The Room (4 page)

I left at once. Without a word I hurried across the granite floor and went up in the lift. I got off at the fourth floor and made an effort not to run to my desk. I slipped onto my chair and leafed quickly through my diary to check that I hadn't missed a meeting, but there was nothing written down. I glanced over at the glass doors where Karl sat, but couldn't see him. I took a deep breath and suddenly realized how tired I was. I tried to remember when I had last slept.

I should have seen through her earlier. Obviously she was a junkie. All that smiling. That optimistic outlook. It was a chemically produced friendliness. I'd walked straight into the trap. Being taken in by the surface appearance of a drug user was one of the dangers of being an open, honest person. Never suspecting anything.

I realized that I would have to stay away from her in the future.

I raised my head and tried to look straight ahead, but it was hard to get my gaze to settle on anything. I have to find somewhere I can pull myself together, I thought. I got up and felt my whole body aching with tiredness.

Without knowing how it had happened, I felt something warm and wet on my legs. I looked down and saw the remains of the coffee on my jacket and trousers, the empty plastic cup upside down in my hand. Slowly but surely I made my way toward the corridor with the toilets, then in to wipe the coffee off. I pulled out a bundle of paper towels and pressed them against my jacket and trousers.

The room, I thought. I'll go into the room for an hour. I crept out into the corridor, past the big recycling bin, switched on the light, and opened the door for the seventh time.

I could feel the clean white wall against my back. The gentle texture against the palm of my hand as I placed it on the wallpaper. The cool steel against my cheek as I leaned my head on the filing cabinet. The soft motion of the drawers as they slid in and out on their metal runners. Order.

I counted the lengths of wallpaper on the long wall. Five, I made it.

After a short while I felt brighter. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I was my old self again. I looked better than I deserved to. I adjusted my tie and went back out into the office.

I sat down in my place and looked at the time. I had about fifteen minutes left until a new fifty-five-minute period started, so I leaned back and stretched my arms up in the air. Then let them fall and folded them behind my head. I glanced over at Karl's glassed-in office. I didn't mind if he did see me now. See me taking time for myself. I sat for a while, going through various replies to things he might say. Little hints that would slowly but surely make him realize that I was a man of the future. Someone worth keeping in with. Not the sort of person to pick unnecessary arguments with. About trivial things.

I looked over toward the little kitchen with the broken light above the stove that still hadn't been fixed. It seemed astonishing that it was still like that. Was it really so hard to screw in a new bulb?

I sighed, tilted my head back, gazed up at the ceiling, and looked at the various fittings. The cables for the fluorescent lighting were attached to the outside of the ceiling tiles, fixed in place by little clamps that made the whole thing look rather provisional. A sausage-like cornice between the ceiling and the walls. I counted the lengths of wallpaper along the wall by the toilet corridor, and made it sixteen.

For some reason I thought that was rather low, so I counted them once more. And made it sixteen again. I spun gently in my chair and wondered how that could be right. Each length must be about half a meter wide, making eight meters for the whole wall. I looked down at the bookcases and filing cabinets lined up against it and tried to work out the distance. Yes, eight meters, that could be about right. But there were five lengths inside the room alone. How narrow could the toilets be, lined up alongside it? I wondered. They couldn't be less than one meter. Not when you took the walls into account.

I got up from my chair and went over to the wall. I stood there for a while looking at it. Three bookcases, a filing cabinet, and a photocopier were lined up against it. I went round the corner into the toilet corridor. There were the three toilets. The first one was vacant and I stood in the doorway and held my arms out to measure it. It must be at least a meter, I thought. I went back out into the corridor, past the room and the big green recycling bin, and reached the lift. I looked at it.

Then I went round the far corner and came to the wall with the bookcases and filing cabinets again. I backed away slightly and counted the lengths of wallpaper again. Sixteen.

I went up to the wall and put my lower arm against the wallpaper. I had heard somewhere that a grown man's lower arm and hand together make up about half a meter. That seemed to fit.

Once again I went back round the corner to the toilet corridor. Three toilets, a recycling bin, and a lift, all of which combined came to about eight meters. So what about the room?

I went back and sat down at my desk, took out a pad of graph paper, and did a simple sketch of this part of the fourth floor.

Impossible, I thought as I looked at the sketch. There's something that doesn't make sense.

I put the pad down and went round to the lift. I went down and got out on the third floor. It was almost as empty as the fourth floor. A man in a cap said hello to me as I went round the corner into their toilet corridor. I didn't bother to respond. I was taken by surprise, and because I didn't know him I didn't think there was any reason for us to waste time saying hello to each other. Besides, I was busy with this peculiar discovery, and I wasn't about to be sidetracked. I was on the trail of something. I could feel it in my whole body.

The layout was the same down here, toilets and recycling bin. But no room.

