The Unit. Part 7

"Are you okay?" she said. "Do you need to go out for some air? To cool down? Water?"

"No, no, I'm fine." I said. I opened my eyes, met her gaze and nodded to her to carry on.

She pulled her hand away and leaned back cautiously against the hot wooden wall. Her whole body was s.h.i.+ny with sweat, mine too, and Alice's. Alice was sitting in silence with her knees drawn up and her arms around her legs, listening earnestly to Elsa's story.

"After she had lost her Ellen-Elin, she applied to make her final donation."

"Can you do that?" said Alice.

"Didn't you know?" Elsa replied. "Well, anyway, now you do. Her application was approved-I think they always are-and just a week or so later there was someone with Siv's blood type who needed both a heart and lungs. And ... That was four years ago."

By this time I was no longer calm, by this time I was seething, and it had nothing to do with the heat of the sauna. As I said, I wasn't surprised. As I've already mentioned I hadn't thought it very likely that Siv would still be alive. I would have been surprised if she had been, if I had b.u.mped into her here, for example during a walk in the winter garden, large as life, just older than when I last saw her. Nor was I upset, not primarily at least. I was angry. The fact is that I had worked up a real rage, little by little, while Elsa was telling us what she had found out. And the knowledge that Siv's heart and lungs lived on inside someone who needed them more than she did-someone who perhaps had five splendid kids to provide for-didn't make me less angry in the slightest.

"But what about me?" I burst out, slamming my hand against the wall. "Perhaps I needed my sister, why doesn't anybody care about things like that? That brothers and sisters might need each other? I needed my big sister, I still need her, she was my family, my closest relative, why doesn't anybody care about that?"

I punched the wall, over and over again, the sweat pouring, almost gus.h.i.+ng out of me, splas.h.i.+ng as I banged and punched, until Alice and Elsa moved in close to me from their respective corners, grabbed my arms and held me, stopping me from punching and flailing. They enveloped me, they rocked and soothed me as if I were a little child, and our warm, damp bodies slipped and stuck together.

"You know that relations.h.i.+ps between siblings don't count," said Alice after a while. "It's only new constellations they approve of. People who make a new home and produce new people. You know that, Dorrit; you know that everything has to move forward."

14.

Sometimes at night I dreamed of Jock. We were usually on the beach or on our way home from there, tired and hungry, me with cold red cheeks, Jock with his breath steaming, and we went into the house, I put some wood in the stove and lit it, gave Jock some food and cooked something for myself. The seasons in the dream varied, but mostly it was autumn or winter. We were on the beach, I would throw a stick, and Jock would dash off barking with joy to fetch it, place it at my feet whereupon I would praise him, pick up the stick and throw it again. It was like a film, a loop, and I was very contented in those dreams, it was as if everything important was contained in that everlasting loop, as if everything else was unimportant, small, worthless. Sometimes I would wake up with the word "cycle" going around in my head, and I would stretch, then creep close to the still-sleeping Johannes and caress him or simply press myself against him until, half asleep and grunting slightly, he would begin to feel for my body with his hands, and before he was even fully awake he would part my legs and push inside me.

The night after Elsa told me about what happened to Siv, I dreamed the beach dream. This time it was unusually intense, the colors and contrasts unusually clear and sharp, almost like a film in Technicolor, and the sound of the waves, the wind, the gulls, the terns, the herons and Jock were clearly distinguishable. I could even smell the sea and the seaweed.

I was happy in the dream, but when I woke up it was with a feeling that I was falling apart, that I was cracking up from the inside and slowly falling to pieces. My heart was jumping and grating like a cold engine that doesn't want to start, my skin was crawling and I couldn't manage a single clear thought, it was as if all my thoughts were crushed to bits just as they began to take shape.

I didn't get much done that day. After Johannes had gone home to write-reluctantly, because of course he noticed that I wasn't feeling too good, but I told him I had to work-I sat for a long time, first in bed with my notepad on my knee, then in front of the computer, but I was incapable of writing one single syllable.

Around eleven o'clock in the morning I gave up, took a shower, got dressed and went out. Restlessly I meandered along the paths and tracks in the winter garden, did a circuit of the Atrium Walkway, then went back into the garden, the Monet part this time, but I felt kind of suffocated, shut in, almost as if I was about to have an attack of claustrophobia in there. So I turned and left via the nearest air lock, and did another half circuit of the Walkway until I reached the galleria and took the elevator up to the Terrace restaurant. Up there, closer to the gla.s.s roof, closer to the sky, it was lighter, and it made me feel slightly better to be looking out over the tops of the trees rather than being beneath them. I sat there for a long time in the middle of the lunchtime rush with my back to those who were eating, looking out over the garden without doing anything, just sitting and trying to breathe normally, until I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned my head. Alice.

