Murder of Halland by Pia Juul

Author:Pia Juul
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Scandinavian, Fiction, Literary Criticism, General, Crime, European
ISBN: 9780956284075
Publisher: Peirene Press
Published: 2012-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

21

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.

Montaigne, ESSAYS

In the beginning, before we started watching television every night, we read and talked. One evening, Halland told me about a hypnotist he had seen as a boy. The man made a group of teenagers think they were hens, but Halland didn’t believe they were truly hypnotized. He still thought the man was a hoaxer.

I witnessed a similar performance by the same hypnotist, though he was older then. He convinced me, and I told Halland so. ‘Why?’ he asked. I had told the story so often that my reasoning had become an anecdote in its own right. But now that I wanted to tell the anecdote to Halland, the words stuck in my throat.

I was afraid that the hypnotist’s power would reach out and grab me even though I sat at the back. I kept shaking my head and saying no to keep his voice and eyes away from me. Volunteers from the audience were invited onto the stage. Told to do stupid things, they obeyed. When they were handed invisible drinks, they raised their invisible glasses and looked like they were drunk. ‘Now you’re at a sex show!’ said the hypnotist’s metallic voice. ‘What do you see, Hans Henrik?’ Hans Henrik was a tall, skinny boy in my class who never said a word. The audience held its breath.

‘It’s disgusting!’ he shouted in a strange, deep voice. The audience laughed.

I didn’t want to reveal myself. The ambiguity of the situation frightened me. In Halland’s eyes I saw how much I resembled Hans Henrik. The incident didn’t appear funny any more. Halland wouldn’t be amused in the right way; the anecdote could reveal insights about me I hadn’t even considered. So this was another story I didn’t tell him.

In the night, I screamed, ‘You’re touching me!’

‘Where? Where?’ he whispered. But whatever was happening had stopped and there was nothing more to say.

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