The Unit (4 page)

7

I was just leaving the party when I heard hurrying footsteps behind me and turned around. It was Majken.

“I presume we’re heading in the same direction,” she said. “I can show you a nice detour. If you’re not too tired, of course.”

“No, I’m not particularly tired,” I said. Actually I was grateful to have some company for a while longer.

We took elevator B from K1 to the fifth floor. The doors slid open and we stepped out into a very wide and apparently endlessly long corridor, more like an indoor street or—I realized after taking a few steps—a running track. It had the same kind of surface as outdoor tracks usually have: with a little bit of give, and the ability to absorb sounds. On the other side of the track, opposite the row of elevators, was a glass wall the height of a three- or four-story building, looking out over something that in the half-darkness looked like a real primeval forest.

“That’s the winter garden,” said Majken. “One of the wilder areas.”

Above us, high above, a glass dome covered both the winter garden and the broad track we were on. And up above the night sky curved over the dome, the infinite reality of space.

“This,” said Majken, gesturing toward the floor, “is the Atrium Walkway. It goes all the way around the winter garden, and measures 130 yards from corner to corner. A total of 520 yards. So if you jog around it ten times, you’ve done a good three miles.”

We followed the Atrium Walkway for fifty yards or so, until the forest on the other side of the glass wall gave way to a kind of galleria, with small glasshouses and orangeries, small shops that were closed, and workshops for drying flowers, arranging flowers, coloring plants, and so on, and a broad staircase curving upward to something that looked like a café.

“That’s the Terrace,” said Majken. “They serve breakfast and lunch every day. The rest of the time it’s an ordinary self-service café—you can make your own coffee or fruit drinks, make a sandwich and take any cakes you like, or anything you fancy from what’s there.”

“It looks really lovely,” I said.

“What?” she said, and I realized we’d somehow managed to swap places as we came around the corner into the galleria, so I was now on her right side, where she didn’t hear so well.

She stopped and turned her left ear toward me.

“It looks lovely,” I repeated.

She nodded. “It is. You can see almost the whole winter garden from up there. I always have lunch there on weekdays.”

At the far end of the galleria, where the high glass wall once again turned into a background of dense greenery, was a door. Majken opened it and let me go ahead of her into a warm air lock, where she opened another door, and we stepped out into a nocturnal garden.

There was a fresh, slightly sweet smell of flowers and plants. The moon, which was almost full, was shining in through the glass ceiling from its winter night. But inside here, under here, it was already spring, almost early summer, and flowers in hundreds of colors and shades seemed to glow in the white moonlight.

There was a different climate in the winter garden from our northern European one. A network of paths meandered among palms, wild hibiscus, climbing vines, trailing bougainvillea, olive trees, stone pines, plane trees, citrus trees and cedars, leading over small paved patio areas with fountains and benches where you could sit and read or philosophize, continuing around a huge lawn—where you could lie and read or philosophize—and then back into a wilder, darker area, and finally to the area Majken really wanted to show me: an almost exact, if somewhat reduced, copy of Monet’s garden at Giverny. The only thing that was really missing was the pink house where he lived with his family, and of course this replica wasn’t as mature as the French original. The garden, which had been laid out by a group of gardening enthusiasts who were interested in art, was like an Impressionist painting: an explosion of colors, a perfect, conscious composition, dotted, its contours slightly blurred—at least that’s how it appeared to me at this time of the night—but unequivocally clear in terms of the combinations and contrasts of the plants and the colors.

As we strolled in silence along the gravel paths through the flower garden and across the little wooden bridges in the water garden, the scents of flowers and herbs gave way to one another—violet, lavender, thyme, rosemary, sage, rose, apple blossom, peony—and all these scents and sights had a pleasantly anesthetizing effect on me.

When we reached the big pool, where the reflections of the moon glimmered between irregular rafts of water lilies just beginning to flower in shades of yellow, blue, green and pink, we stopped and sat down on a wooden bench, painted green and damp with dew.

“I often come here,” said Majken after a while. “It’s as if this were real.”

I understood what she meant. It felt exactly as if we were outside, outdoors, in a normal garden down on the ground, not on the top of a windowless fortress, with earth that had been brought in, artificially constructed ponds and streams, beneath toughened glass that couldn’t be smashed and no doubt had some kind of alarm system built in.

