The Unit (6 page)

2

“What if they find something wrong with me?” I said.

“Like what?” said Majken.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “But what if I’m not good enough, if it turns out that I’m …”—I was searching for the right word—“… that I’m unusable. What will happen to me then? What will they do with me?”

We were standing in the elevator. It was morning. It was Thursday. We were on our way down. She was going to her studio on level 2 to finish things off before her exhibition, which was due to open on Saturday. I was heading for lab 2 on level 1 for the obligatory health check for new arrivals. The elevator stopped on level 2 and the doors slid open, but instead of stepping out Majken put her arms around me and stroked my back.

She was warm. She was calming. She didn’t speak, she simply stood there holding me and stroking my back, while the elevator doors closed and it set off downward. We started to laugh, and she had to come down to level 1. I got out, turned to her and raised a hand to say good-bye. She waved back, the door closed, and the elevator took her back up again with a humming noise.

I was in a corridor not unlike a hospital’s, with white doors and pale yellow walls, decorated with the kind of reproduction paintings you often find in hospital corridors. I passed a Van Gogh, a Carl Larsson, a Miró and a Keith Haring before I reached the door with LAB 2 on it.

I was early, but Fredrik, Boel and Johanna were already sitting in the waiting room. They were sitting in a row along one of the walls. They were silent, simply nodding to me as I came in. I sat down next to Fredrik.

On the wall opposite us hung two large appliqué pictures. One of them represented an autumn landscape, with dark brown, golden brown and pale yellow fields, a sky in tones of white and yellowish gray, and flocks of black and white birds, both on the ground and in the air. The flocks of birds formed a pattern, an image; after a while I could see that it was a face. Siv, my older sister, had often worked in the same way. I got up and went over to see if the picture was signed, but it wasn’t. I carefully lifted one of the bottom corners and peeped at the back, but there was no name there either. When I went back to my chair and sat down, Johanna, Boel and Fredrik were all gazing curiously at me.

“I just thought it reminded me of … of an artist I used to know,” I explained.

Johanna made a small movement with her head to show that she understood. Boel nodded. Fredrik said:

“There are a lot of things here you thought you’d forgotten.”

“Yes,” I said. “But this wasn’t someone I’d forgotten.”

“A good friend?”

“A relative.” I tried to smile, then turned away.

Fredrik didn’t ask any more questions, but placed his hand briefly over mine for a moment.

We could hear lively voices from the hallway. The door opened and Elsa came in, along with Roy and Sofia. Her cheeks were red and her hair looked damp. She sat down next to me, smelling faintly of chlorine.

“Have you been swimming?”

“Diving.”

“Nice?”

“Fantastic!”

Then I looked around and counted. There were seven of us.

“Who’s missing?” I asked, but at that moment the door flew open and Annie burst in, out of breath, her hair standing on end, and with toothpaste at one corner of her mouth.

She looked around for a free chair, but didn’t have time to sit down before a door opened, leading into a room with a breakfast buffet laid out. A nurse with crow-black dreadlocks appeared.

“Good morning,” she said. “I’m Nurse Lis. Please come in!”

While eating our breakfast we each had to fill out a questionnaire about our health, ticking boxes in response to questions about whether there had been instances of diabetes, rheumatism, breast cancer or other chronic and/or hereditary diseases in the family, whether we ourselves were suffering from any chronic condition or had had any serious illness or injury, undergone any kind of surgery, had an abortion or a miscarriage, had or had had any kind of sexually transmitted disease, were on medication for any kind of somatic or psychiatric problem, were still menstruating and if so, whether our periods were regular or irregular, whether we were suffering from hot flashes, sleep disturbance or mood swings, whether we felt tired, stressed, anxious, depressed or completely healthy.

