The Unit Page 4

  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: