It was your fury that troubled me.
I’ve read everything you’ve written in this notebook, and I think you have a lot of interesting things to say. Without any exaggeration, I can say that your analysis is in many instances so pertinent that it’s better than mine.
You’ve got the makings of a psychologist. Go to university!
There’s no more space in the margin after that, and Sofia has drawn an arrow pointing over the page. There she has added:
But I’d appreciate it if you asked for permission before borrowing my notebook. Perhaps you and I could have a talk about what you’ve written, when you feel ready?
Hugs from Sofia.
Sunflower Nursing Home
‘WHAT DID THEY do to Victoria in Copenhagen?’ Jeanette asks. ‘And do you remember what the letter said?’
‘Give me another cigarette, and maybe I’ll remember.’
Jeanette hands Sofia Zetterlund the pack.
‘So, what was it we were talking about?’ she asks after taking a couple of deep drags on the cigarette.
Jeanette is starting to lose patience. ‘Copenhagen and the letter you got from Victoria ten years ago. Do you remember what she wrote?’
To Jeanette’s surprise Sofia laughs out loud. ‘Would you mind passing me Freud …?’
‘Freud?’
‘Yes, I heard you messing about with him when you got the ashtray. I may be blind, but I’m not deaf yet.’
Jeanette gets the little snow globe containing Freud’s bust from the chest of drawers while the old woman lights another cigarette.
‘Victoria Bergman was very special,’ Sofia begins, slowly turning the snow globe in her hands. The smoke from the cigarette curls around her blue dress and the snow inside the globe swirls about. ‘You’ve read my final recommendation, and the court’s judgement about protecting Victoria’s identity, and you’re aware of the reasons behind that. Victoria was subjected to extreme sexual abuse by her father and probably other men as well.’
Sofia pauses, and Jeanette finds herself astonished at how the old woman keeps switching between intellectual clarity and dementia-like confusion.
‘But what you probably don’t know is that Victoria also suffers from multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, if those mean anything to you?’
Now Sofia Zetterlund is the one directing the conversation.
Jeanette is vaguely aware of the concepts. Sofia the younger had once explained that Samuel Bai had had a personality disorder of that sort.
‘Even if it’s extremely rare, it’s not really that complicated,’ Sofia the elder goes on. ‘Victoria was forced to invent different versions of herself in order to survive and cope with the memories of her experiences. When we gave her a new identity, she had documentation that one of her split personalities really existed. That was the conscientious part of her, the one that could get an education, work, basically live a normal life.’
Sofia smiles again, winks at Jeanette with one cataract-blurred eye and shakes the snow globe.
‘Freud wrote about moral masochism,’ Sofia adds. ‘The masochism of a dissociative individual can lead them to relive their own abuse by allowing one of their alternative personalities to do the same thing to others. I detected a trace of this in Victoria, and if she hasn’t received help dealing with her problems as an adult, there’s a great risk that this personality is still inside her. It will be acting like her father to torment itself, to punish itself.’
Sofia puts her cigarette out in the pot plant on the table, then leans back in her armchair. Jeanette sees the distant look on her face return.
She leaves the Sunflower Nursing Home ten minutes and one reprimand later. She and Sofia each smoked five cigarettes during their conversation, and were caught red-handed by the manager and a nurse who came to give Sofia her medication.
She gets in behind the wheel and turns the key in the ignition. The engine splutters, but refuses to start. ‘Fuck!’ she swears.
She walks down to the Midsommarkransen shopping centre, and the Tre V?nner bar, opposite the metro station. The bar’s half full and she finds an empty table by the window facing the park, orders a coffee and calls Hurtig’s number.
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
CAN’T IT BE said that feeling full to overflowing is one symptom of dissatisfaction? Sofia Zetterlund is walking down Hornsgatan, absorbed in herself. And isn’t dissatisfaction the source of all change?
She knows that sooner or later she’s going to have to tell Jeanette who she really is. Explain that she used to be ill, but is now well. Is it as easy as that? Will just telling her be enough? And how will Jeanette react?
When she tried to help Jeanette put together the perpetrator profile, she was really just talking about herself, unsentimentally and without emotion. She hadn’t needed to read the descriptions of the crime scenes because she knew what they looked like. Or what they should have looked like.
When she walks into reception Ann-Britt calls to her.
Sofia Zetterlund is first surprised and then annoyed when Ann-Britt tells her that she had received calls from both Ulrika Wendin and Annette Lundstr?m.
All future sessions with Ulrika and Linnea have been cancelled.
‘All of them? Did they say why?’ Sofia leans over the reception desk.
‘Well, Linnea’s mum said she was feeling better now, and that Linnea was back at home.’ Ann-Britt folds the newspaper she had been reading before going on. ‘Apparently she’s got custody of her daughter again. The decision to take her into care was only temporary, and now that everything’s fine she didn’t think Linnea needed to see you any more.’
‘What an idiot!’ Sofia can feel her anger building. ‘So now she suddenly imagines she’s competent to decide what sort of treatment the girl needs?’
Ann-Britt gets up and goes over to the water cooler beside the kitchen. ‘Maybe she didn’t quite put it like that, but that was pretty much what she said.’
‘And what was Ulrika’s reason?’
Ann-Britt pours a glass of water. ‘She didn’t say much, just that she didn’t want to come again.’
Sofia turns and walks to the lift and goes back down, then out onto the street, heading east along St Paulsgatan. At Bellmansgatan she turns left, past the Maria Magdalena churchyard.
Fifty metres ahead she catches sight of a woman from behind, and there’s something about the broad, rolling hips and the way the feet point outwards that she recognises.
The woman’s head is bowed, as though weighed down by some internal burden. Her hair is grey, pulled up into a bun.
Sofia’s stomach tightens and she feels cold and sweaty. She stops, and watches the woman turn the corner into Hornsgatan.
Memories, difficult to reconstruct. Fragmentary.