"How are you, my friend?" she asked.

"I don't actually know," I replied, and I really didn't know. I couldn't understand myself: I had Johannes, after all; I loved him and everything pointed to the fact that he loved me in return. And I had friends who I cared about and respected, and who cared about me, and with whom I felt secure. And the information that Siv was dead had come as no surprise. I had a.s.sumed as much long ago and accepted it.

But there is a difference between a.s.suming something and having it confirmed. There's a big difference. They're two completely different things.

And then there was Jock.

Alice went and got a chair, sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.

"I miss my dog," I said.

"Your dog? I didn't know you had a dog."

"But I did."

"Poor you," said Alice. "Poor, dear Dorrit."

I leaned against her. I don't remember if I cried, but I think so.

That same afternoon and evening I attended an information meeting about a medical experiment in which I was to partic.i.p.ate. The experiment was to do with a new kind of psychiatric drug, a kind of antidepressant that was intended to work immediately, not like earlier versions that were fully effective only after several weeks of increased depression and fatigue. There were thirty of us at the meeting, including Erik, Lena and Kjell. Kjell was in a bad mood, claiming he had been misled; for some reason it seemed he had believed that his role of librarian within the unit exempted him from medical experiments. I didn't really follow his argument, but it had something to do with the service at the library.

"It's only for now, Kjell," said one of the orderlies involved with the experiment, a heavily pregnant woman with greasy hair and a double chin, "it's only during this particular meeting," she clarified, "that you can't be in the library. But Vivi Ljungberg is standing in for you, and she's supposed to be an excellent librarian, so ..."

Kjell snorted. "Vivi Ljungberg is not not a librarian. Vivi Ljungberg is a a librarian. Vivi Ljungberg is a library a.s.sistant library a.s.sistant. And what's more she's not familiar with this particular library. And besides ..."

And he went on and on and on in his monotonous, whining voice. I got really irritated with him, and felt not a little uncomfortable. I thought he was making himself look ridiculous.

After the meeting, as I was standing in elevator F on my way up to Johannes, I became aware of how anxious I was about these happy pills I was due to start popping the next morning. There was a risk of certain side effects, and we had been asked to be on the lookout for symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, disturbed vision, numbness in the hands and feet and loss of feeling in the face. This would be the second experiment with the drug, after an adjustment to its composition. The side effects I mentioned had, in the first experiment, affected 90 percent of those taking part, and in certain circ.u.mstances they had been extremely serious, developing into bleeding stomach ulcers, strokes, and a dementialike state. There were rumors that a couple of people had actually died. Because of these risks and rumors the team leaders had decided it was necessary for us to take our pills under their supervision. They were afraid that otherwise we would wreck the whole project by not taking them.

When I knocked on Johannes's door I was very tired. I felt heavy and old. But when I heard his footsteps approaching the door I felt lighter, it was as if I were being filled with helium or laughing gas; I felt happy and giddy.

"Here you are at last!" he said when he opened the door.

And he more or less pulled me into the apartment, into his arms, closed the door behind me, kissing my forehead, the tip of my nose, my cheeks, my mouth. My hands fumbled and grabbed and tore at his back, his upper arms, his back again and his b.u.t.tocks, and he ran his hands through my hair, over my face, my neck, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, forced one thumb into my mouth and made me suck it while he ordered me to look into his eyes. And with the other hand he found his way under my s.h.i.+rt and unb.u.t.toned my pants, pulled them down, then my panties-not far down, just enough so that he could get at me. Then he slowly took his thumb out of my mouth and got hold of the hair at the back of my neck instead and held my head so that it was impossible for me to take my eyes off his face, while at the same time alternately rubbing my c.l.i.toris with his middle finger and pus.h.i.+ng one, two, three, four fingers inside me. At the moment of o.r.g.a.s.m my knees gave way, and if he hadn't held me firmly I would have fallen forward onto my knees; instead I stayed there in his grasp, supported by his upper body and the hand ma.s.saging my p.u.s.s.y, and I heard myself uttering gurgling, whimpering noises of pain and pleasure mixed together.

Afterward he allowed me to slide slowly to my knees, and I stayed there, panting, sobbing, and watching his coa.r.s.e yet at the same time soft hands with the raised lilac-blue veins floating in a spa.r.s.e forest of white hairs, as they unb.u.t.toned his pants and his c.o.c.k emerged in front of my face, and I opened my mouth, closed my lips around it, hard, like a sphincter. He breathed out with a slow "aaah ..."

