can I touch your tongue?”
“No. Sit down, please.”
She eventually sat down but immediately started fidgeting restlessly. She seemed to be holding something in her hand.
“What have you got there?” I asked.
She quickly hid her hand behind her back. “Come and look if you dare,” she challenged, her tone one of frightened hostility.
I felt a wave of impatience rush through me but forced myself to sound calm as I asked her, “Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”
She shook her head.
“Why do you think you’re here?”
Her face twitched. “Because I said I had cancer,” she whispered.
“Were you afraid you had cancer?”
“I thought he wanted me to have it.”
“Lars Ohlson?”
“They operated on my brain. They operated a couple of times. They knocked me out. They raped me while I was unconscious.” Her eyes met mine, and a fleeting smile crossed her lips. “So now I’m both pregnant and lobotomised.”
“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
