The Unit (5 page)

10

I have always loved exercise, and in the unit’s sports complex there was everything I could have wished for, and more: a small sports ground with a running track—as if the Atrium Walkway weren’t enough—and equipment for all kinds of athletics, a big hall for various ball and racquet sports, a bowling alley, a classic gymnasium with wall bars all the way around, and a storeroom next door with a vaulting horse, a vaulting box, baseball bats, hockey sticks, and nets containing balls of various sizes. And on two floors there were smaller rooms for aerobics, Friskis & Svettis gym training, spinning, dance, yoga, fencing and so on, as well as a weight room. And the swimming pool was right in the center of everything.

My mouth was almost watering as Elsa and I wandered around. We saw people practicing the high jump, long jump and discus, playing badminton, tennis, hockey and volleyball. And as we cautiously pushed open the door of each of the smaller rooms in turn and peeped in, we saw two women playing squash, a group in cotton outfits learning judo, another group doing something that sounded and looked like African dance, a man on his own practicing tai chi, plus a group exercising around a Friskis & Svettis instructor to some music with a powerful beat. When she saw us in the doorway she waved to us to come and join in, but we smiled and waved our refusal, pointing at our clothes and shoes by way of explanation. Elsa was wearing loafers and I was in sandals. The instructor nodded and we closed the door and went into the gym next door.

It was small but well equipped, the air fresh without feeling chilly, the music pulsating energetically but with the volume relatively low. Five or six people were exercising at the moment. None of them took any notice of us; they carried on lifting, walking on the treadmill, pulling and pushing as they puffed, grimaced and concentrated as hard as they could on one muscle group at a time, one repetition at a time.

“I don’t get it,” muttered Elsa as we made our way between rows of well-oiled, perfectly functioning machines.

“Don’t get what?” I said.

“All this luxury! How much is all this costing the taxpayer?”

“That’s true,” I agreed, although I was actually more excited than upset. “We seem to be expensive to run.”

“Exactly. And for what purpose?”

I didn’t reply. Not because I had nothing to say, but because at that moment I caught sight of something that took my attention away from the topic of luxury. On the leg-curl machine was a man in a T-shirt and shorts, exhaling audibly each time he pulled the weight down toward himself with the back of his legs, keeping an even rhythm. On his face, arms and legs he had some kind of outbreak: blue-black and reddish brown spots and blotches, the smallest the size of the nail on your little finger, the biggest about as large as a medium-size birch leaf. Some of the larger blotches had burst and were suppurating. They looked revolting. It looked like a disease, and it made me think of Kaposi’s sarcoma, which I had seen an AIDS patient suffering from when I was young and working in health services and home care. This outbreak reminded me of Kaposi’s, and the lumps were swelling and shrinking according to the movement of the man’s muscles. As we passed him I glanced curiously and as discreetly as I could at the weights on the machine, and saw that he was lifting four hundred pounds with the back of his thighs. Not bad for a man between sixty and sixty-five. Whatever he was suffering from, at least it wasn’t AIDS.

Elsa, who didn’t seem to have noticed either the man’s skin or the strength of his legs, sighed and carried on her argument.

“We’re like free-range pigs or hens. The only difference is that the pigs and hens are—hopefully—happily ignorant of anything but the present.”

Suddenly a long-forgotten memory surfaced; I laughed and said:

“You know what, Elsa—you haven’t changed at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember our class trip to the zoo in fourth grade?”

“Er … vaguely. Why?”

“The sight of all the animals wandering back and forth behind bars made you absolutely furious. Particularly the beasts of prey and the elephants. And the big birds that didn’t have room to fly properly. You were probably the only one of us who realized that their restless wandering wasn’t natural behavior. Do you remember? Do you remember what you did?”

“Let them out? No, I don’t remember at all.”

“Every time you caught sight of one of the keepers or anyone else employed by the zoo,” I said, “you crept up behind them, and when you got there, right behind them, you yelled out: ‘Gestapo!’ Do you remember?”

She giggled and said:

“Now you come to mention it, yes I do. But do you remember when you and that Lotta …”—and we were off, chatting about childhood memories as we carried on out of the gym and into the echoing foyer of the swimming pool, with its smell of chlorine. This sort of talk was calming, soothing. It was as if we were wrapped in a kind of cotton wool, insulating us from everything around us.

We hadn’t brought swimsuits, but Elsa had heard that there was a small selection of used but clean ones that could be borrowed, so we went over to the nearest attendant, dressed in white, and made inquiries. He showed us to a closet containing trunks, bikinis, and one-pieces neatly sorted according to size. Next to it was another closet containing hand towels and bathing towels.

“Just help yourselves,” said the attendant. “When you’ve finished, put them in the laundry bags in the changing room. Towels and swimming gear in separate bags. Simple and practical, isn’t it?”

