The Unit

1

It was more comfortable than I could have imagined. A room of my own with a bathroom, or rather an apartment of my own, because there were two rooms: a bedroom and a living room with a kitchenette. It was light and spacious, furnished in a modern style and tastefully decorated in muted colors. True, the tiniest nook or cranny was monitored by cameras, and I would soon realize there were hidden microphones there too. But the cameras weren’t hidden. There was one in each corner of the ceiling -small but perfectly visible-and in every corner and every hallway that wasn’t visible from the ceiling; inside the closets, for example, and behind doors and protruding cabinets. Even under the bed and under the sink in the kitchenette. Anywhere a person might crawl in or curl up, there was a camera. Sometimes as you moved through a room they followed you with their one-eyed stare. A faint humming noise gave away the fact that at that particular moment someone on the surveillance team was paying close attention to what you were doing. Even the bathroom was monitored. There were no fewer than three cameras within that small space, two on the ceiling and one underneath the washbasin. This meticulous surveillance applied not only to the private apartments, but also to the communal areas. And of course nothing less was to be expected. It was not the intention that those who lived here should be able to take their own lives or harm themselves in some other way. Not once you were here. You should have sorted that out beforehand, if you were thinking along those lines.

I was, for a while. I thought about hanging myself or jumping in front of a speeding train or doing a U-turn on the highway and driving toward the oncoming traffic at full speed. Or simply driving off the road. But I didn’t have the courage. Instead I just obediently allowed myself to be picked up at the agreed time outside my house.

The first snowdrops had just appeared in my flowerbeds, which had been blazing with yellow winter aconite for several weeks now. It was a Saturday morning. I had lit the fire earlier. A transparent, quivering plume of smoke was still rising from the chimney as I stood waiting by the side of the road outside the gate. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the air was cold and clear.

The SUV was a metallic wine red, so shiny that it cast reflections of the sun as it slowly moved down the hill and through the village, then stopped in front of me. All the windows except the windshield and the front side windows were tinted black; apart from that the car was completely anonymous, with no logo or sticker to reveal where it had come from or where it was going. The driver, a woman in a black quilted jacket, climbed out and greeted me with a nod and a friendly smile. She hoisted my large suitcase into the trunk and waved me into the back seat. I fastened my seat belt and placed my shoulder bag on my knee, my arms around it. The driver put the car in first gear, released the handbrake, and we moved off. There were only the two of us in the car. We didn’t say anything to each other.

After a drive of about two hours, behind those windows that were so dark I would have found it difficult to follow our route even if I’d tried, or to work out in which direction I was being taken, we suddenly plunged downward and the sound of the engine and the tires changed and became muted and echoing at the same time, as if we were traveling through a tunnel. First it became darker, then lighter on the other side of the windows, then the car stopped and the engine was switched off. The door by the back seat where I was sitting was opened from the outside. I saw a man’s face and a woman’s face. The woman’s face was smiling, her mouth open, and she said:

“Hi there, Dorrit! You’ve arrived.”

I got out of the car and saw that I was in a parking lot, an underground one from the look of things. The man and the woman were both dressed in green shirts the color of linden flowers, with the logo of the unit in white on the breast pocket-I recognized it from the information packet that had been sent to me at home a few months earlier. The man and woman introduced themselves as Dick and Henrietta. Henrietta added:

“We’re your section orderlies.”

She went around the car, opened the trunk, lifted out my suitcase and set off toward a row of elevators at one end of the parking lot where some fifty cars were parked, most of them ordinary family cars, SUVs or minibuses, but I also saw a couple of ambulances. Dick picked up my shoulder bag from the concrete floor where I’d put it while I shook hands. I would have preferred to carry it myself, as it contained my most private possessions, but he insisted and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I shrugged my shoulders and let him take it. He gestured toward the elevators. I followed Henrietta empty-handed with him directly behind me.

The elevator went up only one floor. When we got out, Dick said:

“We’re on level K1 now. That’s the upper basement floor.”

We walked along a wide corridor with a red ceiling, floor, and walls until we reached another row of elevators. We got into one of them, went up several floors and came out into something that resembled an ordinary stairwell with two doors that looked like ordinary apartment doors, one at each end. Dick, who had less to carry of the two functionaries, went ahead and pushed open one of the doors labeled SECTION H3 and held it open for me. I walked into an open common room of the kind usually found in hospital wards or student corridors, a lounge really. On a sofa in the corner sat a woman with red frizzy hair, just starting to turn gray, reading a magazine. In front of her on the table was a steaming cup of tea. Judging by the aroma, it was peppermint. The woman looked up, smiling.

“This is Majken,” said Henrietta. “And this is Dorrit.”

I managed to croak something that was supposed to be hello, and noticed that my mouth was completely dry.

“I live two doors down from you,” said Majken. “If there’s anything you’re not sure about, or if you just want to talk-or not even that; if you want to be quiet in someone’s company, or anything at all-then I’m either here or in my room for the next few hours. It says Majken Ohlsson on my door.”

