Jonas Karlsson - The Room

Håkan was sitting there typing, and I wondered if he was actually writing something or merely wanting to give the impression that he was busy.

He was wearing a shabby blue corduroy jacket, which made an unusually scruffy impression. Particularly when combined with his long sideburns, which somehow seemed better suited to the 1970s. I wondered why he hadn’t taken it off. As I was sitting there looking at him, it struck me that his blue jacket had been bothering me since first thing that morning. Even before the business with the shoe-covers and cloth, before the incident with Ann. I seriously disliked that jacket. Once when he emptied his pockets out onto the desk I saw he had a whole bundle of crumpled serviettes. Several of them appeared to have been used. He looked tired. Maybe he was out every night partying? Either way, he ought to take care to make sure that his work didn’t suffer.

I never went into the room that day. But I thought about it several times. It was as if I was thinking: I ought to go into the room.

That night I lay awake thinking about Karl’s cotton cardigan and what sort of unfortunate consequences his attitude problem might have. I thought about Håkan and the way he got away with things. I thought about Ann and the elegant way she rejected me. I realised I would have to look out for her. She was doubtless capable of dragging a creative individual down to the semi-social state of casual interaction involving endless coffee and small talk that characterised most workplaces.

Oh well, I wouldn’t let myself be affected.

Instead, I thought about the attractive woman in reception. Her smile. The way she made me feel genuinely welcome each morning with just a glance. As if she really saw me. Saw that there was something special about me. I realised that she was one of the rare breed of alert women, of whom there are fewer and fewer, and decided as I lay there to give her a little of my time. Maybe a chat early one morning, maybe lunch?

In my mind I went through material from the department. Decisions and framework documents that I arranged chronologically and put in folders. I got up, went out into the kitchen and drank a glass of milk as I read the adverts in the morning paper.

The third time I went into the room, I did it for no reason. That’s not like me at all. I usually stick to a clear chain of cause and effect, but this time it was as if I just wanted to go there. I closed the door and stopped in the middle of the floor, in front of the desk.

The desktop was covered by a protective pad that seemed almost to have been stuck down. I felt obliged to lift one corner to check that it was only held in place by the anti-slip backing that stopped it shifting even a millimetre in any direction, no matter how you pulled and pushed it.

In front of the pad was a hole-punch, a stapler, a teak penholder containing two ink pens and a pencil.

All neatly lined up.

I raised my elbow and rested it on the shiny metal filing cabinet that stood against one wall. I felt a sense of calm in my body that seemed to cleanse my whole system. An intoxicating feeling of relaxation. A bit like a headache pill.

There was a full-length mirror in the room. I caught sight of myself in it and fancied, to my surprise, that I looked really good. My grey suit fitted better than I thought, and there was something about the way the fabric hung that made me think that the body beneath it was — how can I put it? — virile.

I stood there for a long while, resting my weight on one leg, with my elbow on the filing cabinet. It was a good stance. It looked incredibly relaxed. Simultaneously confident and aware.

I had never thought of myself as ‘attractive’. Most of the time I used mirrors to check that my clothes and accessories were in the right place. Not to check how ‘attractive’ I was. The idea had never occurred to me. I never actually thought about men as being either more or less attractive. But I realised it was time to start doing so.

Because the best thing was the look in the eyes.

The man reflected in the mirror had a remarkable look of concentration in his eyes. He fixed me squarely with his pupils and followed me wherever I went. I realised at once that this was a new asset, a pair of eyes that could demand anything. And get it.

Inhibited people don’t see the world the way it really is. They only see what they themselves want to see. They don’t see the nuances. The little differences.

A lot of people — more than you’d imagine — think everything’s fine. They’re happy with things the way they are. They don’t see the faults because they’re too lazy to allow themselves to have their everyday routines disturbed. They think that as long as they do their best, everything will work out okay.

You have to remind them. You have to show people like that what their shortcomings are.

Fresh documents kept arriving from the investigators. The numbers on the title-page indicated the level of priority given to their conclusions, on a declining scale where number one was the most important. On the fourth floor we worked exclusively with three- and four-figure documents. The framework decisions from one to ten were almost never changed now, and those in double-figures were dealt with by considerably more senior administrators on the floors above. No one in my department had ever worked with a single- or double-digit decision. Not even Karl. As soon as anyone started working on a file near two or three hundred, rumours of promotion would start to circulate about the person in question.

Fortunately for everyone on my floor, there were departments lower down that worked with all the five-figure material.

The fourth time I went into the room I took my colleague Håkan with me. We had some questions about internal organisation to go through, and I thought it best to discuss them inside the room.

Håkan sat on the other side of my desk. We worked opposite one another. At any moment we might happen to look up and meet each other’s gaze. I tried never to look straight ahead whenever I looked up from my work. Håkan carried out his duties with the same lightness of touch as everyone else in the department. He used the phone more or less as he liked, took breaks whenever he felt like it. He would spend ages gazing off into the distance without it apparently having anything to do with work. Now and then he would try to talk to me as well. I would rebuff him gently but firmly. Usually with a simple gesture of the hand. Arm out, palm raised towards him. It worked.

We didn’t actually share a desk. We each had one of our own. But the desks were positioned back to back and Håkan had an irritating habit of shoving his papers across his desk every time he started something new, which meant that they eventually ended up on my side.

One day I caught him in the process of doing precisely that. In the middle of one of my fifty-five-minute periods.

It certainly wasn’t my intention to sit and stare at him as he worked, but his movements were so expansive that it was hard not to. He took out a couple of weighty new files from the investigators and put them in front of him on the desk, but instead of gathering up and tidying away what was already there, he merely pushed it away from him. Towards me.

I realised at once what was going to happen.

Not now, maybe not even today, but eventually Håkan’s desktop would overflow with files and papers and documents, and they would begin to eat away at my side.

I had seen the same pattern before, in other workplaces, and knew it would be a source of irritation between us. I spent a little while wondering how best to tackle the situation on this occasion.