He smiled. We thanked him, took what we needed and went to the ladies’ changing room, where we each found a locker, got undressed and tramped along to the showers barefoot and topless, each with our bathing towel wound around our hips.

There weren’t many people in there, which was fortunate, because the few naked bodies we did see made the insulating cotton wool of our old childhood memories loosen and fall away. In front of us were six naked women. Three of them had the same kind of outbreak on their bodies and faces as the man on the leg-curl machine. They all had one or more scars from surgery, most on their bellies. Two of the women had distorted, swollen joints, their movements slow and jerky, as if their whole body ached. Another was clearly finding it difficult to breathe. She was also moving very slowly, and was always within reach of something that she could use for support—a wall, a faucet, a friend—when she had to stop and gasp, gasp, gasp for air, before tottering unsteadily on.

Elsa and I had stopped dead on the tiled floor, just inside the doorway of this wet, steaming room, with our borrowed swimsuits in our hands and the bathing towels wrapped around our hips and thighs. We just stood there. The women turned toward us where they were, under the showers or beside the rows of faucets where a couple of them were rinsing out their swimsuits. They all gave us a friendly smile and said hi—except the one who was having difficulty breathing; she just nodded wearily as she stood there with one hand pressed against the tiles on the wall.

Elsa was the first to start moving again. Resolutely she pulled off the bathing towel, stepped forward and hung it on a hook, then carried on into one of the showers and turned on the water. Mechanically I followed her example, and when we had put on our swimsuits we went out into the pool area. There were two big pools, a deep one 75 feet long, with a trampoline and diving boards, and a shallow one 150 feet long. There were also two Jacuzzis. No children’s pool.

Without a word Elsa marched straight over to the diving boards and began to climb. There were four different levels, each with a board extending out over the pool. I assumed she was going to walk out onto one of the two lower ones, get ready, then jump feetfirst into the water, but she didn’t. She kept on climbing, past the third level, all the way up to the top—from where I was standing it looked as if she were only a few feet from the ceiling.

With relaxed, confident steps she walked out onto the board, which bounced slightly under her weight; she positioned herself right at the end, with her toes just over the edge. Extended her arms out in front of her, stood completely still, staring straight ahead until the movement of the board stopped altogether. Up above her I could just make out the blurred shape of the soles of a pair of shoes through the thick glass ceiling, as someone walked across the square on the floor above. At the same time I became aware of a dragging feeling of dizziness in the soles of my own feet as I waited there watching Elsa by the side of the pool down below. I’ve always had a tendency to feel dizzy easily.

Then she began to bend her knees, once, twice, so that the board began to bounce, and the third time she pulled back her arms and seemed to collect her body, somehow. And when she straightened her knees and pushed off, her arms shot up in a straight line above her head, and the whole of her body formed a single straight line from the tips of her toes to the tips of her fingers. She was like a spear as she took off from the board—or perhaps it was the board that fired her into the air, like a spring. She flew upward at an angle, toward the ceiling. And when she had gone a short distance up in the air she bent her upper body forward, downward, toward her legs, then straightened her body once more by extending her legs backward and upward, once again forming that same straight spear, but this time hurtling downward. The next moment she cut through the surface of the water with a sound that was most reminiscent of a whiplash, then she was underwater without the slightest splash. At least that’s the way I remember it, the way I see it in my mind now as I try to describe it: as if she went through the surface of the water with a whistling, cracking noise, without even a drop of water splashing up around her. The only trace I remember her leaving behind was a series of gently undulating rings spreading across the surface of the pool from her point of entry.

She swam underwater, the contours of her body rippling beneath the rings on the surface; she came up at the far end, climbed up the metal ladder, pushed her wet hair back from her face and shook the water out of her ears.

“Oh, I can’t tell you how good that feels!” she said when I had made my way around the pool to join her.

I was amazed, admiring, and asked stupidly:

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Oh,” she said, laughing, “I used to dive when I was young. I’d already started a little bit in middle school, in fifth grade if I remember correctly. Then after a few years I started competing.”

“You must have been good,” I said. “I mean, you
are
good.”

“Thanks. Yes, I was pretty good, actually. Won a few prizes, that sort of thing. It was fun. I mean, diving was fun. But I wasn’t competitive enough to carry on at the top level. I only did it because it felt so liberating, so beautiful somehow. It was the experience of beauty and the slight sense of danger I wanted, not a load of trophies and medals and fuss.”

I gazed at her, lost for words.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking that if I’d gone in for competing at the top, I might not have ended up here.”

“Something like that, yes,” I admitted. “For example, if you’d won an Olympic medal …”

“I know,” she said. “Then I would have become a great, positive role model for many young women, and would have been protected for the rest of my life. But I have to tell you, Dorrit, that I don’t regret getting out of that particular rat race for one single second. It’s not my thing, I’ve never understood the point of winning just for the sake of winning. What’s the point in putting all your energy into being better than other people at just one thing, which is in fact completely irrelevant? Why do it? Do you understand it?”