Once the questionnaires had been collected and breakfast was over, the examination itself began. We were weighed and measured. They took our pulse, blood pressure, blood samples, DNA, and gave us an ECG, a chest X-ray and a mammogram. They checked our sight, hearing and reflexes. We had a full gynecological examination, with a pap smear and tests for HIV, chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea. This went on all morning, on a rolling program where we moved one by one from room to room and station to station. It was like a kind of circuit training, where the pommel horse, vaulting box, ropes, weights, beam and mats had been replaced by various nurses and doctors with different items of equipment—syringes, sample bottles, blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes, X-ray scanners, gynecological stirrups and so on.

I started with a mammogram, where Nurse Karl took care of me, gently pressing first one breast, then the other, in the big X-ray machine. Then I moved on to the gynecological room and Dr. Amanda Jonstorp. When I was finished there I went next door, where Nurse Lis and Nurse Hassan weighed and measured me, took my pulse and checked my blood pressure, then on to Nurse Yasmin who measured my reaction rate and hemoglobin and took some other samples, found out my blood group and took saliva from my mouth with a swab to get a DNA sample. And then on to the chest X-ray, ECG, eye and hearing tests and so on, until all eight of us had gone all the way around.

For lunch we were given a salad with boiled fillet of salmon. No bread, no potatoes or pasta—so that we wouldn’t get tired and dopey, but would get some nutrition, because after just an hour’s rest it was time for our fitness and strength tests.

On exercise bikes arranged in a semicircle, and with various cables and wires and sensors attached to carefully selected places on our bodies, we pedaled along, encouraged by music with a strong beat and an instructor yelling heartily in a shrill voice:

“Okaaay, let’s do this! One and two and three and fooouur! Come on now, everybody, one and two and three and fooouur!”

Meanwhile the machines and monitors to which we were connected via the cables, wires and sensors were measuring our pulse, lung capacity, calorie consumption and fat burning in relation to the number of pedal rotations per minute. The bikes were on the interval setting, alternating between easy and difficult. About halfway through this fitness test, which lasted half an hour, it became harder and harder, and then harder still, until it felt like cycling up a steep hill in a stiff breeze. Our legs wanted to pedal slowly, in slow motion—or preferably to get off. But the instructor kept driving us on, more and more:

“Come on, come on! Get those pedals moving, one and two, one and two, let’s get some speed up!”

She seemed almost deranged, and I decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to give up, so I carried on as best I could, releasing the lactic acid in my thigh muscles, panting and groaning and grimacing with pain as the sweat poured off me. After a while it felt as if my heart were getting heavier, being pulled down and down, and the air grew thinner and thinner. It was like being at a height of three thousand feet.

However, it did gradually get easier, first as if we were cycling on level ground, then on a slight downward slope, and after a short cool-down the music came to an end. Nurse Yasmin and Nurse Karl came in and removed our sensors, and we were finally allowed to get off the bikes to stretch and have a drink and eat some fruit, which was displayed in a big basket.

After our break it was time for each of us to go on a strength-building machine, Advance Home Gym model, to measure the strength in our legs, arms, shoulders, back and stomach. This was much more pleasant than all that frantic cycling. The instructor didn’t shout at us, but just walked around explaining calmly and clearly how to set the machines for the different muscle groups, and we worked at our own pace.

All these measurements and the results from our samples and tests, from both the morning and the afternoon, were then fed into databases and toward the end of the day when the strength assessment was over, we each got our own printout with our individual measurements and values listed and compared with the average scores for dispensable individuals of the same age and sex. There was also a comparative table showing the average values of individuals who were needed. It was interesting—and surprising—to see that these were significantly worse than those of the dispensable in terms of fitness, physical strength and BMI, while at the same time, paradoxically, they had considerably better blood counts and lower blood pressure than the dispensable.

I was judged somatically healthy, even though my iron levels were a fraction low, but not below normal; I was just above average for the dispensable when it came to strength, and well above when it came to fitness.

But during a short conversation with Nurse Lis—we all had a brief chat with one of the nurses at the end of the day—I was assigned to a psychologist. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I was already booked for a session with him the following day after lunch. This was because on the questionnaire I had ticked to say that I felt quite anxious and depressed. We had to choose one of these alternatives: I feel: 1) not at all anxious, 2) anxious sometimes, 3) slightly anxious, 4) quite anxious, 5) extremely anxious, 6) unbearably anxious, and the same for the extent to which we felt depressed, stressed and tired.

“If you’ve ticked number four, five or six for at least two of the statements, an interview with a psychologist is automatically arranged,” explained Nurse Lis.

“But,” I said, “isn’t everybody here more or less anxious and depressed? I mean, wouldn’t you say that was normal?”

Nurse Lis tilted her head to one side, her dreadlocks dangling. She smiled with her mouth open. She had dimples and small white teeth. She looked like a child when she smiled.

“You’re right, Dorrit,” she said. “Most people here get depressed now and again. And that’s why we’ve got a dozen or so psychologists attached to the unit. We want you all to feel as good as possible. In body and soul. They go together, as you know. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” I said.

I got ready to get up and leave. The sweat had dried on my clothes, and I felt smelly and cold and wanted to have a hot shower and put on something clean. But Nurse Lis had something more to say, so I stayed put.

“We have a suggestion for you,” she said. “A group of researchers are working on an experiment here; they need more people with physical stamina, and we think you’d be suitable.”

“Right,” I said. “And that would involve … ?”

“In purely practical terms,” replied Nurse Lis, “it would involve devoting yourself to physical exercise every afternoon for a comparatively long period of time—we’re talking about roughly two months. Pretty intensive exercise, from what I understand, because the point is that you become virtually exhausted, and then the level of various minerals and hormones in the body is measured. In other words, it’s not that different from what you’ve been doing here today. The researchers want to investigate which nutrients and hormones are lacking and which the body produces itself or releases during intensive exercise. And how this lack or production works out over a period of time, and in relation to the subject’s weight, sex and basic fitness. What do we gain and what do we lose from regular intensive physical activity, to put it simply.”

I was surprised. This offer sounded too good to be true.

“And where’s the catch?” I said.

Lis laughed, delighted, as if I’d asked the very question she wanted to answer most of all.

“There is no catch,” she said. “It’s difficult to get hold of volunteers for these studies out in the community, even for something as safe and comparatively pleasant as this. People are just too busy. It’s partly because it does take up quite a bit of time: four hours a day, five days a week for a couple of months. And partly because you’re going to get tired, and presumably will need to sleep and eat more than usual. And what person who is needed has time for that? Young people might volunteer if there was some kind of compensation, and top sportsmen of course, but they’re not the groups the researchers are interested in for this study; they want middle-aged people who are comparatively fit.”

She paused briefly. Then she asked:

“Well then, Dorrit. What do you think?”

I realized of course that this project would keep me off the operating table for a couple of months. It also sounded like a dream—exercising, eating and sleeping a lot. So my answer didn’t need too much consideration. But I didn’t want to sound too grateful or enthusiastic, so I drew it out a little bit.

“Well …,” I said. “I suppose I could give it a go.”

“Fantastic!” said Lis. “In that case, you start tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. That will be immediately after you’ve seen Arnold.”

“Arnold?”

“Your psychologist. Arnold Backhaus. The research group works in lab 8. If you come here after you’ve seen Arnold, I’ll take you over there. I’m actually”—and she said this in the tone of voice you use when you’re passing on something that you expect will be an enormous and wonderful surprise to the listener—“starting as an assistant on this particular experiment tomorrow!”

She smiled her dimpled smile. Her eyes sparkled. I couldn’t make any sense of her at all.

When I passed the waiting room on my way out, I stopped and looked at the appliqué landscape with the flocks of birds forming a face. The face seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t work out who it resembled. On the other hand, I was almost completely certain that the picture had been created by Siv.