I went round to the other side where a large whiteboard had been screwed to the wall. I counted the lengths of wallpaper. Sixteen. Exactly the same proportions, I thought. It's all here. Except the room.

I took the lift back up again and stopped on the office side of the wall.

I looked at Jörgen's fairy lights up by the ceiling. They stretched all the way from one wall to the other, and down to the electric socket by the floor.

I grabbed hold of the string of lights, unplugged it from the wall, and pulled it down from the ceiling. It was more firmly attached than I had expected and when I finally managed to get the whole string loose, small flakes of plaster broke away from the top part of the wall.

I tied the part of the wire that had been hanging down toward the electric socket, then went round and laid it out on the floor on the other side where the toilets started. It reached just past the green recycling bin.

I knew it, I thought, then said it out loud to myself so that I would be sure to understand.

“It's invisible. It's a secret room.”

I heard someone say my name. I turned round and caught sight of Ann in the doorway to one of the toilets. Her face was completely blank. She was staring at me, so I spoke as calmly as I could to her.

“Have you got a ruler?”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“A ruler?” I said. “Or a tape measure?”

She shook her head.

I got the long ruler from HÃ¥kan's desk. It was fifty centimeters long. He'd borrowed plenty of things from me. It was only fair that I finally had a good reason to borrow something from him.

I started with the photocopier wall, in toward the office, and measured along the carpet. “8:40,” I wrote on the sketch on my pad.

On the other side I sat down and started measuring the carpet where the first toilet started. I held my thumb in place, moved the ruler, and counted the number of lengths as I did the calculation in my head.

When I reached the lift I had got to 12:20. Impossible, I thought. That makes three meters and eighty centimeters that don't exist on the other side.

I went and stood by the lift to see if the corridor was angled somehow in a way that would distort the measurements, but the wall and corridor were perfectly parallel.

It was an excellent viewpoint. From there you could clearly see that the corridor ran parallel to the wall on the other side. No distortion, no angles. But with one room too many on one side. It was extremely professionally done.

“Can I ask you something?” HÃ¥kan said when I gathered up my things at the end of the day. I had just decided to stop lending him my Staedtler pens with the 0.5 and 0.05 millimeter tips, seeing as I had noted that he seldom, if ever, put the lids back on them. Next time I would say no.

“Yes,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“What are you doing?” HÃ¥kan said.

I took my coat and scarf off the hanger and went round to HÃ¥kan. We were almost the only people left in the office. Lena by the window was still there, as she usually was.

“What do you mean?” I said.

HÃ¥kan folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and looked at me.

“What are you doing when you stand like that?”

“Stand? Like what?”

“When you stand still like that. By the wall.”

“Which wall?” I said.

He nodded his head toward the toilet corridor.

We both fell silent and looked at each other. I realized that this was a defining moment. A moment when I might be able to find out what was really going on in this department.

“Come on,” I said. “Show me. Where do I stand?”

HÃ¥kan squirmed and suddenly didn't seem so interested anymore.

“Oh, you know.”

“No, show me. Where do I stand?”

He hesitated. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, down his cheek, and under his chin. He scratched his long sideburns. It was obvious that he felt unsettled.

“Look, never mind. We can talk about it some other time.”

He slowly gathered together his things on the desk. I caught him glancing over toward Lena by the window.

“No, show me now,” I said. “What do I do?”

“Come on, surely you know?”

“No. I don't know.”

He folded his arms again and looked me in the eye.

“You stand there, completely still,” he said.

“Where do I stand?”

“Over there. By the wall.”

“Show me, HÃ¥kan. Please. I want you to show me exactly.”

HÃ¥kan looked at me suspiciously. Finally he got up and went off round the corner. I followed him. We stopped right outside the door to the room.

“Here,” HÃ¥kan said.

“What do I do here?” I said.

“You stand here. Completely still.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, it's almost a bit creepy. You're so bloody still. How can you do that, without moving a muscle? It's like you're just not there.”

“Show me.”

“No.”

“Go on, please.”

“No, damn it. You just stand here completely still.”

“Do I say anything?”

“No, you're completely gone. It's like you're somewhere else. Completely out of reach. Hell, your phone even started to ring in your inside pocket. I asked if you weren't going to answer it, but you didn't move a millimeter. It was like you couldn't hear. As if you were somewhere else.”

“When did I do this?”

“The other day. You made me come with you. And then you just stood there like that.”

“How long do I stand like that?”

“It varies. Last time it was about five minutes, but last week you must have stood for at least fifteen minutes.”

“Has anyone else seen me like that?”

HÃ¥kan shuffled uncomfortably.

“Well, yes. People have to go to the toilets.”

“So they've seen me.”

“Yes, I mean, it's not like they stand and stare, but they can't help wondering. Me too. What is it you're doing?”