“No,” I replied truthfully. “I don’t, actually.”

“No,” she said, “I can see you don’t. If you did, you probably wouldn’t have ended up here either. Shall we have a swim now? We’d better go for the other pool so we don’t risk somebody like me landing on our heads.”

We swam twenty lengths, back and forth. After the first three or four warm-up lengths I speeded up. I was swimming breaststroke, I’ve never managed to learn anything else, but I had strong arms and legs and could swim pretty fast when I was in the mood, which I was at the moment. It felt as if I were literally splitting the water in half as I pushed it aside with huge, rapid strokes and kicked it away with my legs.

When I had swum my laps and came up I was as heavy as a whale; I heaved myself out onto the side of the pool with a particularly unattractive splash and waited for Elsa, who had taken things a little more slowly and still had a couple of lengths to go. I was out of breath, my heart pounding rapidly, steadily, rhythmically. I really did feel alive.

PART 2

1

I didn’t think about Nils. I didn’t think about my house. I didn’t think about Jock, but it didn’t help. Not thinking about Jock didn’t help, because the way I missed him was different. It was in my body. It was in my heart. And it was painful.

For anyone who has never experienced or set any store by being close to an animal, it is perhaps difficult to understand that you can miss a dog so that it literally hurts. But the relationship with an animal is so much more physical than a relationship with another person. You don’t get to know a dog by asking how he’s feeling or what he’s thinking, but by observing him and getting to know his body language. And all the important things you want to say to him you have to show through actions, attitude, gestures and sounds.

People, on the other hand, can always be reached through talking. A bridge of words grows easily between people, a bridge of information, explanations and assurances. For example, one person can say to another: “It’s my birthday on August twenty-sixth,” which is a piece of information, or: “I’m late because I couldn’t get the car started,” which is an explanation, or: “I will love you until death do us part,” which is an assurance. But words between people also act as a kind of shock absorber; those in close relationships often choose to talk about something other than the matter that is weighing them down, worrying them or annoying them. Just like when Elsa and I were sharing our childhood memories. Or when an established couple immerse themselves in a discussion about the fact that the children need new shoes, or start enthusiastically planning a house extension, instead of talking about why they’re always mad at each other these days.

Between Jock and me there was no bridge, no shock absorber. The contact between us was what it was, with no shortcuts, diversions or beltways. We couldn’t talk to each other about our relationship, couldn’t sort out misunderstandings or explain how much we meant to each other. We lived completely separately, because of the conditions imposed by our respective species. But we also lived side by side, body to body, without promises, lies or small talk. And irrespective of whether I thought about him or not, during my early days in the unit I could feel his coarse coat beneath the palm of my hand, the rapid beating of his heart under the coarseness, his cold nose, his warm tongue against my cheek, the smell of his breath and his fur. I could hear and see him: his brief bark when he caught sight of me and came bounding toward me, his legs wide apart, but his head held elegantly high; his excited snuffles and constantly wagging tail; his panting breath as he ran alongside me, his paws rhythmically rasping against the ground. And in bed at night I could feel his weight on my leg, and when I woke up in the morning I would sit up straightaway, and for a fraction of a second I would imagine I could see his expectant expression meeting my eyes from the foot of the bed. Each one of these sensory perceptions, these phantom emotions surrounding Jock’s presence was immediately followed by the realization that it bore no relation whatsoever to reality. This realization was always equally brutal, like being struck hard by a fist or stabbed with a knife, and then it turned to a constant, nagging ache.

The only thing that could alleviate this kind of pain was physical activity. As long as I was on the go, the body was producing endorphins, and as long as the body was producing endorphins, life was bearable. Elsa seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because without ever discussing it or even commenting on the reasons, we were more or less constantly on the move during those first free days. We went for long, brisk walks around the Atrium Walkway and in the winter garden, swam, went to Friskis & Svettis, did strength-building exercises, joined in with various dance groups—salsa, hip-hop, jazz, step, belly dancing—and tried to keep up as best we could. In the evenings we had dinner at the restaurant on the indoor square on level 4, chatting about old school friends or talking for a while with whoever happened to be dining in the restaurant. This was something completely new for me, this idea of whiling away the time just chatting and socializing with other people. I had never looked at time or at people that way before. I had always valued my time and I had always regarded people as individuals, I had never reduced them to “just anybody” who might keep me company. Never before had I valued company for its own sake. I had never valued small talk. Now I noticed that small talk had a soothing effect; it was like a cold compress placed on a twisted ankle, counteracting swelling and bruising. And when the night came and Elsa and I left each other to go to our own apartments, I was so exhausted from all the physical activity, all the chatting, all this intense time killing, that I literally collapsed into bed and slipped into a black, dreamless sleep. Eight hours later I woke feeling rested, and with each new morning my perceptions of Jock were slightly less overwhelming.