“Those Impressionists,” she said, “they certainly knew about color. And about light and shade. Different kinds of shade: thinner shadows that let the light through, and heavier, denser ones. And it’s as if Monet made this garden to show the world how he saw colors. How he saw their power, their potential and their purpose. I think he wanted to show that the world is color. That life itself is color. That if we can just see the colors, really see them, life will be beautiful. And meaningful. Because beauty has a value of its own, that’s how I see it anyway.”

She looked at me, smiled. The moonlight made her lips appear dark red, like pomegranate, her eyes almost emerald green, her skin like ivory, her hair like gold and ash. I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t do it, there was a lump in my throat dragging the corners of my mouth down, and if she had said “life” one more time I wouldn’t have been able to hold back the feelings that were lying there whimpering and throbbing beneath the pleasantly numbing veil all these different impressions had wrapped around me. Fury, grief, fear, hatred—everything would have burst through the veil and surged up and come roaring out through all the orifices in my face: my eyes, my nose, my mouth. And I didn’t want that to happen—not because I was afraid of showing my feelings to Majken or to other people, not because I was particularly bothered about keeping up a facade of strength and self-control, but just because I didn’t want anything to disturb this period of stillness. I wanted to keep the stillness, intact, for as long as possible.

But she didn’t say anything else for quite a while. We just sat there. And eventually we got up from the bench and set off again. Then we heard a faint mechanical humming somewhere in the bushes behind us—so sudden and so unlike the other faint sounds of rustling leaves and lapping waves that I jumped and turned around.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Majken. “It’s just someone on the surveillance team wondering what we’re doing out here in the middle of the night.”

“Aren’t we allowed out here at night?” I said.

“Oh yes, sure. It’s just a little unusual for anyone to actually come here then.”

The stillness had been disturbed, as if someone had drilled right through it and smashed it to pieces. All of a sudden I felt cold, frozen.

8

The breakfast buffet in the Terrace restaurant was groaning with fruit and vegetables, freshly baked white and brown bread, cheeses, pâtés, salami, ham, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, cereals, jellies and marmalade, and on a table nearby was coffee and hot water on hotplates, and milk and juice in thermoses to keep them cool.

Elsa just took a cup of coffee and a bowl of yogurt with granola and sliced fruit, while I piled up my tray with as much as it would hold: coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, cinnamon toast, yogurt with raspberry jelly and cornflakes, a boiled egg, three sandwiches—one with Emmental cheese, one with honey-smoked ham and one with ginger marmalade. I didn’t expect to be able to eat it all, but it smelled so good, looked so attractive, and as it didn’t cost anything I saw no reason to stop myself or hold back.

We moved through fifteen or so other diners to a table where we could look straight down onto a circular patio with marble benches and a fountain, surrounded by low palm trees and hibiscus bushes with bright red flowers. The winter garden extended around and beyond the patio. The morning sun was shining in at an angle from above. I could see birds, butterflies, bumblebees. Far away I could just glimpse a weeping willow, a wisteria, a big copper beech and Monet’s lily pond. Elsa gazed at all the greenery, and in a tone of voice that I interpreted as tired, but later would realize was more likely to be apathetic, or possibly ironic, she said:

“Isn’t that lovely.”

“Yes,” I said.

I was feeling pretty good, almost confident after the walk and the time spent with Majken the night before, and I had slept surprisingly well without needing to take a sleeping pill, and even if I hadn’t managed many hours of sleep before Elsa rang just after eight, I felt rested. I took a cautious sip of my coffee, which was steaming hot, black, and smelled fantastic. Closed my eyes, swallowed.

“Oh, that’s good!” I exclaimed spontaneously, and went on:

“This is such a treat, isn’t it? Being able to go out for breakfast.”

“Out?” said Elsa, raising an eyebrow and looking around and up toward the dome, which in daylight turned out to consist of several large sheets of glass, set in lead—at least I presumed it was lead—and put together in a symmetrical, starlike pattern. There was something British or colonial about it, like the roof of an orangery in the gardens of a palace. The sky on the other side was clear blue. Individual clouds sailed majestically by, and the word “galleon” came to mind.

“I don’t mean ‘out’ as in ‘outside,’” I explained, “but more as in the opposite of being at home. Going out, sort of.”

Elsa mumbled something inaudible. Not a morning person, I thought. She’s got out of bed on the wrong side.

“I’ve never been out for breakfast before,” I went on, taking a bite of my cheese sandwich. Chewed. Swallowed.

“Have you?” I asked Elsa, who—I now noticed—wasn’t eating or drinking, just poking her spoon listlessly around in her yogurt with granola and sliced strawberries and mango.

“No,” she replied in a flat voice. “Not as far as I can remember.”

