Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [256]
“She had very loose sexual relations with a large number of individuals, both male and female.”
“In your own report, you dwell on my client’s sexual habits. You claim that her relationship with her friend Miriam Wu confirms the misgivings about a sexual psychopathy. Why does it confirm any such thing?”
Teleborian made no answer.
“I sincerely hope that you are not thinking of claiming that homosexuality is a mental illness,” Giannini said. “That might even be an illegal statement.”
“No, of course not. I’m alluding to the elements of sexual sadism in the relationship.”
“You think that she’s a sadist?”
“I—”
“We have Miriam Wu’s statement here. There was, it says, no violence in their relationship.”
“They engaged in S. & M. sex and—”
“Now I’m beginning to think you’ve been reading too many evening newspapers. Lisbeth Salander and her friend Miriam Wu engaged in sexual games on some occasions which involved Miriam Wu tying up my client and giving her sexual satisfaction. That is neither especially unusual nor is it against the law. Is that why you want to lock up my client?”
Teleborian waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
“When I was sixteen and still at school I was intoxicated on a good many occasions. I have tried drugs. I have smoked marijuana, and I even tried cocaine on one occasion about twenty years ago. I had my first sexual experience with a schoolfriend when I was fifteen, and I had a relationship with a boy who tied my hands to the bedstead when I was twenty. When I was twenty-two I had a relationship with a man who was forty-seven that lasted several months. Am I, in your view, mentally ill?”
“Fru Giannini, you joke about this, but your sexual experiences are irrelevant in this case.”
“Why is that? When I read your so-called psychiatric assessment of Lisbeth Salander, I find point after point which, taken out of context, would apply to myself. Why am I healthy and sound while Lisbeth Salander is considered a dangerous sadist?”
“These are not the details that are relevant. You didn’t twice try to murder your father—”
“Dr Teleborian, the reality is that it’s none of your business who Lisbeth Salander wants to have sex with. It’s none of your business which gender her partner is or how they conduct their sexual relations. And yet in her case you pluck out details from her life and use them as the basis for saying that she is sick.”
“Lisbeth Salander’s whole life – from the time she was in junior school – is a document of unprovoked and violent outbursts of anger against teachers and other pupils.”
“Just a moment.” Giannini’s voice was suddenly like an ice scraper on a car window. “Look at my client.”
Everyone looked at Salander.
“My client grew up in abominable family circumstances. Over a period of years her father persistently abused her mother.”
“That’s—”
“Let me finish. Lisbeth Salander’s mother was mortally afraid of Alexander Zalachenko. She did not dare to protest. She did not dare to go to a doctor. She did not dare to go to a women’s crisis centre. She was ground down and eventually beaten so badly that she suffered irreversible brain damage. The person who had to take responsibility, the only person who tried to take responsibility for the family long before she reached her teens even, was Lisbeth Salander. She had to shoulder that burden all by herself, since Zalachenko the spy was more important to the state and its social services than Lisbeth’s mother.”
“I cannot—”
“The result, excuse me, was a situation in which society abandoned Lisbeth’s mother and her two children. Are you surprised that Lisbeth had problems at school? Look at her. She’s small and skinny. She has always been the smallest girl in her class. She was introverted and eccentric and she had no friends. Do you know