3

I took a shower. It was the first time I’d done that alone, and in my own bathroom. Up to now I’d showered at the pool or in the sports complex, surrounded by other naked women the whole time. Now, with no one to talk to, I became very aware of the surveillance cameras, and in my mind’s eye I could see someone sitting in a control tower somewhere in front of a bank of monitors, closely observing the particular monitor that showed me showering in my bathroom. It was as if I were showering for someone else, doing some kind of number, putting on a live show. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it gave me a feeling of unreality, as if I were playing the role of a person showering rather than actually showering.

By this stage I had already managed to get used to going to the toilet without bothering about the surveillance; I simply took it for granted that whenever a resident did something as intimate as carrying out their bodily functions, any observer would look away discreetly and turn their attention to another monitor.

After drying myself and putting on clean clothes, I realized I was hungry and thirsty. My first impulse was to go to the restaurant and eat a meal that someone else had cooked, but halfway out the door I stopped myself.

If I’ve managed to take a shower alone, I thought, I might as well try to eat on my own as well. So I closed the door, walked resolutely through the living room to the kitchenette, took a packet of crackers out of the cabinet and butter, cheese and orange juice out of the refrigerator. Poured myself a big glass. Drank it standing by the sink. Then I spread butter on a cracker, sliced some Port Salut and placed it on top. Ate—still standing, but leaning against the counter facing the room. Chewed. The hard cracker crunching between my teeth. When I’d finished I made another one the same. Then I remembered that I had some tomatoes, so I got one out, cut it into four thick slices, and placed two of them on top of the cheese. Ate. Poured another glass of juice. Just as I raised the glass to my lips, I happened to catch sight of one of the small camera lenses up in the corner of the ceiling. It was pointing straight at me.

I took the glass away from my mouth, raised it in the air, said “Cheers!” and drank. Then I made another cracker sandwich with cheese and the remaining two slices of tomato, turned my back to the camera, and ate. I was full after that, and I didn’t know what to do next, so I put the butter, cheese and juice back in the refrigerator and went out anyway.

I took the elevator up to the Atrium Walkway, went through one of the airlocks into the winter garden. Ambled—I made a real effort to walk slowly, strolling rather than behaving like someone consciously chasing the body’s endorphins—along the gravel paths through arbors and shrubbery and past little fountains and marble benches where people were sitting chatting or reading; they would look up and nod or say hi as I wandered past and on into other darker, bushy areas. I stopped by a hibiscus with enormous flowers, pointing their stamens at me in a challenging way. A bumblebee, buzzing heavily, found its way right inside one of the flowers, where it fell silent for a moment before tumbling out, buzzing once again, and flew away. I moved on, nodding, smiling or saying hi to the people I met. I knew some of them already. I recognized most of them. There were a few I hadn’t seen before. One or two I was seeing for the last time. I passed the olive grove, then spent a long time walking slowly among the extravagant flowerbeds. The whole time I was inhaling different scents: cypress, rose, jasmine, lavender, eucalyptus. I walked through the citrus grove and finally reached the big lawn.

Beneath a cedar tree a small group of people were sitting on a blanket having a picnic. A little way off a man on his own was lying on his stomach, also on a blanket, reading a book. I lay down on my back on the slightly damp grass which smelled of earth. I lay there with one leg draped over the other, gazing up at the sky through the leaded glass dome. It was striped, the dome, with running water. It was raining up there, out there, raining on the glass. Through the stripes I could see gray, sodden banks of cloud scudding across the sky. It wasn’t only raining, it was blowing too. Hard. It looked as if it was almost storm force. I would have guessed it was blowing at maybe thirty-five miles per hour. But in here, down here where I was, everything was still. There was no wind to speak of here, and no rain of course, just a faintly humming air-conditioning system, but you could hardly hear it at this time of day when the air was filled with different sounds: people moving about, people chatting, bees, birds. Watering took place at night, automatically and in accordance with a carefully planned schedule.