It was now I realized she wasn’t tired, or at least that wasn’t the main problem. This wasn’t about being in a bad mood because it was morning, she just felt bad all over. I was ashamed. I put my sandwich down and said:

“Elsa, I’m sorry!”

“For what? Because you can manage to be positive? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, because I’m so caught up with myself I didn’t realize that you …”

I broke off—I had absolutely no idea what words to use, so instead of finishing the sentence I reached across the table with my right hand and clasped Elsa’s left hand, which was lying limply beside her bowl. Her right hand was still clutching the spoon in the yogurt, but it wasn’t moving now. She closed her eyes. She screwed them tight shut. She bent her face over the bowl so that I couldn’t see it, only her bangs, like a brown-and-silver-striped curtain. The hand I was holding was cold, and was shaking slightly.

“It’s okay …” I said, tentatively at first, trying to sound as calm, as secure as Majken, Alice and Johannes had the previous evening. “There now, Elsa, it’s okay. There now.”

She was weeping now, silently but with drawn out, suppressed whimpers and quivering, hacking breaths as I squeezed her hand and repeated “It’s okay,” because I didn’t know what else to say or do.

The other people up on the Terrace this Sunday morning—the others who were having breakfast at tables around us, reading the morning papers or chatting quietly with one another, or simply eating in silence without reading, and the two breakfast hostesses who could have been either employees or residents, bringing in one pot of coffee after another, topping up the dishes on the buffet, wiping down tables, carrying out dirty dishes and providing clean plates and cutlery—started noticing Elsa. One or two put down their newspapers and took off their reading glasses, others put down their coffee cup, placed their spoon in their bowl of oatmeal, or pushed their tray away from themselves, slightly across the table. Conversations fell silent, one by one. One hostess stopped in the middle of the room carrying a dish of sliced papaya. Everybody was staring at us, and everyone looked serious. But no one seemed troubled, no one seemed upset. They were just paying careful attention. They were waiting, I realized just a little while later. They were waiting to see how things unfolded. And when Elsa was finally unable to control the sobs she had suppressed until now, when her cries became louder and more piercing and persistent, first one of the diners got up, then another, and a few more, and the hostess hurried over to the buffet table and put down the dish so that her hands were free. The next moment a crowd of people surrounded Elsa in a semicircle, some sitting on chairs they had dragged along with them, others standing. Those who could reach were touching her. With steady hands they held her shoulders, or stroked her arms, her back or the nape of her neck. As if they were holding her together.

9

The small shops and workshops in the galleria were open now. People were standing or sitting inside, working on different activities related to plants, herbs and spices. The whole galleria was flooded with sunshine, revealing that the air in here was filled with very fine particles, forming a gossamer-fine, yellowish mist. There was an aroma of spices and flowers.

It was warm in the winter garden, perhaps as high as eighty degrees, at least in the sun. Elsa and I strolled along in silence. Birds sang. Flies and bees buzzed. A squirrel leaped among the branches of a stone pine, stopping from time to time to grab small orange cones with his teeth; he would hold them between his front paws and eat quickly, then shoot off, leaping with ease and assurance to the next branch. We carried on through the olive grove, passed an area planted with rosebushes, and entered the citrus grove, where the trees were covered in white blossoms that filled the air with a sweet, fruity perfume, and came out again on the other side where the vegetation was dense and tangled. After an avenue of tall bushes and low-growing trees we reached the huge lawn, where people were lying and reading, or simply relaxing in the sun. We walked around the edge of the lawn and on past springs and small fountains and underneath trellises covered in vines, roses, sweet peas, honeysuckle, clematis and bougainvillea, through narrow overgrown passageways and thickets, and eventually reached Monet’s garden. There, in front of a large bed of forget-me-nots and pink and red tulips, Elsa stopped dead. We were on the exact spot where the pink house would have stood if it had been the original garden. On the far side of the forget-me-not bed and two yew trees lay the flower garden, with its rows of flowerbeds and gravel paths in between. Elsa looked around in confusion, then exclaimed:

“But … I’ve been here! I don’t mean here, but … I was here with my … With a good friend. She treated me to the trip. We had that book with us, you know, that children’s book … We’d read it at home together when we … And that’s why we came here. There.”

Her cheeks were red. She was thrilled, but also agitated, it was obvious that something inside her had been stirred.

“
Linnea in Monet’s Garden
,” I said quietly. “I think that’s what it’s called.”