Later we lay in bed naked. I still hadn't told Johannes what Elsa had found out about Siv-I hadn't actually mentioned Siv or the rest of my family at all-so I told him now.

"Superwoman Siv!" he exclaimed before I'd even finished telling him. "Was Superwoman Siv your sister? I didn't know her name was Weger."

"Did you know her?" I sat up in bed.

"No. But when I arrived here three-or what is it now, three and a half years ago-people were always talking about her and Ellen, her partner. Majken had time to get to know her, though. Just about. I think Superwoman Siv might have been to Majken something of what Majken was to you."

"Do you really think so?" I said. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

"Now you're being stupid, Dorrit! Why on earth would I do such a thing? I'm saying it because that's the impression I got about the contact between Siv and Majken: a short friends.h.i.+p that made a deep impression and helped Majken to achieve a kind of balance pretty quickly, to get on an even keel and be able to cope with the circ.u.mstances of life in here."

"She seemed to cope very well."

"Presumably thanks to your sister, to a certain extent."

"I wonder who was a friend like that to Siv," I said.

Johannes didn't reply, he just looked at me, and it seemed to me that his expression was suddenly sorrowful and slightly distant.

"Are you sad, or just serious?" I asked.

"I don't really know," he said.

I lay down again, took hold of his hand. We lay there on our backs, hand in hand, gazing up at the ceiling.

"The generations are very short in this place," I said.

"Yes," said Johannes. "They are."

After a while I could tell from his breathing that he was struggling with tears. I turned over onto my side facing him, and placed my hand on his slightly rough cheek. He turned off the light-perhaps he didn't want me to see his face when he was crying, or maybe he just thought it was time to go to sleep now-then he turned to me in the darkness, pulled me close, one arm around my shoulders, the other holding my head against his chest, and I pressed myself against him with my arm around his waist, my forehead against his breastbone and one leg wrapped around his thighs, almost as if I were climbing him.

In the morning when we woke up we were in the same position: like two drowning souls who have clung to each other in a final fruitless attempt to save themselves-or simply to avoid dying alone.

15.

The experiment involving the antidepressant drug forced me into new routines. Three times a day-morning, afternoon, and evening-I took the elevator down to lab 3 on K1 to swallow a little yellow pill. It upset my schedule, especially in the mornings when I had to interrupt my writing, or to put it more accurately: because I was always aware that at some point between eight and nine o'clock I would have to break away to get dressed and take the elevator and swallow that pill, I found it difficult to achieve the peace and concentration I needed to be able to write at all. So instead I would usually spend the time sitting and reading through what I'd already written, making the kind of notes and corrections I would have preferred to leave until I had the whole thing printed out.

This was irritating enough, but what upset me considerably more was the feeling of not being trusted, of being treated like a difficult child, a cheat, a rebel. I found it offensive to have to stand there and open my mouth in front of Nurse Karl or the brisk, naive Nurse Lis or one of the other nurses who handed out the yellow pills then looked in your mouth as if you were a horse at a horse fair back in the olden days, before carefully ticking it off from a list and chirruping smugly: "Well done, Dorrit. We'll see you between two and three."

My dignity shrank by several inches every time I had to go through this procedure.

On the other hand, I had more time to write, more time generally during this medical experiment than during the exercise experiment, because my only obligation was to make sure I was in the right place three times a day. That took up about half an hour per day in total, and it should have outweighed the disadvantages, but it didn't.

During one of my many conversations with Arnold I took up this question of my dwindling dignity, and the fact that I found it difficult to settle down to work because of having to break away. I had hoped that he might manage to say the right thing and give me some idea how I should handle the problem, but he just nodded and listened, made notes, and asked questions like: "What kind of feelings do you get when you can't write?" and "How would you define the term 'offensive'?"

So I started to talk about my concerns regarding the side effects instead.

"Have you experienced any?" asked Arnold.

"No, but I haven't felt any positive effects either. If anything I'm more anxious than I was before. These pills are supposed to have a direct effect."

"Direct doesn't always have to mean immediate," said Arnold.

"Oh really?" I said. "And what does it mean when it doesn't mean that?"

He didn't reply. Just sat there opposite me in his armchair with one leg loosely crossed over the other, his elbows resting on the upholstered arms, pressing the tips of his fingers together as he contemplated me with a thoughtful expression. I changed the topic of conversation again, started talking about Siv: about how I had almost fallen apart when what I already knew about her was confirmed.

This clearly interested him, because his expression came alive, he placed his hands on his knees and began to ask questions about Siv and my family and the relations.h.i.+ps when I was growing up. I answered dutifully and almost mechanically, rattling off my thoughts and theories on why Siv and I were the only two out of the five of us who hadn't succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a family of our own, and had chosen professions with an uncertain income.

