The Room (7 page)

Late that afternoon the sun peeped out for a couple of minutes. Everyone in the department turned their faces toward the windows, but soon it was gone and shortly afterward it started to snow again.

I kept to my desk and wondered if I ought simply to skip my five-minute breaks and carry on working. Maybe it would be best to shut out everything else in the office and concentrate one hundred percent on work? Maybe Karl and I could come to some arrangement where we calculated how much time I saved by not taking breaks, not chatting with my colleagues, not making private phone calls or running to the toilet every five minutes, like some of the older women did, and reduce the time I spent at work by the same amount?

I took a deep breath and sighed. Getting authorization for something like that seemed unlikely under management that was so hostile to positive developments.

I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and put the indoor shoes inside.

I passed the room twice that day. Once on my way to the toilet, and once when I tidied my desk and went to put two old journals in the recycling bin. I tried not to think about it. I did my best to imitate the others and pretend the room didn't exist. It felt utterly ridiculous. Of course there's a room there, I thought. After all, I can see it. I can touch it. I can feel it. I went round the little corridor once more, as if to check that the door hadn't suddenly disappeared and I'd been imagining it all. But the door was still there. It was firmly fixed in the wall. No question. Solid. As clear as day. It almost made me laugh. I nudged it with my elbow as I walked past it the second time. I heard the sound as the fabric of my jacket touched it. And when all the others were off at lunch, I couldn't see any reason not to go in there for a short while, the tenth time.

After lunch we were all called to yet another meeting in Karl's office. I didn't understand how it could have happened, but I assumed someone must have seen me sneak into the room even though I had taken all reasonable precautions. I prepared myself for the worst.

“Well?” Karl said, when everyone had squeezed into his office.

His gaze swept round the room and settled on Jens. I made an effort to look as relaxed as possible.

“Well…” Jens said from over in the corner. “I'd just like to know…how much did those shoes cost?”

“The shoes?” Karl said, stretching to his full height.

Jens nodded, with a self-important expression on his face.

“I mean, they weren't free, were they?”

“No,” Karl said, picking up a pen which he drummed idly against the edge of the desk. “I took the liberty of—”

Jens didn't let Karl finish his sentence.

“So how daft do you have to behave to get a pair like that?” he went on, to scattered laughter.

Karl gave a strained smile, holding the pen in the air.

“Let's just say that I have a certain amount in the budget for pastoral investment in personnel matters—”

“That's still not fair,” Ann said.

“No,” Jörgen said.

“This seems to me to be all too typical,” Hannah with the ponytail said, folding her arms over her chest. “We didn't get any contribution to the Christmas party. But apparently there's money available now.”

“Now listen,” Karl said, leaning back in his chair with the pen under his chin. “That's not the same thing.”

“So he can turn up and get given stuff just because he acts a bit crazy?” Jörgen said.

Hannah with the ponytail held her arms out.

“It seems to me that it's very unclear what the applicable rules actually are.”

Several people nodded.

“The question is,” Ann said, “what sort of signals are we sending out?”

When we went back to our places John appeared alongside me. He put his hand on my arm and hissed in my ear: “I saw what you did at lunchtime.”

I raised my eyebrows and did my best to look uncomprehending.

“Don't act all innocent,” he went on. “I saw you. If I see you again, I'll tell. Just so you know.”

The snow carried on falling, and I carried on working. I tried to stick to my fifty-five-minute periods. I even tried smiling. Every time anyone happened to look in my direction I fired off a broad smile, but the whole time I could feel how suspicious everyone else was of me, trying to pretend I wasn't there. Karl came over to our desk. First he chatted with HÃ¥kan, then he turned to me. As if everything was normal.

“And how are things with you, then, Björn?”

“What sort of things?” I asked in a neutral voice.

“Well,” Karl said, and I could hear how unsettled he was. “What have you spent the last few days doing?”

Naturally he didn't want an answer. He was asking in that pointless way that people do when they ask how you are. They don't want to hear about your health. They just want to hear their own voice, and say things they've said before. They want to make a noise in a social context.