It was pleasantly warm, very easy to relax. I was lying there half asleep when I felt a movement in the grass just behind my head: light, running steps, and in some strange, dreamlike way I was in my garden back at home, while at the same time I was here in the unit’s winter garden; I was lying on the grass resting and it was summer, and the steps behind my head moved away, then came back, came closer, and closer still, and I heard the faint panting, felt the nose nudge my hair, the warm breath against my scalp, and I smiled and turned, but there was no one there. No dog. No person. No bird. Not even a mouse or a beetle. Nothing. I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my chest. But I steeled myself and managed to quell the impulse to sit up. I didn’t even press my hand against my chest, but forced myself to lie still and focus my attention on the weather and the wind up there on the other side.

It was still raining. The racing clouds were darker now, shading from gray into blue-black. I realized it was twilight. The air quickly grew cooler and damper—an artificial dew came down—and when I eventually sat up it had grown dark around me. The picnic group was packing their things away. They were shadowy figures, silhouettes, until the lampposts around the lawn flickered into life and spread a yellowish muted glow over them. Then I saw that Alice was among the group. I hadn’t seen her since the party almost a week ago.

Just as I got up and shouted to her and she turned and peered in my direction, I suddenly thought, “What if she doesn’t recognize me, what if she doesn’t remember me!”

This had happened before, it had happened quite often, out in the community; I would say hi to people who didn’t recognize me, despite the fact that they’d been sitting opposite me at a party or some other event just a few days ago. But as soon as Alice caught sight of me her face brightened, and she waved and shouted “Hi Dorrit!” and came over.

“If I’d known you were here earlier,” she said, “we could have invited you to share Ellen’s delicious raspberry pie. But it’s all gone, unfortunately.”

“I’ve only just seen you,” I said. “Besides, I needed to be on my own for a while. It was that big health check today.”

“Oh right, how did it go?” said Alice.

I told her about the exercise experiment.

“Wow! Congratulations!” Alice raised her hand and we gave each other a high five. “Does it feel good?”

“It feels absolutely fine,” I replied.

“Alice!” shouted one of her companions, who had gathered up the blankets and baskets and was ready to leave. “You won’t forget your injections?”

“No, I’m coming now!” Alice called back, then she turned to me: “I’m involved in some test with male hormones. Don’t ask me what it’s all about, because it’s so complicated that I’ve forgotten, but I presume I’ll soon end up with a beard and a hairy chest.”

Just as she said that I realized her voice was slightly deeper than it had been on Saturday at the party.

“See you around!” she said, starting to move away, but then she stopped herself. “But I’ll see you at the opening of the exhibition the day after tomorrow, won’t I?” she said. “Majken’s exhibition. You are coming?”

“Of course,” I said. “Good luck with the jabs.”

She gave me the thumbs-up sign in reply, turned and walked away.

I also set off across the lawn, but in the opposite direction. The man with the book had fallen asleep. He was still lying on his stomach. I stopped, hesitated. Should I wake him up, or leave him alone? He’d get cold, lying there. But maybe he wanted to be left in peace? I set off again. But he was lying so very still. What if he was ill? It was probably best to check after all.

When I got right up to the man I could see it was Johannes. He was lying with his cheek resting on the right-hand page of the book. I knelt down beside him, and a glance at the left page told me it was a play he was reading; I caught sight of a line roughly halfway down the page: “People who stand at a stove all day get tired when night comes. And sleep is something to be respected …”

I could have taken that as a message, an indication that I shouldn’t disturb him. But Johannes was lying so strangely still and—it seemed to me—not breathing, and for a moment I was afraid that … well, I feared the worst, as they say, and I spontaneously put my hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.

“Johannes?”

“Mm … what is it, Wilma?” he mumbled from somewhere inside a dream.

“It’s not Wilma,” I said. “It’s Dorrit. Are you okay?”

“Dorrit … ?” He stirred, raised his head, opened his eyes, first one, then the other. “Oh, Dorrit, my dancing queen. Hi there.”