She didn’t reply, but started walking again, and I followed her, the gravel crunching beneath our feet as we moved between the multicolored flowerbeds. The same scent of flowers and herbs from the night before drifted toward me, but drier now, not quite so distinct. We went through the underground passage to the water garden, into the shadows beneath the trees, and followed the path by the pond. We reached one of the green benches, and Elsa sat down. I sat beside her. She was sitting up very straight, not leaning against the back of the bench, and she stared straight ahead, down into the lily pond. She didn’t speak. Nor did I. I wondered if I should ask how she was feeling, or if she wanted to tell me about the woman she went to Giverny with, but something held me back. And after a while she sighed, then leaned back and crossed her arms and legs. Then she shrugged her shoulders, sneezed, and looked normal again. No red roses in her cheeks, just that watchful expression, her eyes slightly narrowed.

“It’s strange,” she said. “But this feels completely real. Totally genuine.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“Genuine, and at the same time … romantic,” she said, and her voice once again had something of that toneless quality, which might be either apathy or irony. “Perhaps they want it to be romantic for us. Warm and romantic. Eternal summer.”

She didn’t yet know—nor did I—how right she was when she talked about eternal summer. In the winter garden it was in fact spring and summer all year round. Mimosa, bougainvillea, rhododendrons, roses, peonies, tulips and forget-me-nots flowered week after week, month after month. Everything was either just coming out or in full bloom, but never yellowing, withering or dead. Nothing died in the winter garden. And yet everything was real; there were no silk flowers or plastic bushes or trees from some stage set. These were real plants, real living flowers with stamens and pistils, and real live bumblebees buzzing around them. Flowers and leaves that could be picked and arranged in a vase, or used to make tea or dye clothes. If you picked them and put them in a vase with some water, they gradually faded like any other flower, but in the beds or on the trees, where you’d picked them from, delicate new plants or buds soon emerged. And the lawns were real grass; they needed cutting and fertilizing and watering, just like any other lawn. The bushes and trees also had to be trimmed and pruned at regular intervals so that the paths and patios wouldn’t get overgrown. Everything was green all the time. The color of the leaves never changed from green to yellow to red to brown, they never dried up and they never fell. On the citrus trees the oranges, lemons, mandarins and grapefruit never ripened. However, their small white scented petals did fall after the brief flowering period, filling the air between the trees and forming a snowy carpet on the ground. But the buds from which the petals had fallen never developed into fruit. Instead they came into blossom once again after a while. But Elsa was not yet aware of any of this as she went on:

“Perhaps they want us to experience summer and romance. One last time.”

“Or for the first time,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Elsa. Then she asked:

“Do you think you’ll miss the Scandinavian winter? Snow and wind and cold?”

I thought it over.

“Autumn and late winter,” I replied. “Late winter moving into spring, the way it is out there right now,” and in my mind’s eye I could see my garden as it had looked the previous morning: the winter aconite and the snowdrops that had just appeared. And I could see the outside of my house with its flaking white paint and its roof covered in patches of moss, with the chimney puffing out the transparent, quivering smoke from the stove. And I saw myself coming out of the door in my warm jacket, hat, scarf, and gloves along with Jock, setting off for a long walk in the wind in the low, early spring sun. I shook myself to get the images out of my head, but it didn’t work. So I stood up quickly and said:

“Can we go a bit further, I just feel I … I need to get moving.”

It must have been obvious that there was something I needed to shake off, because Elsa nodded and got up straightaway; she took my arm and we went through the nearest warm air lock into the Atrium Walkway, where two joggers came steaming toward us, their feet almost soundless on the surface of the track.

“Hi Dorrit!” panted one of them, wiping the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve. “Thanks for yesterday.”

It was Johannes. He stopped. His companion stopped too, and jogged in place.

“This is Dorrit, who’s such a good dancer,” explained Johannes, turning to his companion. I felt ridiculously flattered. I don’t think I blushed, but I might have.

Johannes introduced his friend to us and I introduced Elsa, and we all shook hands, then they jogged away and Elsa and I took elevator A to the next floor, where we walked out directly into the library.

It wasn’t large. It was just like an ordinary rural branch library: one big room divided up by shelves. But as we walked around I could see that it was well organized and impressively up-to-date; I noticed a number of titles that had just been published. The CD and DVD section wasn’t large either, but it too was varied and current.

The librarian, a skinny man in saggy brown corduroy pants, came over to us as we stood checking out the selection of films. He stopped directly behind us, his hands in the back pockets of his pants. It was a little while before he spoke, and when he did it was with a sullen whining quality that we would soon realize was somehow inherent in his voice. Whatever he said, it sounded negative. He said:

“You can of course order music CDs and films on loan from the real library out in the community.”