“Why do you want to know?” I said.

“Because I'm your boss,” he said.

I looked him in the eye and had a distinct sense of being the stronger person.

“I've initiated a process for developing a set of guiding principles for the department, identified so-called focus areas, specific targets in various sectors, and gathered a number of criteria. I have chosen to call one of my focus areas ‘operations in the center.' ”

I clicked to open the document and pointed at the screen.

“I plan to use this to measure the benefit we deliver to customers. To that purpose I have drawn up a questionnaire intended to find out what you customers think about my services.”

He looked at me.

“Us customers?”

“I usually think of you as customers.”

“What for?”

I allowed myself a gentle sigh.

“Are you really asking me that?”

Karl looked away for a moment and gazed out across the open-plan office. He put his hands on his hips and clenched his jaw. Then he looked at me again.

“Yes, I'm really asking you that,” he said.

“I think you maximize your potential better if you imagine a customer at the other end.”

I could tell he was impressed even if he was unable to grasp the full extent of the idea and absorb it there and then. I pointed at the screen again.

“So I'd be grateful if you could take the time to fill in this customer questionnaire which you'll find by clicking this link. The survey contains five questions dealing with the quality of our services, and one question asking if you think any other service should be provided. The questions are divided according to the various entities within the Department. Home number. Cell phone number. Private cell phone number, if applicable, although of course that's voluntary, but I'd be grateful if you could fill in the questionnaire as fully as possible.”

I fell silent and looked at the others. They were all looking at me now. HÃ¥kan was wearing the blue corduroy jacket. It looked streaked somehow. Stained? Karl had a terribly deep wrinkle above his nose, right between his eyes.

“But Björn,” he said. “I asked you to compile a list of phone numbers, didn't I?”

All my energy slowly drained away. I suddenly had difficulty concentrating. I felt a chill run down my spine and a stiffness spread across my neck and shoulders. Karl disappeared off toward his glass office. Slowly but surely the others went back to work. Finally even HÃ¥kan turned away, his scruffy corduroy jacket reflecting his movements like an extra layer of skin.

If it's never happened to you before, it's easy to let yourself be taken in by new acquaintances. You get the impression that they're better than your old ones. You ascribe to them all manner of noble qualities, simply because you don't know them properly.

They might be nice and pleasant the first time, and the second and third. In rare instances also the fourth and fifth. But you will almost always end up disappointed.

Sooner or later you reach a certain point. An occasion when their true self breaks through.

One way of dealing with that sort of thing is simply to assume the worst of people.

Karl, for instance, probably imagines that he means well. He convinces himself that his feeble efforts to help his staff are for the good of all. What he doesn't recognize, or chooses not to recognize, is his own desire to be seen as a hero: the one who solves the problem and garners the praise.

Or Margareta in reception. The appealing exterior, the pleasant demeanor, but before you can say the word “unblemished” she reveals herself to be a junkie.

More people ought to learn to see their worst sides. Everyone has a bad side. As the poem goes: “What is base in you is also base in them.”

On the other hand, it's good to realize that we aren't as remarkable as we might imagine. We want to earn a lot, eat well, and generally have a nice time. Listen to the radio sometimes or watch something on television. Read a book or a journal. We want to have good weather and be able to buy cheap food close to home.

In these terms we are all relatively simple creatures. We dream of finding a more or less pleasant partner, a summer cottage or a time-share on the Costa del Sol. Deep down we just want peace and quiet. A decent dose of easily digested entertainment every now and then.

Anything more is just vain posturing.

After three days without the room I started to feel unsettled deep down in my gut. I became irritable and noticed I was sweating more than usual. The most acute abstinence anxiety was starting to subside, but it was as if the habit was still in my body. I constantly had to stop myself when I realized my body was on its way there of its own accord. Like a former smoker fumbling for a packet of cigarettes. I tried to think about something else, and every time I felt the urge I tried counting to twenty.

I didn't go in. I'm sure of that. I sat there clinging to my desk, thinking that as long as I sat there I was fine.

That night I stood at the window fantasizing about the room. Remembering details. The mirror, the filing cabinet. The little fan on the desk. I tried to recreate something of the atmosphere in there. But it just felt odd.

The next morning I woke up thinking about the room. I ate my two crispbreads with unsmoked caviar thinking about the room. I walked to work thinking about the room. I was thinking about the room as I passed Margareta in reception, who hadn't looked at me for several weeks now and thus hadn't given me an appropriate opportunity to show that I was keeping my distance. I went up in the lift, got out, and was almost at the door. Very close. I crept toward the forbidden place like a child on Christmas morning. Stopped right next to it. Just stood there, feeling what it felt like to be so close. A bit further down were the three toilets. And beyond them the large recycling bin. There was some writing on it:

Not for cardboard or packaging.

Then I caught sight of Ann at the other end of the corridor. I don't know how she got there but suddenly there she was. Our eyes met and I realized what she was thinking. I shook my head slowly, thinking, “No, it's not what you think.”

“He was there again,” she said a short while later when we were both standing in Karl's office.

“I wasn't,” I said.

“I saw you.”

“No.”

“I saw you. You were standing like that again.”

“No. I was just standing.”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“Surely people are allowed to stand still? No one can stop you from just standing for a moment?”

“You were standing on that spot again,” Ann said. “You were talking to yourself.”

“I was reading. I didn't go inside.”

“What were you reading?”

“Not for cardboard or packaging.”

“Sorry?” Karl said.

“I didn't go inside,” I said.

Karl tried to calm us both down by putting a hand on each of our shoulders. Ann pulled away. She went and stood by the large window facing the office, with her back to us.

“I think it's very unsettling. How's anyone supposed to know if he's there or not? This way we can never be sure.”

Word spread from Ann like a group e-mail. During the day practically everyone had passed her desk, and before they walked on they managed to glance in my direction several times. I could see them whispering and making faces.

Some of them talked and pointed at me without any attempt to disguise the fact. A few didn't care if I heard them discussing and diagnosing me. No one replied when I tried to say anything. No one spoke to me at all, apart from Jörgen, who pressed me up against the wall without any warning that afternoon. He held me fairly hard with both hands on my shoulders. His face contorted, his mouth hissing, “You're a freak, you know that?”

I went home slightly early that day because I was unsure of Jörgen's mental state and I was afraid of physical violence. I once got punched in the stomach at primary school, which made me sick and I had to go and see the nurse. The memory brought with it a series of unpleasant associations.

I packed my things in my briefcase and passed reception and Margareta who pretended not to see me again. On the way home I felt I was being watched by a whole load of people. I thought everyone was looking at me. I had to stand at the front of the aisle on the bus because all the seats were taken, so anyone who felt like it could stare at me as much as they wanted. A small child with a pacifier in her mouth stared me right in the eyes for ages. In the end I couldn't help saying:

“Do we know each other?” I got no answer. The little girl just went on sucking the pacifier. Her mother gave me a disapproving stare.

When I got home I leaned my briefcase against the wall. I tried lying down on the bed, but I could feel how tense I was. And scared. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and it upset me. I felt pressure around my ankles and kicked my shoes off onto the floor. The seams of my socks had left marks on my skin.

I got up and turned the television on. I started watching a film with Harrison Ford fighting Russian terrorists. At the end of the film they were fighting by the open loading ramp of a plane while it was in the air, which isn't remotely realistic. So I switched it off and went out into the kitchen instead.

On the radio, an actor was reading a novella he'd written himself. The story included a number, sixty-nine. The actor was claiming that it became ninety-six if you turned it round, which is obviously a total lie, and I suddenly felt how lonely it is, constantly finding yourself the only person who can see the truth in this gullible world.

I turned the radio off and went and stood by the window, looking out. The snow had turned to rain and for a moment I thought it might have leaked into the apartment when I felt the first traces of wetness on my cheeks.