“Okay,” I managed to get out.

She looked at me, her gaze steady. Her eyes were flecked with green.

“Don’t hesitate,” she added. “You mustn’t feel you’re disturbing me. We always have time for each other here.”

“Okay,” I said again. Then I thought I ought to say something else, so I said: “Thanks.”

A hallway led off the lounge, with five doors along one side. On the second door was my name. Dick pushed down the door handle, opened the door, and we walked straight into the living room.

Henrietta put my suitcase down on the floor. Dick placed the shoulder bag on top of it, then turned to me and asked pleasantly:

“Would you like us to stay for a while?”

“No,” I replied, a fraction less pleasantly.

“In that case we’ll leave you in peace,” he said. “Just don’t forget the orientation meeting at two o’clock.”

He looked at me searchingly, as if to check that I could really manage all on my own until two o’clock. I couldn’t help snorting. Then they left, closing the door behind them.

So there I stood.

It was warm in the room; it must have been about seventy degrees. I wasn’t used to such a high temperature indoors, especially not at this time of year. I shrugged off my peacoat, untied my winter boots, took off my cardigan and finally my socks. For the time being I just left everything lying in a heap on the floor. I stood next to the heap, barefoot, contemplating a simple beechwood dining room set, a deep sofa and two armchairs upholstered in eggshell white; at the far side of the room in an alcove was a desk. To my left, the kitchenette, to my right, the bathroom door, and next to that the bedroom, with the door standing open. To my surprise I saw that there was a double bed in there. I’d never had a double bed in my entire life. I laughed, and that was when I heard the faint hum of one of the cameras for the first time, as it turned its little dark eye toward me and-or so I imagined-zoomed in on my face. I automatically looked away.

2

Yes, I did actually have a house. When I say that I was picked up outside my house, I don’t just mean my home, my residence, but my actual house. Despite my very low and irregular income, I had managed to get a bank loan some eight years earlier, just before I turned forty-two, to buy a little place I’d been to look at several times, and one of my life’s dreams had been fulfilled: a house of my own and a garden of my own on the open, rolling plain between the Romele Ridge and the south coast.

But I hadn’t been able to afford to maintain the house. The bargeboards and the window frames were rotten, the paint was flaking, the roof leaked in at least two places, and new drainage was needed all the way around the house. My income just about covered the interest on the loan, paying it off in the smallest possible installments; wood and electricity and maintenance costs, plus insurance, taxes, gas, and food for myself and my dog. And I don’t think it could have made much difference to the state coffers when the confiscation authority sold the house at auction-that is if they managed to sell it at all in its present condition.

But despite the fact that I’d let the house get so run down, and despite the fact that it was old-fashioned and impractical, and cold and drafty in the winter and damp and stuffy in the summer, at least it was my very own home, my sanctuary, a place over which I and no one else had control, where my dog could run free and I could work in peace most of the time: no noisy neighbors on the other side of the wall, no footsteps clattering up and down an echoing stairwell, no squabbling kids in the shared courtyard, no communal outdoor spaces where families with children or friends could come along and sit down just as I was relaxing in the sun, noisily snacking or partying around me as if I didn’t exist. I felt at home here, both indoors and outdoors; this was my domain, and if anyone-a neighbor or a friend who happened to be passing by-noticed that I was sitting in the garden, and stepped in through the gate for a chat or a cup of coffee, then at least it was me they wanted to talk to or drink coffee with. And if I didn’t have the time or the inclination for a chat, then I had the right to tell them that, and they would have to go away.

It very rarely happened that I would ask someone to go. I didn’t have very many friends, and not so many neighbors either, and if visitors turned up unannounced at an inconvenient moment, I usually let them stay for a little while anyway. If you live alone in the country you can’t afford to push away your neighbors, or fall out with them. In fact, the way I see it, you can’t afford to fall out with anyone at all if you live alone and no one needs you. Therefore I was friendly and welcoming from the very start each time someone turned up in my garden or at my door, even those times when I was absorbed in my work and they really were disturbing me.

At that time, when I’d just moved in, I still regarded the future with optimism. I still believed and hoped that it wasn’t too late to have a child. Or at least to start earning money from my profession and become financially secure, or find a partner, someone who would love me and want to live with me. Almost to the very end I had hopes, futile and desperate hopes, of Nils.

Nils was several years younger than me, tall and strong and with tremendous sexual vitality. We had the same secret desire. The same sexual fantasies. The same hopelessly politically incorrect attitude. We were like a hand in a glove. He was actually living with another woman already; they had a child together, a boy. He never said he loved me, but for him, as for me, the word “love” was a big thing to say. But he said he “almost loved me”-he said it many times-and for me that was wonderful to hear. To be almost loved is as close as you can get to being loved without actually being loved.

