Jonas Karlsson - The Room

You have to capture its own force and then slowly but surely lead it in the desired direction. The river won’t notice it’s being led if the curve is gentle enough. On the contrary, it will think it’s flowing just the same as usual, seeing as nothing seems to have changed.

Uneventful days. Days without any particular character. Days which at first glance didn’t appear to have led to much. Days that no one pays any attention to. Every day there came more and more documents from the investigators on the sixth and seventh floors, all of them waiting to be turned into framework decisions.

Håkan was becoming more and more anxious about the workload. He started making excuses. Moaning about the quality of the investigations. Their layout, content, incoherent argumentation.

So you’re the only one who’s perfect? I thought. How ironic.

Håkan and Karl had endless heated discussions that always ended with talk about the possibility of the entire Authority being closed down.

The threat of closure hung like an evil spirit over the whole department. Probably the whole Authority. I assumed this was the government’s way of keeping us on our toes and not letting anyone think they were safe. But Håkan was irritated at the investigators and the work they did most of the time. He waved documents at Karl when he walked past.

‘How am I supposed to formulate a clear, easily understood text from this rubbish? Do they even know what decision they’ve come to themselves?’

I went in to see Karl with money for the indoor shoes. At first he didn’t want to take it, but I insisted, and explained that I would have bought a pair exactly like them if I’d got them myself. After a while he relented. Took the money and put it in his own pocket. I didn’t say anything.

Later that day Karl came over to see Håkan and I heard them discussing the formulation of a new decision. I took care not to look up from my work as I listened to them talking.

Håkan was groaning and constantly scratching his sideburns, and said he couldn’t produce a clearer text from that material, and that it was impossible to work any faster, particularly at the moment when there wasn’t exactly a calm atmosphere conducive to work.

Without looking at them I could tell that this last remark was aimed at me, and I thought I could feel them both glancing in my direction. I pretended not to notice.

Soon I had finished my task. Sorting out the quality-assured projects was really just a matter of checking the signatures at the end of each file. One investigator meant no. Two or more control declarations with different save-dates meant yes.

I was done just before lunch and another printout was delivered to Karl’s office. Karl thanked me and smiled, but I could see how tired he was.

‘What shall I do now?’ I asked.

Karl looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. He stared blindly through the window facing the office.

‘Well …’ he muttered, sighing through his nose.

‘Perhaps there’s some text that …?’

Karl looked at me.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘No, I was just wondering if I could help …’

‘No thanks, Björn. I don’t think so. It’ll be fine. But you could …’ He looked round the room. ‘… check all the printers … make sure they’ve all got enough paper and so on.’

We looked at one another, both of us aware of the menial task he was asking a civil servant to do, and I realised that my humiliation had to be dragged right down to the very bottom. I didn’t mind. I was prepared. I nodded and went out to find some photocopy paper.

All the printers in the department ended up as full of paper as they possibly could be without the paper-feed jamming, or the thin plastic holding it being so overburdened that it broke.

When I saw several of the others having a coffee-break I went over to the little kitchen as well and got myself a cup.

A peculiar silence spread round the small room. They all drank their coffee, but the easy banter was missing. I tried to avoid making eye-contact with Jörgen, who still looked likely to have an outburst at any moment. All you could hear was the sound of my spoon stirring the cup.

When I returned to my place I saw that the inevitable had now happened. Håkan’s papers had finally overflowed onto my desk.

Håkan’s chair was empty but his desk was covered with files and documents, all waiting to be formulated into new framework decisions. Several piles of printouts were positioned so that they were almost nudging the back of my computer screen.

I felt a pang of my old intolerance. A gust of my old self who had been far too excitable, too guileless in purely tactical terms.

I sat down at my desk and put my hands against all his things. Then I simply pushed them back until everything was just inside the edge of his desktop. I heard one or two things fall to the floor on the other side of the desk.

When Håkan came back with a large pile of papers in his arms he didn’t even bother trying to make room among the mess on his desk, but impudently parked it all on my side. He leaned down and picked up the papers that had ended up on the floor. He didn’t even seem to wonder how they had got there.

Soon he disappeared again.

My initial impulse was of course to repeat my earlier procedure and this time push everything a bit further to make him realise what he was doing. But then my eyes were caught by one of the printouts. Investigation. Case 1,636 , it said. I realised that this was an opportunity. Without even asking for it, I had been given a helping hand. An almost meditative calm spread through me.

I looked around. I took hold of the pile of papers with both hands and put what had been left on my desk in my drawer.

Håkan spent a large part of the afternoon trying in vain to find the missing investigations. Even if he didn’t say anything, I knew that was what he was doing. He picked up books and files, looked underneath things, muttering to himself and occasionally swearing quietly.

I watched him go in to see Karl, gesticulating with his arms. Karl looked sweatier than ever. At some point Håkan gestured in my direction, but Karl merely shook his head.

I took care to participate in all the group coffee-breaks and idle conversations. No one spoke to me or even looked at me, but I was there. I was taking part. I was a physical presence among them.

To start with I noticed that everything would stop as soon as I came along. I would stand beside the others and pretend I hadn’t noticed. In the end I came to assume the role of passive participant, the person no one bothers about, but whose presence is a precondition for the general character of social interaction.

By five o’clock most of the others had left, but I stayed behind as usual. I did an extra circuit of all the printers and checked that they were all full, mostly to make sure that the others had all gone home.

Then I went back to my desk. I opened the drawer and took out the top bundle of papers. Investigation. Case 1,636 .

I put it in my briefcase, put my coat on to leave, checked once more that there was no one left, crept round to the corridor with the toilets, turned the light on and slipped inside the room for the eleventh time.