He winked with one eye, either flirting or still half asleep—I couldn’t decide which, but went for the latter. Then he rolled over onto his back and sat up. He was supple, I noticed: how supple his body was, not stiff at all after lying there sleeping on the damp grass. But his thin white hair was standing on end and his face looked worn—slightly more so than the previous evening, when Elsa and I had met him while we were having dinner in the restaurant.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just really tired. Hey, it’s gotten dark. Time passes, Dorrit.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

He got to his feet, closed his book, shook and folded his blanket, then we walked together through the garden toward one of the exits. He told me about the psychological experiment he was participating in.

“It’s just a series of tiring exercises in cooperation, loyalty and trust. I don’t know what they think they’re going to get out of conducting this kind of experiment here. I mean, none of us here understand the business of trust. Do you?”

I laughed. “No, to be honest I don’t suppose I do. I’ve never understood why it’s regarded as such a good thing, being able to rely on other people. To me it just sounds naive.”

“Exactly,” said Johannes. “And loyalty? What do you think about that? Isn’t it just a kind of blindness, in actual fact?”

“Or another name for dependence,” I said. “And being at a disadvantage. An expression for obsequious respect. Perhaps even fear.”

Johannes sighed. “You should see us trying to solve a problem together. Or attempting to reach a common standpoint on some issue. You can’t imagine how much babbling it takes! It makes my ears hurt. That’s why I get so tired. Do you know what I mean?”

I knew.

“But I shouldn’t complain,” said Johannes. “At least there’s no physical danger, no chemicals and no scalpels involved. But how are things with you, Dorrit? What’s happening with you?”

And as we left the Atrium Walkway via one of the warm air locks, I told him about the exercise experiment and was congratulated once again, only this time with a hug instead of a high five, a hard, warm hug that smelled of a man, and I became … what did I become? Not sexually aroused, but not far from it, something along those lines at any rate. My head was buzzing, it was like being dizzy, and a quiver ran through my body—a hormone specialist would presumably say I was reacting to Johannes’s pheromones—and I suddenly felt embarrassed. When he let go of me I didn’t quite know where to look.

To cover my embarrassment I asked him if he was going to Majken’s exhibition on Saturday.

“Are you going?” he asked me.

I told him I was.

“In that case I’ll come,” he replied, winking at me, and this time it couldn’t be because he was half asleep, so I said as firmly as I could:

“Are you flirting with me, Johannes?”

He smiled. Tilted his head to one side and said:

“What do you think?”

Out in the community I could have reported a man behaving like this for sexism or mild harassment—in fact I would virtually have been forced to do so. For the first time I was glad—yes, glad—that I wasn’t out in the community, because I have always felt secretly flattered when men flirt with me; it makes me feel happy and sort of soft all over my body—soft in the same way as when I put on my black dress, nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes.

But despite my pleasure, despite the fact that I was flattered, I attempted to maintain an indignant facade, and looked sternly at Johannes.

But he just laughed at me and I blushed and looked away and felt completely foolish. To my shame, however, I liked it—which made me feel even more foolish; I felt like one of those silly women in old films, capable of nothing but giggling and fainting and busying themselves in the house and being seduced. And suddenly I thought of the cameras and microphones which, even if no one happened to be watching us right now, registered everything. I was worried that my body language would have consequences for me.

As if Johannes had read my mind, he said:

“Nobody minds, Dorrit. Haven’t you realized that yet? Not here.” And in a teasing, almost mocking tone of voice he added:

“You can be yourself here, totally yourself.”

I considered whether to pretend that I didn’t understand what he meant, to say that he had misinterpreted me and was presuming things about me that were untrue. But instead I just mumbled: “Okay …”

And so we separated. He went toward elevator F. I watched him go. He turned, winked. I couldn’t help smiling in response.

I was just on my way to elevator H to head home when I remembered that I had no idea how Elsa’s conversation with the nurse had gone, so I went to look for her instead.

She wasn’t in her room in section A1, so I knocked on other doors until I found someone who had seen her. She had gone off with a small bag in one hand and a bathing towel around her shoulders.