It would definitely have been more useful to talk about my recurring dreams involving Jock, or about what was happening between Johannes and me, because these were new phenomena and new feelings that I didn't really understand, while my relations.h.i.+p with my family was old and already made sense. But I couldn't bring myself to change the topic of conversation yet again, and when I left Arnold's office it was with the feeling that I had wasted a whole hour of my life.

16.

One afternoon after I had been downstairs and swallowed the second pill of the day, I took the elevator up to the library to return some books, and found Vivi behind the desk. There was no sign of Kjell, and as I turned my books over with the bar code facing her, I asked where he was.

"Did he get fired?"

It was meant as a joke, but Vivi's expression was serious.

"Haven't you heard?" she said. "He's sick. Serious side effects. He's really dizzy all the time. And completely disoriented when it comes to time and s.p.a.ce. He can hardly get out of bed or feed himself."

"What?! How long has this been going on? I'm in the same experiment, so I mean I'm wondering ..."

"... if it's going to happen to you too? It won't."

"Really ... ?"

"If you haven't had any side effects by now, then you've been given sugar pills. And if you're wondering how I know, well of course I don't. But all the indications would suggest that. Some of you became very happy at first, then confused and completely out of it. Up like the sun, down like a pancake, you could say. Kjell was like a completely different person for the first few days-I was here at the time, helping to unpack new films and clear out some of the old magazines and newspapers. He was in an excellent mood, joking and carrying on, and so intense that it was almost unbearable. Then all of a sudden, from one day to the next, he became listless and tired. Then it just went downhill; he found it difficult to judge distances, walked into things, tripped and fell over and dropped things left and right. And he got so forgetful, he hardly knew where he was after a while. In the end he couldn't carry on here, it just wasn't working. And, as I said, he isn't the only one. That man who's always so sad, for example, the one who sat opposite you at my welcome party-he's the same. Bedridden."

"Erik?" I said. "You mean Erik." I felt my heart sink and I had to lean on the issue desk for support; my head was spinning. "How do you know all this?" I asked her.

Vivi said with a little smile that when you work in a place like a library, you find out all kinds of things about all kinds of things. And she went on telling me what she had heard about a couple of other people who were involved in the same experiment as me. But I wasn't really listening, I was thinking about Erik. I was thinking about how low and lost he had been since Vanja's final donation. He would have needed her now, he would have needed the love and solicitude of another person.

[image]

I gathered together a little group: Elsa, Lena, Johannes, and Peder, and we went to visit Erik. It was around eight-thirty in the evening, after I had been to the gym, had dinner, and been down to lab 3 to take the final yellow pill of the day.

Erik was in a worse state than I had thought. He didn't recognize any of us. And it wasn't only because he had problems with his vision and was shaking so much that he couldn't keep his head still. Something had happened inside his head as well, something to do with his awareness and his memory. He just didn't know who we were, not even Peder, whom he'd known the longest.

"Oooh!" said Erik in a strange, singsong voice, and smiled with his whole face when we walked into his bedroom after being let into his apartment by a young orderly wearing big, round gla.s.ses with black frames, who was looking after him and helping him to eat and wash and go to the bathroom. "Wel-wel-wellllcome!"

His huge smile was the only redeeming feature about his condition; at least he was happy, and for the first time in weeks. But he called Peder Uncle Jonas, Johannes Grandpa, and Elsa Mommy. And he called me, with a certain amount of contempt, the Snork Maiden and Mademoiselle. He didn't speak to Lena at all, but he was very shy around her, blus.h.i.+ng and giggling and looking away every time she spoke to him or glanced at him.

We were all very low when we left. As we were walking through the living room on the way out, Johannes said so quietly that only I, walking next to him, could hear: "It's only a matter of days."

I looked up at him but said nothing. Instead I went over to the young orderly, who was sitting on the sofa watching TV, and asked: "How serious is it?"

"What do you mean?"

I sat down next to him on the sofa. POTTER read the name badge on his s.h.i.+rt.

"Will Erik be ... normal again?" I asked.

Potter looked me in the eye, his expression behind the gla.s.ses strangely distant yet sympathetic at the same time.

"I don't think anybody really knows for certain. But personally, I don't think so."

And after a while, in a very low voice-and protected by the noise of the television: "I've seen the X-ray plates."

Then he leaned forward a fraction, coughed, cleared his throat, and at the end of the throat clearing he spat out, so quickly and hoa.r.s.ely that I only just managed to get it: "Abnormal atrophy." And another cough: "The brain ...," and a final throat clearing: "... has shrunk."