Perhaps it was because of this “almost loving” that as late as six weeks before my fiftieth birthday, in a final attempt at least to gain a dispensation with regard to the date, I turned to him and asked him to save me-yes, in my desperation I actually used that expression-by separating from his partner and becoming mine instead, and, regardless of whether it was true or not, supplying a written declaration to the authorities stating that he loved me. When I asked him this outright he became terribly upset. In fact, he cried. He sat there naked on the edge of my bed, and that was the first and last time I saw him cry. He sat there with his eyes glistening, sobbing, and he pulled a corner of the duvet over his penis, apparently unconsciously, and said:

“Dorrit, I think more of you than I’ve ever thought of any other woman, and it isn’t just sexual feelings, you know that. I admire you and respect you, I almost love you, and I would be more than happy to live with you and share my life with you. But for one thing, I want my son to grow up with both parents living in the same house. And for another, I can’t actually say I love you, because I can’t lie. I… I’m just not made that way. I can’t say it to you, and I can’t say it to the authorities; I can’t put my name to something that isn’t true. That would be perjury. I would be committing a crime. You have to understand this, Dorrit. I…”

He paused, took a deep breath, swallowed a few times, sniveled, rubbed his finger under his nose, and went on, virtually breathless, almost whispering:

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I… you know what you’ve meant… what you mean to me. I’ll miss you so much, I…”

And he wept and wept. He put his arms around me, clung to me, howling like a child. I didn’t cry. Not then.

I didn’t cry until I said good-bye to Jock, my dog; we’d been so close for so many years. He’s a Danish-Swedish farm dog, white with black and brown patches, brown eyes, and ears that are as soft as velvet, one black and one white. I gave him to a family I knew and trusted, not far from where I lived. Lisa and Sten and their three children. They’ve got a smallholding with horses and chickens, and they were very fond of Jock. The children loved him. I knew he liked them too, and that he’d have a good life there. But even so. He was mine, after all. And I was his. Between him and me you really could-without committing perjury -talk about love. The feeling was mutual, I’m convinced of that. But dogs don’t count; a dog’s dependence and devotion are not enough. And it was when I had left Jock at Sten and Lisa’s and I was driving away that I wept.

Loving and leaving don’t go together. They are two irreconcilable concepts, and when they are forced together by outside circumstances they require an explanation. But I was unable to give Jock that explanation. Because how do you explain something like that-or anything at all-to a dog? Nils could at least explain to me why he couldn’t be with me properly and make me a needed person, and I could understand that. But how will Jock, if he’s still alive, ever be able to understand why I drove away without him that day? How will he ever be able to understand why I never came back?

3

The suitcase wasn’t particularly heavy. All I had to do was get a good grip and swing it up onto the table. I opened it and started unpacking. It was mostly clothes, nothing out of the ordinary: sweaters, shirts and pants. A black jacket for festive and formal occasions. Clothes for exercising. Sneakers, walking shoes, sandals.

But at the last minute and after much deliberation, I had stuffed my little black dress into my shoulder bag, along with my blue skirt, my fitted white blouse, a push-up bra, a few pairs of stockings and my high heels. I had no idea if I would get the chance to wear them here. I didn’t think so, but then they didn’t take up much room. Besides which they were mine, after all, and they had been expensive and not all that easy to get hold of. And I knew myself well enough to know that if I suddenly got the urge to feel feminine, I would be very unhappy if I didn’t have the means to satisfy that urge.

I stood with my back to the surveillance camera on the ceiling, fumbling with the dress, skirt and blouse I’d just taken out of my bag, then opened the closet door to hang them up-and that was when I saw there was a camera in there too. It was pointing straight at me, and it made me feel as if I’d been caught red-handed. I could feel myself blushing. Then I got angry, gave the camera the finger, put my clothes resolutely on hangers and shut the door on them.

I had also packed a couple of books, and I put them on a side table in the living room for the time being; I placed my laptop on the desk in the alcove. I put my favorite pen, a notepad and an envelope containing some photographs in the drawer of the bedside table.

The envelope contained a photo of Jock, one of Nils, one of my house and one of my family from when I was a child. It was a Polaroid, taken on the sofa in my parents’ house. Mom and Dad in the center, Mom with the baby, Ole, on her knee. Next to her Ida and me, and next to Dad the two eldest, Jens and Siv, sitting close together. We’re all smiling. Ida and I are actually laughing. I was eight when the picture was taken by Mom’s best friend; I remember I really liked her a lot. She loved kids but had none of her own, and she’d insisted on taking a photo of us all with her new Polaroid camera that day. It was actually the only photo of the whole family gathered together, so I was glad she’d got her way. Unfortunately, I can’t remember her name.

My family was all over the place now, scattered to the winds like a dandelion clock. Both my parents had died a long time ago. If they had still been alive, I could probably have received a dispensation for a few years to look after them. Jens, Ida and Ole had families of their own, living and working in different parts of Europe. My older sister Siv didn’t exist anymore, at least I didn’t think so. She had no children and was seven years older than me, so the probability that she might still be alive wasn’t particularly great, that’s if she had become dispensable-I didn’t even know that much for certain.

