Jonas Karlsson - The Room

‘I think it’s creepy, seeing him stand there like that. He’s so … It’s like he’s just not there.’

As usual, several people decided to voice their agreement, and once again there was a hubbub of voices all wanting to have their say. Karl raised his voice to drown out the muttering.

‘Hello. Hello. Hello!’ he called, waving his arms in the air.

One by one they fell silent. Karl turned to me.

‘What do you say, Björn?’

I took my time, seeing as I knew what he wanted me to say, but I decided to stick to the facts, unlike the rest of them.

‘They say there’s nothing wrong with me and that I’m perfectly capable of carrying on working.’

Several of them looked at me as if they’d only just noticed that I was still there. Hannah with the ponytail and Ann whispered something between them. Several of the others muttered among themselves, like they were still at school.

‘Well, surely we can agree …’ Karl began. ‘I mean, why don’t we say that it’s okay as long as Björn doesn’t go into the room?’

There was a long silence. Then Jörgen stepped forward. The picture rocked behind him.

‘Okay, let’s agree on this,’ he said, fixing his gaze on Karl. ‘If I see him standing like that once more. Then he’s finished. Just saying.’

Karl nodded with exaggerated clarity to show that he was really listening. Then he turned to me.

‘Do you think you can manage that, Björn?’

I felt a knot in my stomach. But I still opened my mouth and replied.

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ Karl said. ‘So we’re all in agreement, then?’

One by one they drifted away.

Late that afternoon the sun peeped out for a couple of minutes. Everyone in the department turned their faces towards the windows, but soon it was gone and shortly afterwards it started to snow again.

I kept to my desk and wondered if I ought simply to skip my five-minute breaks and carry on working. Maybe it would be best to shut out everything else in the office and concentrate one hundred per cent on work? Maybe Karl and I could come to some arrangement where we calculated how much time I saved by not taking breaks, not chatting to my colleagues, not making private phone calls or running to the toilet every five minutes, like some of the older women did, and reduce the time I spent at work by the same amount?

I took a deep breath and sighed. Getting authorisation for something like that seemed unlikely under management that was so hostile to positive developments.

I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and put the indoor shoes inside.

I passed the room twice that day. Once on my way to the toilet, and once when I tidied my desk and went to put two old journals in the recycling bin. I tried not to think about it. I did my best to imitate the others and pretend the room didn’t exist. It felt utterly ridiculous. Of course there’s a room there, I thought. After all, I can see it. I can touch it. I can feel it. I went round the little corridor once more, as if to check that the door hadn’t suddenly disappeared and I’d been imagining it all. But the door was still there. It was firmly fixed in the wall. No question. Solid. As clear as day. It almost made me laugh. I nudged it with my elbow as I walked past it the second time. I heard the sound as the fabric of my jacket touched it. And when all the others were off at lunch, I couldn’t see any reason not to go in there for a short while, the tenth time.

After lunch we were all called to yet another meeting in Karl’s office. I didn’t understand how it could have happened, but I assumed someone must have seen me sneak into the room even though I had taken all reasonable precautions. I prepared myself for the worst.

‘Well?’ Karl said, when everyone had squeezed into his office.

His gaze swept round the room and settled on Jens. I made an effort to look as relaxed as possible.

‘Well …’ Jens said from over in the corner. ‘I’d just like to know … how much those shoes cost?’

‘The shoes?’ Karl said, stretching to his full height.

Jens nodded, with a self-important expression on his face.

‘I mean, they weren’t free, were they?’

‘No,’ Karl said, picking up a pen, which he drummed idly against the edge of the desk. ‘I took the liberty of—’

Jens didn’t let Karl finish his sentence.

‘So how daft do you have to behave to get a pair like that?’ he went on, to scattered laughter.

Karl gave a strained smile, holding the pen in the air.

‘Let’s just say that I have a certain amount in the budget for pastoral investment in personnel matters …’

‘That’s still not fair,’ Ann said.

‘No,’ Jörgen said.

‘This seems to me to be all too typical,’ Hannah with the ponytail said, folding her arms over her chest. ‘We didn’t get any contribution to the Christmas party. But apparently there’s money available now.’

‘Now listen,’ Karl said, leaning back in his chair with the pen under his chin. ‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘So he can turn up and get given stuff just because he acts a bit crazy?’ Jörgen said.

Hannah with the ponytail held her arms out.

‘It seems to me that it’s very unclear what the applicable rules actually are.’

Several people nodded.

‘The question is,’ Ann said, ‘what sort of signals are we sending out?’

When we went back to our places John appeared alongside me. He put his hand on my arm and hissed in my ear: ‘I saw what you did at lunchtime.’

I raised my eyebrows and did my best to look uncomprehending.

‘Don’t act all innocent,’ he went on. ‘I saw you. If I see you again, I’ll tell. Just so you know.’

The snow carried on falling, and I carried on working. I tried to stick to my fifty-five-minute periods. I even tried smiling. Every time anyone happened to look in my direction I fired off a broad smile, but the whole time I could feel how suspicious everyone else was of me, trying to pretend I wasn’t there. Karl came over to our desk. First he chatted to Håkan, then he turned to me. As if everything was normal.

‘And how are things with you, then, Björn?’

‘What sort of things?’ I asked in a neutral voice.

‘Well,’ Karl said, and I could hear how unsettled he was. ‘What have you spent the last few days doing?’

Naturally he didn’t want an answer. He was asking in that pointless way that people do when they ask how you are. They don’t want to hear about your health. They just want to hear their own voice, and say things they’ve said before. They want to make a noise in a social context.

‘Why do you want to know?’ I said.

‘Because I’m your boss,’ he said.

I looked him in the eye and had a distinct sense of being the stronger person.

‘I’ve initiated a process for developing a set of guiding principles for the department, identified so-called focus areas, specific targets in various sectors, and gathered a number of criteria. I have chosen to call one of my focus areas “operations in the centre”.’

I clicked to open the document and pointed at the screen.

‘I plan to use this to measure the benefit we deliver to customers. To that purpose I have drawn up a questionnaire intended to find out what you customers think about my services.’

He looked at me.

‘Us customers?’

‘I usually think of you as customers.’

‘What for?’

I allowed myself a gentle sigh.