“So you mean this isn’t a real library?” I said, amused.

He didn’t reply. Instead he took his right hand out of his back pocket and held it out slowly, first to me and then to Elsa, shook us by the hand and introduced himself as Kjell.

“I used to work for the library service in Lund,” he said. “I actually saw you there once, recording one of your books as an audio book. Anyway, I’ve been looking after all this for two years now,” he said, making a sweeping gesture around the room. “Full time—at least. There’s a certain amount of overtime, if I can put it that way.”

“I see,” I said.

“Well, it’s because there are so many intellectuals here. People who read books.”

“I see,” I said again.

“People who read books,” he went on, “tend to be dispensable. Extremely.”

“Right,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

I looked for Elsa, who had moved discreetly away and was now leafing through a gardening book a few shelves away.

Kjell slipped his hand back into his pocket, and for a moment it looked as if he were going back to the issue desk, but he stopped.

“Yes, that’s the way things are,” he said. “Books, on the other hand, can’t be ordered from the main library. Either I have to buy them,” he said, sighing, “or you can download them as an e-book. You can sign out a reader each from here, if you haven’t already got one.”

We did that. And we sorted out our library cards as well. Then we sat down in the armchairs in the corner and flipped through the daily newspapers and magazines. A man was fast asleep in one of the other armchairs. The newspaper he had been reading was lying on the floor in front of him. He was breathing audibly—not exactly snoring, but it sounded as if there was something wrong with his airway. He was making a grating, whistling noise.

Perhaps he has a cold, we whispered to each other, and neither Elsa nor I wanted to catch anything, so we got up and left.

During those early days at the unit I would come across several people who just fell asleep anywhere, and who breathed in the same way, almost snoring. It would soon be explained to me that this was a side effect of one of a series of tranquilizing drugs being tested here. The people involved in this particular experiment found their ability to absorb oxygen was seriously impaired, and at the same time the yawn reflex was canceled out. A consequence of these two side effects was that they found it very easy to fall asleep. A few were also affected by minor but permanent brain damage, presumably as a result of the lack of oxygen, and in the worst cases had difficulty walking, talking, and knowing where they were or what day it was.

In other words, the man sleeping in the corner probably didn’t have a cold, and there was no need for us to worry about our health.

We didn’t borrow anything from the library that first day, but left empty-handed apart from our readers. As we were passing the issue desk on the way out, we nodded to Kjell.

“Thanks for popping in,” he said gloomily. “Come again any time.”

We emerged into a large indoor square, surrounded by a department store, lots of smaller shops, a cinema, a theater, an art gallery and a restaurant with tables outside. In the middle of the square, which was paved with mottled gray polished slabs of the kind you often find in churchyards, in the form of gravestones, was a rectangle of thick glass, with several stone benches surrounding a bronze sculpture representing a fishing boat. Through the glass we could see shifting, constantly moving shades of blue and turquoise. We realized the swimming pool must be directly beneath us.

Among the small shops around the square were two boutiques, one offering new clothes and one secondhand, a music store with guitars, wind instruments, electric organs and drum kits in the window, a craft shop with goods made by artists in the unit, a hardware store and a shop with hobby items as well as office and art supplies. The words “shop” and “store” are perhaps misleading, and I must stress that no money changed hands. Or to put it more clearly, it wasn’t really a question of shopping at all. You just went in and picked up what you needed, apart from certain items that had to be signed out. Sometimes you also had to order things that were temporarily out of stock, or fill out a request for some specific product or a specific brand to be stocked in the future.

The cinema had two screens. At the moment they were showing
The Double-Headed Crane
, a psychological drama about a family in crisis that had received very good reviews, and an action comedy,
The Maniac 3
.

The art gallery was closed while a new exhibition was being mounted, and it would open the following Saturday. It was Majken who was exhibiting. She had told us during dinner at the party: “My first solo exhibition!”

The theater was also closed. But a poster informed us that Chekhov’s
The Seagull
would shortly be having its premiere, and later in the spring they would be putting on Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice
.

“What a shame,” I said. “Now that we can actually afford to go to the theater, they’re only doing the same old classics.”

“It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” said Elsa. “A play is a play. The whole thing about going to the theater is actually going to the theater, isn’t it?”

I laughed; there was certainly some truth to what she said.

“Okay, let’s go for a swim!” she said, grabbing my arm and dragging me with a certain amount of gentle force in the direction of the elevators at the opposite end of the square.