I finished unpacking, pushed my suitcase, peacoat and winter boots into the top part of the closet, then began-indifferently at first, then restlessly, finally almost manically-wandering to and fro through the two rooms and into the bathroom; I turned on the faucets, flushed the toilet, opened drawers and cabinets, checked out the appliances in the kitchen, made sure the refrigerator and freezer were on and that the ice maker, ceramic cooktop, convection oven, microwave and kettle were all working. Went over to the alcove and sat down on the chair in front of the desk. It was a nice chair, made of molded wood, but it wasn’t particularly comfortable. It didn’t give support to the lower back, but higher up, just below the shoulder blades, and there were no arms. I knew from experience that if I sat and wrote for just a few hours a day on a chair of this quality, I would have an aching back and shoulders within a week. But I was sure I would get a better chair if I asked for one. From now on it was important that I was kept in good condition and good health in every way. That was the whole point, after all.

I got up from the chair and went over to the sofa to try that out. It was wonderful, both to sit on and to lie on. I settled down and picked up the remote from the coffee table, pointed it at the TV, pressed a button at random and the picture quickly appeared. It was a German channel broadcasting a talk show. I flipped here and there, established that there appeared to be lots and lots of channels, and that at least the world came here, even if I couldn’t reach the outside from now on, not by mail, e-mail, text messages or telephone calls. From now on the telephone existed for me only in the form of a fixed internal line, and as for the Internet, I was allowed to surf only under supervision, which meant an orderly or another member of staff sitting beside me, and I was not allowed to join chat forums, contribute to blogs, create or respond to advertisements, or vote in opinion polls.

After flipping at top speed through fifty or so channels, I switched off the television, got up from the sofa, stretched, then looked around the room. What should I do now? A glance at the clock on the DVD player under the TV told me there was still quite a while before the meeting at two o’clock. This was not good. I’d begun to get the creeps. Whether it was from anxiety or anger, I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. If there had been a window I would have gone and stood by it to look out. That usually had a calming effect on me, standing by a window and looking out. But-I only realized it now-there were no windows, not anywhere. I had probably registered it subconsciously as soon as I was shown into the apartment, but it was only now that it struck me. No windows. And yet it was daylight in here. How could that be? Nor did the light appear to be coming from any kind of lamp. It didn’t seem to be falling in a particular direction; it was more that the room seemed to be filled by it. I looked around the living room in confusion. The only light that was on was the bulb above the sink in the kitchenette. In a vain attempt to solve the mystery, I went over and switched it off, but it didn’t make much difference. I gave up.

It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I found out about the daylight. It was when I got on top of a chair to put a shelf above the alcove where the desk was. I happened to glance up at one of the rectangular air vents mounted in the walls, high up, close to the ceiling, a couple in each room. They turned out not to be air vents at all, because when I was standing on the chair looking diagonally through the upwardly angled slats- roughly like Venetian blinds when you adjust them to let in the light, but not direct sunlight-I was dazzled by the harsh white glare of the diodes inside.

Because I couldn’t go and stand by a window to calm myself down, and because the creepy feeling in my body was threatening to get out of hand and take over, I wondered about going to the lounge or maybe knocking on Majken’s door. But when I thought about it, I didn’t feel ready. I was also very tired, so I went into the bedroom and lay down on one side of the double bed. Lay there, looking up at the ceiling and trying not to think. Took deep breaths and concentrated on exhaling slowly. After a while I must have fallen asleep, because when a loudspeaker somewhere in the room suddenly crackled, I opened my eyes with a start. The crackling gave way to a friendly exhortation from a male voice:

“This is a message for today’s new arrivals. We would like to remind you that the obligatory welcome and orientation meeting will be taking place in conference room D4 in ten minutes. You will find conference room D4 on staircase D on the fourth floor. The easiest way is to take the optional elevator down to level K1, follow the blue corridor then take elevator D up to the fourth floor. Welcome, everyone! End of message.”

4

There were eight of us. Only two were men, which wasn’t that strange as the age limit for them is sixty. It’s perfectly natural; after all, they produce viable sperm much later in life than we produce eggs. Even so, I had thought for a long time that the difference in age limits for men and women was unfair. That is until Nils informed me that there were lots of men-I think he even knew a few-who had been conned out of parenthood by women who just wanted free sperm.

“It’s really only fair that men get more time, so stop moaning!”

I was very upset when he said that, not least because I felt found out. One of the reasons I had sex with Nils was that I secretly hoped the condom he so carefully slid over his penis before we had intercourse might split. I also made sure we got together immediately before or during ovulation. But it was also his harsh words, and the hardness in his voice when he said them, that upset me, and from then on I never spoke to Nils about my anxiety as I approached my fiftieth birthday.