I looked him in the eye and he looked back. We looked at each other as if we were playing some sort of game where you had to make the other person laugh or look away. I thought it felt uncomfortable and somehow infantile. I felt a sudden burst of impatience. Was this the start of a message? Some sort of code that would initiate me into the secret? Was he trying to tell me something, or was this whole thing a test?

“Can I ask you something, then?” I said.

“Sure,” HÃ¥kan said.

“What do you see in front of you here?” I said, pointing at the door.

HÃ¥kan was wearing his rather worn, dark-blue corduroy jacket that day, and I could feel that it was having a negative effect on me. Blue really wasn't his color, and the corduroy was soft and threadbare. No substance to it at all. It made me think of poorly stuffed cushions in waiting rooms. It was making me uneasy and unfocused. And even more angry.

It was as if he wasn't properly concentrating on work.

There was something about him that had long made me suspect that he had a hidden agenda beyond the watchful eye of the Authority. His hair, his sideburns, and that scruffy jacket; it all suggested a set of values different from the ones that we in the department live by.

“Shall we go home now, Björn?” he said.

“Not before we're done here,” I said.

As HÃ¥kan reluctantly explained, for the second time, what he could see in front of him, and stubbornly denied the existence of the room, I realized that I was going to have to be more obvious. I reached out my arm and pointed, so the tip of my forefinger was touching the door.

“Door,” I said.

He looked at me again with that foolish smile and glazed expression.

“Wall,” he said.

“Door,” I said.

“Wall,” he said.

The following day I decided to pay careful attention to everyone going down the corridor, and I was forced to admire the elegant artistry of whoever had constructed the secret space. What had the architect done to conceal a room so effectively, when it was right in front of the noses of everyone working here? And who had managed to get them to act so credibly as if it didn't exist? Who had drilled this crazy exercise into them? And what was that room, really? Maybe it was dangerous, or did it possibly contain classified information? It seemed so unassuming, but perhaps that was the whole point? Maybe it was supposed to look innocent.

Just before lunch I went over to Jörgen. I stood there waiting until he looked up from his papers.

“Did you want something?” he asked.

I beckoned him toward me with my forefinger but he didn't move from his chair. His jaw was hanging like a boxer's.

“Have you got a minute?” I asked when he didn't obey my signal, which couldn't possibly have been unclear.

Finally he got the message and slowly followed me round the corner into the corridor. I stopped outside the door to the room, just as I had done with HÃ¥kan the day before. I made an effort to adopt a confidential tone of voice.

“Jörgen,” I said. “I want you to be completely honest now. I want you to tell me what this room is for.”

“What room?”

“This one,” I said, touching the door with my finger.

“There's the lift,” Jörgen said. “And there are the toilets.”

“Mmh, but what about in between them?”

“In between? Well, there's a recycling bin, if that's what you mean…”

“That's not what I mean,” I said. “What's this room for?”

I slapped my hand on the door, fairly hard. Actually harder than I had expected. I realized that this nonsense was wearing my patience. I had to try to keep a cool head.

“Well…” Jörgen said, looking at me.

I could see that he was extremely uncertain. He was evidently disconcerted at having to talk to me.

“…it's a wall.”

I glared at him.

“Is that all you've got to say?”

“Yes, what do you want me to say? You're fucking weird, you know that? Why are you so interested in this wall? Don't drag me into this.”

I realized that Jörgen wasn't the right place to start. He was only a poor subordinate. Loyal, but entirely without influence. Whoever was responsible for this deception was on a different level of the hierarchy. I patted him on the shoulder and said he could go back in and sit down again.

That afternoon I went round and led my other colleagues to the same spot and carried out the same procedure as with Jörgen and Håkan. They were all reluctant, and they all stuck to the same story: there was no door there, let alone a room, and, anyway, what was I doing when I stood there without moving?

A certain anxiety spread through the department. People stood and whispered to each other. HÃ¥kan tried to put his arm round my shoulders and a number of people pointed at me. In the end I lost patience and gathered all the staff together, apart from Karl, who was off at some meeting all day.

I went from desk to desk and summoned everyone in friendly but firm terms to a short meeting. Some of them muttered, wondering what this was all about, wanting to know in advance. Some of them literally required a helping hand to get moving. But most of them came along without any fuss, and I told them all it would be best, as well as easiest, if everyone was given the information at the same time. Jörgen and Håkan laughed rather nervously at first and tried to make a joke of it, but when they realized that no one else thought they were very funny they quieted down noticeably. I herded them like a sheepdog out to the corridor, past the toilets, toward the room.

When I stepped inside the room for the eighth time, I had the whole department with me, apart from Karl. Each and every one of them stepped through the door, and once I had them all in there I explained to them that I had seen through their little joke. I said I didn't know who was the brains behind it, but that I'd worked it out well enough to let them know.