The Unit Read online

  PART 2

  1

  I didn’t think about Nils. I didn’t think about my house. I didn’t think about Jock, but it didn’t help. Not thinking about Jock didn’t help, because the way I missed him was different. It was in my body. It was in my heart. And it was painful.

  For anyone who has never experienced or set any store by being close to an animal, it is perhaps difficult to understand that you can miss a dog so that it literally hurts. But the relationship with an animal is so much more physical than a relationship with another person. You don’t get to know a dog by asking how he’s feeling or what he’s thinking, but by observing him and getting to know his body language. And all the important things you want to say to him you have to show through actions, attitude, gestures and sounds.

  People, on the other hand, can always be reached through talking. A bridge of words grows easily between people, a bridge of information, explanations and assurances. For example, one person can say to another: “It’s my birthday on August twenty-sixth,” which is a piece of information, or: “I’m late because I couldn’t get the car started,” which is an explanation, or: “I will love you until death do us part,” which is an assurance. But words between people also act as a kind of shock absorber; those in close relationships often choose to talk about something other than the matter that is weighing them down, worrying them or annoying them. Just like when Elsa and I were sharing our childhood memories. Or when an established couple immerse themselves in a discussion about the fact that the children need new shoes, or start enthusiastically planning a house extension, instead of talking about why they’re always mad at each other these days.

  Between Jock and me there was no bridge, no shock absorber. The contact between us was what it was, with no shortcuts, diversions or beltways. We couldn’t talk to each other about our relationship, couldn’t sort out misunderstandings or explain how much we meant to each other. We lived completely separately, because of the conditions imposed by our respective species. But we also lived side by side, body to body, without promises, lies or small talk. And irrespective of whether I thought about him or not, during my early days in the unit I could feel his coarse coat beneath the palm of my hand, the rapid beating of his heart under the coarseness, his cold nose, his warm tongue against my cheek, the smell of his breath and his fur. I could hear and see him: his brief bark when he caught sight of me and came bounding toward me, his legs wide apart, but his head held elegantly high; his excited snuffles and constantly wagging tail; his panting breath as he ran alongside me, his paws rhythmically rasping against the ground. And in bed at night I could feel his weight on my leg, and when I woke up in the morning I would sit up straightaway, and for a fraction of a second I would imagine I could see his expectant expression meeting my eyes from the foot of the bed. Each one of these sensory perceptions, these phantom emotions surrounding Jock’s presence was immediately followed by the realization that it bore no relation whatsoever to reality. This realization was always equally brutal, like being struck hard by a fist or stabbed with a knife, and then it turned to a constant, nagging ache.

  The only thing that could alleviate this kind of pain was physical activity. As long as I was on the go, the body was producing endorphins, and as long as the body was producing endorphins, life was bearable. Elsa seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because without ever discussing it or even commenting on the reasons, we were more or less constantly on the move during those first free days. We went for long, brisk walks around the Atrium Walkway and in the winter garden, swam, went to Friskis & Svettis, did strength-building exercises, joined in with various dance groups-salsa, hip-hop, jazz, step, belly dancing-and tried to keep up as best we could. In the evenings we had dinner at the restaurant on the indoor square on level 4, chatting about old school friends or talking for a while with whoever happened to be dining in the restaurant. This was something completely new for me, this idea of whiling away the time just chatting and socializing with other people. I had never looked at time or at people that way before. I had always valued my time and I had always regarded people as individuals, I had never reduced them to “just anybody” who might keep me company. Never before had I valued company for its own sake. I had never valued small talk. Now I noticed that small talk had a soothing effect; it was like a cold compress placed on a twisted ankle, counteracting swelling and bruising. And when the night came and Elsa and I left each other to go to our own apartments, I was so exhausted from all the physical activity, all the chatting, all this intense time killing, that I literally collapsed into bed and slipped into a black, dreamless sleep. Eight hours later I woke feeling rested, and with each new morning my perceptions of Jock were slightly less overwhelming.

  2

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

  “Like what?” said Majken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “A good friend?”

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

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

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

  “Have you been swimming?”

  “Diving.”

  “Nice?”

  “Fantastic!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

  “And where’s the catch?” I said.

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

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

  She paused briefly. Then she asked:

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

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