There was still a minute or so before the orientation began. We went around shaking hands and introducing ourselves. Everybody looked pale and serious. Resolute. I was feeling slightly unwell and just a little bit groggy and only half awake after my unintended nap. An orderly who had been by the door welcoming us and ticking us off on a list was now standing by a table up on the podium at the front of the room, arranging some papers, a bottle of water, a bottle opener and a glass. She gave an introverted impression, as if she were shy. But if you happened to meet her eye, she smiled warmly. Her legs were disproportionately short, and she must have been seven or eight months pregnant. When she had finished arranging everything on the table, she climbed down and moved with short, waddling steps to the other end of the room. The way she walked reminded me of a penguin, which made me feel a little better, and the next time she smiled at me, I smiled back.

There was something familiar about one of the other new arrivals, a tall slender woman with high cheekbones and slanting eyes who seemed to be looking at everything around her with narrow-eyed skepticism. I recognized the girl in her through all the layers of age, but at first I couldn’t place her. When she introduced herself as Elsa Antonsson, I remembered.

“Elsa! It’s Dorrit-Dorrit Weger.”

“I can see that now,” she said, smiling tentatively. “Elementary and middle school. We were in the same class.

“Time passes…” she added slowly, in a voice that was only just holding. She was noticeably moved.

“Yes,” I said. “Time passes.”

We sat down in a semicircle facing the podium. The director of the unit was now standing behind the table, neatly and impeccably dressed in a dark maroon suit and a gray shirt. She looked at us, allowing her gaze to rest on each person in turn. Made sure she met everyone’s eyes. This made her appear extremely sincere. She smiled, unbuttoned her jacket, cleared her throat and took a deep breath, and as she breathed out she began to speak:

“My name is Petra Runhede, and I am the director here at the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. First of all I want to welcome you here. I would also like to take the opportunity to congratulate you on your fiftieth or sixtieth birthdays. Congratulations! This evening we will be throwing a big party for you all. A combined welcome and birthday celebration. Everyone in the unit, residents as well as staff, is of course invited. If everyone attends there will be something in the region of three hundred people. There will be a dinner, entertainment, and dancing. Don’t miss it! Our welcome parties are usually a lot of fun! We hold one each month, as you might be able to work out. Because those of you who are here, the eight of you, have certain things in common, including the fact that you were born in the same month. You are all February children.”

Petra paused and took a sip of water.

“You all know why you’re here,” she went on, “so I won’t bore you by going through all the whys and wherefores.”

She had tilted her head slightly to one side and was smiling now, confident but still immensely engaging.

“Or to put it more accurately: you know the main reason why you are here. But there is also something more positive for you in all of this.”

She paused again, for slightly longer this time, looking at us with a serious expression.

“I have no doubt,” she said slowly, once again allowing her gaze to move from one to another, stopping briefly on each of us, “you have found that people were often unsure of you, felt nervous in your company, sometimes seemed afraid, or behaved in a condescending or scornful way. Isn’t that the case? Do you recognize that kind of situation?”

Nobody replied. There was complete silence in the room, apart from a faint hum from the air-conditioning. I was staring like an idiot at Petra, and presumably the other seven were doing the same. After a while she continued:

“Is there anyone who doesn’t recognize that situation?”

We burst out laughing, grinning at each other in embarrassment, responding to her with a mumble of denial.

“Okay,” she said, “this is what I mean. For the majority of you it isn’t until you come to the reserve bank unit that you will experience the feeling of belonging, of being part of something with other people, which those of us who are needed often take for granted. And the icing on the cake, as explained in the information packet you’ve been given, is that you need never worry about your finances again. You have food on the table, a roof over your head, free access to medical care, dental care, physical therapy and so on, and it won’t cost you a thing. You may move around freely within the unit and make use of all its facilities. There is a large winter garden here, almost a park in fact, for recreation and the enjoyment of nature. There is a library, a cinema, a theater, an art gallery, a café and a restaurant. There is a huge sports complex. And you can pursue more or less any hobby or professional activity you wish: art, crafts, electronics, mechanics, botany, architecture, acting, film, animation, you name it-there are workshops and studios for most activities. But above all”-and now she leaned forward, supporting herself on her fingertips on the edge of the table as if to give her words additional emphasis. “But above all,” she repeated, “you have each other! And now it’s coffee time.”

I would venture to say that this welcome speech made us all feel better about things. It would be an exaggeration to say that there was a cheerful atmosphere during the coffee break, but the deathly pallor had left most people’s faces, and as we drank coffee and ate homemade cinnamon buns in a cafélike room next door, the conversation was lively. We were starting to become interested in one another, asking questions about jobs and activities. Roy and Johanna were long-term unemployed; before that Johanna had delivered the mail and Roy had been some kind of consultant-I didn’t understand what kind. Annie had been a hotel receptionist, Fredrik a mechanic in a truck factory, Boel was a violinist and Sofia had done lots of different things, including delivering newspapers and junk mail, proofreading, cleaning in a hotel and packing goods for a mail-order company. Elsa, finally, had worked in the same shoe store ever since she finished high school.

After coffee, the meeting continued with practical information about everything from the procedures surrounding research experiments and donations to finding our way around the unit. Staff from the residential department, the health center, the surgical department, the restaurant, the art gallery, the sports center, and the podiatry and massage clinics came along, one after another, introduced themselves and told us what they did.

When we were finished my head was spinning from all the information we’d been given during the afternoon, and I had to go and lie down again for a while so I’d be able to cope with the welcome party that evening.

5

I remember the debate and the referendum. I also remember that it wasn’t really much of a debate to begin with, because the idea came originally from a newly formed party called the Capital Democrats, or something like that, and very few people took their proposal seriously.

I wasn’t particularly interested in politics, and I was far too young to be able to identify with concepts like middle age. Every time the topic came up, in the media or with other people, I heaved a bored sigh and turned the page or switched channels or changed the topic of conversation. Social issues of this kind just had nothing to do with me, in my opinion, and when I got pregnant by accident during the first phase of the debate, I had an abortion. I was young, after all, I was in high school, I wanted to travel, go to college, do some casual work here and there, paint, write, dance and enjoy myself. It was just as impossible to imagine myself as a mother as it was to imagine myself as middle-aged. But if I had known that at the very moment when I allowed myself to be anesthetized and scraped out I was throwing away the only chance of becoming a parent I would ever have, then things would probably not have been quite so clear cut. If I had been able to work out how things were going to be in the future, if I’d had the slightest idea, I would have given birth to my child. At least I would like to believe that’s what I would have done.

The question came up again in different guises and different packaging, and somehow it had slipped into the manifestos of some of the bigger and more established parties, and when the referendum finally took place, opinion had shifted. At that stage I was already more or less a grown woman with my sights set on a career as a writer. As I got by with various odd jobs I was determinedly working on what was to be my debut book. Around that time I started to toy with the idea that I would probably like to have a child before too long. But as I was living just below the poverty line and without a partner or other adult who could share the responsibility and the expense with me, I never pursued the idea. And when the new law came into force, I was well over thirty. I was a complete person with my character fully established, and unfortunately stamped more by the spirit of the times I had grown up in than that of the present situation.

When I was a child and a teenager, the ethos of the day advocated that a person should acquire some life experience and some experience of working life; you should learn about what made people tick, look around the world and try out different things before settling on a way of life you enjoyed. Enjoyment was important. Self-realization was important. Earning lots of money and buying lots of things was regarded as less important, in fact it was hardly of any importance at all. As long as you earned enough to get by. Getting by, coping, standing on your own two feet-financially, socially, mentally and emotionally-was important, and that was sufficient. Children and a family were something that could come later, or even something you could choose to do without. The ideal was first and foremost to find yourself, to develop your character, become a whole person who loved and respected yourself and who was not dependent on others. This was particularly important for women. It was extremely important not to become dependent on a man who would provide for us while we were with the children, looking after the house. At that time such a division of labor was actually still possible, and something my mother often warned my sisters and me about. From time to time she would gather the three of us together and give us a feminist talk. It started when Ida was just about three years old, and I was five. Siv was twelve, and the only one who had any idea what my mother was talking about for the first few years.

“Don’t you go having kids before you can stand on your own two feet,” Mom would say. “Don’t go letting some man support you, not financially, not intellectually, not emotionally. Don’t you get caught in that trap!”

Getting caught in a trap became my greatest fear. To begin with, it was a very concrete fear. I looked carefully for traps around me, and didn’t like to go into narrow passageways or enclosed spaces, for example elevators or airplanes-what if there was a man in there threatening to support me! I didn’t know what this supporting business actually was, but I was sure it would hurt a lot and that it might kill you. In stores, museums, cinemas, theaters and other large public indoor spaces I always wanted to stay near one of the doors, and the first thing I looked for when I went into an unfamiliar building was the emergency exits, the fire escapes, the escape routes.

When I got older and understood more clearly what my mother meant by children and men and supporting and traps, my fear of crowds and narrow spaces diminished somewhat. It no longer had such a concrete expression. But I was still-and would remain-afraid of getting caught. In every situation where there was a choice, I opted for the alternative that would give me the most freedom, even if that usually meant I was also opting for the alternative that was the least financially rewarding. For example, I have never had a permanent job with regular hours, a monthly salary, a pension and paid holidays. My jobs were always on an hourly or freelance basis so that, at least in theory, I could choose from day to day whether I wanted to work or not. Whenever I was forced to sign a contract-of whatever kind: a rental agreement, a book contract, a purchase agreement-I did so with great unease. I would sometimes get palpitations and break out in a cold sweat as I stood there with the pen in my hand, about to sign and therefore lock myself into something, irrevocably.

In my mind it was strictly taboo to be, or even to dream of being, emotionally or financially dependent on anyone, or to harbor even the tiniest secret desire to live in a symbiotic relationship with another person. And yet-or perhaps for that very reason-I have always felt a strong attraction to that kind of life. An attraction and a secret longing to be dependent and taken care of. That’s right: to be taken care of, to be taken in hand-financially and emotionally and sexually, and preferably by a man.

I sometimes managed to live out this longing, which found its expression through daydreams and fantasies, in my sexual relationships. This would take the form of a kind of role-playing, where my partner and I would pretend we were an old-fashioned married couple: married man who is the provider comes home to housewife who has dinner on the table. And after dinner: active male subject services passive female sex object.

But, as I said, I only managed to live out these fantasies to a certain extent, because just as I have never had a permanent job, I have also never had a long-term relationship, only casual liaisons.

These days there is no trap of the kind that my mother talked about and warned my sisters and me about. First of all there was the law stating that parents must divide their parental leave from work equally between them during the child’s first eighteen months. Then day care became compulsory for eight hours a day for all children aged between eighteen months and six years. The housewife and her male provider have not only been out of fashion for a long time, they have been eradicated. And children are no longer a drag, a hindrance, for anyone. There is no longer the risk of ending up as a dependent, or falling behind on the salary scale, or losing skills in the workplace. Not because of the children, at any rate. There is no longer any excuse not to have children. Nor is there any longer an excuse not to work when you have children.

6

The welcome party started off with a five-course Italian meal: Parma ham with melon, minestrone, pasta with pesto and chicken fillets, aged cheese with pears and grapes, and for dessert, panna cotta. Freshly baked white bread was served with the appetizer and main course. Only the wine was missing. During dinner I sat next to Majken, who told me she was an artist; Alice, a short, plump woman who had been a stagehand at the theater in Malmö, and Johannes, a fellow author I had often come across in literary circles, but had never really spoken to. I had always thought he seemed difficult and deliberately kept his distance. Now, however, he turned out to be quite the opposite-easy company and socially adept. He seemed to be in good form, despite the fact that he had been in the unit for more than three years. But then so far he had only donated sperm to the sperm bank and one kidney to a father of five who was a primary school teacher. He had also taken part in various experiments.

“At the moment I’m involved in a completely safe psychological investigation to do with cooperation and trust and that kind of thing,” he said.

Then he told us about the time he took part in an experiment with a new kind of medication for depression and chronic exhaustion, and ended up so lively and talkative that they had to bring in extra staff working around the clock just to socialize and chat with him-or rather listen to him, since he was babbling nonstop-and to keep an eye on him so that he didn’t overexert himself or disturb his neighbors too much. He had been seized by an uncontrollable urge to make things and to renovate, and took the opportunity to convert his kitchenette and part of the living room into a proper little kitchen.

“I didn’t get much written at that time-I was way too restless and desperate for company-but I had a really good time,” he ended his story.

Majken had been in the unit for four years, Alice for four months. Majken had, among other things, donated eggs for stem-cell research, one kidney, and the auditory bone from her right ear. As she was now deaf in that ear, she always wanted people to be on her left, she explained.

“And in a few weeks,” she went on, “I’m going in to donate my pancreas to a student nurse with four kids. So I guess this will be my last welcome party.”

She was moving her spoon around in her dessert, a distracted movement, it seemed to me-as if she didn’t mind, as if it didn’t bother her, as if it were completely okay. All of a sudden I felt completely powerless. Majken stirred and stirred with her spoon and I followed her hand and the spoon with my eyes, and with every rotation it felt as if the air in the big room were becoming thinner and more difficult to breathe. My body grew heavy, my arms ached, there was a thudding and rushing noise in my ears, I couldn’t see properly. I broke out in a cold sweat, and through a black, flickering mist I saw Majken’s hand stop its movement, let go of the spoon and grip my hand as it lay there in front of me next to my dish, limp and damp and cold. As if from far, far away, beyond the rushing in my ears, I heard her voice:

“Darling, you get used to it. Don’t you, Alice?”

I couldn’t see Alice. My field of vision had shrunk. I could only see Majken’s hand resting on mine. Alice said something, she was talking, reassuring me, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying because her voice was surging and fading, growing in turn stronger and weaker as if she were speaking in a strong wind, and only odd words were getting through. I opened my mouth, tried to say that I couldn’t hear her properly, but there wasn’t enough air. I couldn’t get my breath. I couldn’t focus. The dark flickering mist grew more dense and became a dark veil, a curtain. I could hardly see at all, and it felt as if the chair and the floor were about to give way beneath me, as if I were being sucked down into a hole. But then Alice was there too, stroking my arm with her hand, and now I could hear her. She was saying:

“It’s okay, darling, it’s okay…”

And Johannes, who was sitting beside me, put one arm around my shoulders. He placed his other hand on my forehead. As if I were a little child who might have a temperature. But it worked, it felt as if he were propping me up, keeping me there, stopping me from being sucked down into that hole or falling headfirst into the panna cotta. It felt as if they cared about me, all three of them, and I have always been calmed by the feeling that someone cares about me. Johannes said:

“There now… Take a deep breath. There. And breathe out slowly. Good. And again, Dorrit, nice and calm. That’s it, there now…”

We sat like that for quite a while: Majken holding my hand, Alice stroking my forearm and Johannes stroking my back slowly, and they all carried on murmuring “There now, it’s okay” until my senses and my breathing returned to normal. When Johannes finally took his hand away from my forehead, he did it by allowing it to slide down over my cheek, like a gentle caress.

There was entertainment. There was dancing. A rock band played. I danced with Johannes, Majken and Alice. And with Elsa and lots of other people. But I danced the most with Johannes. He had rhythm and feeling, and he knew proper ballroom dancing, with the right steps and everything. He could lead like a real old chauvinist, like an old-fashioned gentleman. At first I found it a bit difficult to keep up. Partly because I had never done this kind of dancing before, I’d only seen it in old films, partly because I felt a little bit exposed somehow, it almost felt dangerous, not being in charge of your own steps. But after a while I decided to ignore that feeling and just let myself be led and managed. And then it felt just wonderful, right up my alley.

It grew late. Elsa and I were standing at the bar, each with a pear drink. They served only nonalcoholic beverages, and if you didn’t want a soda there was only orange juice and a pear drink to choose from.

“Would you like to meet up tomorrow morning and have breakfast together?” I asked.

“Would you like to have breakfast tomorrow and then spend the next four days together?” Elsa asked.

As new arrivals we had four consecutive free days, Sunday to Wednesday. It was so we could make ourselves at home in the unit before the compulsory health check; after that we would be allocated to appropriate humane experiments or begin to donate. We were being given a gentle start. And when Elsa mentioned spending the next four days together I felt-to my surprise-an enormous sense of relief, and it made me realize that I was afraid of those four free days. It made me realize that for the first time in my adult life, I was afraid of being alone. So I accepted her invitation. No, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone in a building without windows, where there wasn’t a living thing to fix your gaze on, not a thing to stop me from thinking about the fact that I would never again experience the feeling that flooded through me that morning in March each year when I opened my door and saw the first crocus of the year in bloom on my lawn. Or the first scilla or the first hepatica or the first scented violet. Or when I saw the cranes, trumpeting as they flew over in wide skeins on their way north to Lake Hornborga. And I didn’t want to think about Nils and our times together, his hands on my body, his kisses, his penis, his words telling me how much I meant to him. Above all I didn’t want to think about Jock, about the fact that we would never again run together in the forest or by the sea. Or take our walk along the tractor route to Ellström’s farm to buy fresh eggs and vegetables for me and a pig’s heart for him. I needed to erect a barrier of new experiences, a buffer zone between there and here, between then and now, before I had the courage to be alone with my thoughts again.

On the other hand, I wasn’t so afraid of the night. I wasn’t afraid to sleep without company. Since I wasn’t used to sleeping with other people in the same room, or even in the same house, I actually preferred it that way. And to be on the safe side I’d made sure I got myself some sleeping pills. Of course they were the kind that can’t send you off to sleep forever; they were the suicide-proof kind with a built-in antabuse effect: if you take more than two, you throw up.

When Elsa put her empty glass down on the bar and said she was tired and off to bed, I asked her if she wanted a sleeping pill.

She laughed.

“Thanks, but I’ve been to the doctor too and got myself some!”

We decided that whoever woke up first the next morning would ring the other, and after breakfast we would set off to explore the unit and make the most of everything being free. Then we hugged each other, said good night, and she left.

The last dance was a ballad. The singer stood in the middle of the stage, alone in the spotlight, the orchestra hidden in the darkness behind him. He sang: “This is for my girl, this is for my woman, for my world. Baby, baby, this is all for you…”

Johannes came over to me as I stood there with my lukewarm pear drink, swaying to the beat and humming along with the refrain. He bowed briefly and asked, very politely:

“May I have the pleasure?”

It was charming, I was charmed by his old-fashioned manner and his words, and without a second’s hesitation I put my glass on the bar, nodded graciously and held out my hand to him. He took it and placed his other arm quite formally around my waist. And we sailed out onto the dance floor. He led so confidently, in such a relaxed way and with such perfect timing that I didn’t even feel as if I couldn’t really dance like this. I almost fell into a trance, following him as easily as if I were a part of him, as if we were the same body.

“Thank you for the dance, Dorrit,” he said when the music ended. “And thank you for this evening.”

He took my hand, raised it to his lips, and just brushed it with them. I had read about this in novels, I had seen it in films and plays. I had dreamed about it. But this was the first time in my life that someone had actually kissed my hand.

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.

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.