Jonas Karlsson - The Room

‘After all, two kronor isn’t the end of the world,’ I said, glancing towards the woman in the suit, but there was no conspiratorial smile.

They resumed their conversation and I went back to the coffee-machine, put my money in, got my coffee, then went and stood beside the plastic Christmas tree again. By now most people had arrived and the reception area resumed its usual deserted appearance. I was left alone again with Margareta on the other side of the counter.

‘Well,’ I said after a while, sipping the hot coffee and wondering what I ought to say.

She looked up at me from her papers, but I saw none of the respect you might expect from a receptionist of her level. It made me slightly annoyed. Maybe she was one of those people who thought it was acceptable to set aside all politeness and manners once you’ve been introduced and become acquainted.

‘Yes?’ Margareta said.

I decided to sit her out. Let her catch up and realise the situation she was in. Any moment now everything ought to click into place, I thought, but she just went on looking at me with that indirectly arrogant expression, rather like a mother looking at her teenage son.

When she didn’t say anything, I felt obliged to speak: ‘Well, I thought it was nice, anyway.’

She took a paperclip and fastened several documents together, then put them on a new pile.

‘I have to ask you something personal,’ she said after a while, as she pushed the papers away. ‘Is that okay?’ I nodded and she looked round. I could see she was gathering herself.

‘Are you on drugs?’

At first I thought she was joking. I laughed, but then I saw that she was serious. I took a couple of steps back and noticed that I’d spilled some coffee on the sleeve of my jacket. What did she mean? Why would she ask that? Was she on drugs? Did she want me to join her on some sort of junkie adventure?

I must have looked angry because suddenly she got that scared look in her eye that I recognised from the night before. I wasn’t used to people looking at me that way. It unsettled me, and made me even more angry.

‘What do you mean?’ I tried to say in my usual voice, but I heard it come out much more strained than I had intended.

It annoyed me that she had so suddenly managed to throw me off-balance. I wasn’t remotely enjoying the confusion she was spreading, and felt the need to create more distance. I backed away another couple of steps.

‘I just mean,’ Margareta began uncertainly, ‘well, what are you doing down here now, for instance? In work time?’

I looked at the large clock on the wall behind the desk and saw to my surprise that it was already twenty-five to ten. How could it be so late? So quickly?

I left at once. Without a word I hurried across the granite floor and went up in the lift. I got off at the fourth floor and made an effort not to run to my desk. I slipped onto my chair and leafed quickly through my diary to check that I hadn’t missed a meeting, but there was nothing written down. I glanced over at the glass doors where Karl sat, but couldn’t see him. I took a deep breath and suddenly realised how tired I was. I tried to remember when I had last slept.

I should have seen through her earlier. Obviously she was a junkie. All that smiling. That optimistic outlook. It was a chemically produced friendliness. I’d walked straight into the trap. Being taken in by the surface appearance of a drug-user was one of the dangers of being an open, honest person. Never suspecting anything.

I realised that I would have to stay away from her in future.

I raised my head and tried to look straight ahead, but it was hard to get my gaze to settle on anything. I have to find somewhere I can pull myself together, I thought. I got up and felt my whole body aching with tiredness.

Without knowing how it had happened, I felt something warm and wet on my legs. I looked down and saw the remains of the coffee on my jacket and trousers. The empty plastic cup upside down in my hand. Slowly but surely I made my way towards the corridor with the toilets, then in to wipe off the coffee. I pulled out a bundle of paper towels and pressed them against my jacket and trousers.

The room, I thought. I’ll go into the room for an hour. I crept out into the corridor, past the big recycling bin, switched on the light and opened the door for the seventh time.

I could feel the clean white wall against my back. The gentle texture against the palm of my hand as I placed it against the wallpaper. The cool steel against my cheek as I leaned my head against the filing cabinet. The soft motion of the drawers as they slid in and out on their metal runners. Order.

I counted the lengths of wallpaper on the long wall. Five, I made it.

After a short while I felt brighter. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I was my old self again. I looked better than I deserved to. I adjusted my tie and went back out to the office.

I sat down in my place and looked at the time. I had about fifteen minutes left until a new fifty-five-minute period started, so I leaned back and stretched my arms up in the air. Then let them fall and folded them behind my head. I glanced over at Karl’s glassed-in office. I didn’t mind if he did see me now. See me taking time for myself. I sat for a while going through various replies to things he might say. Little hints that would slowly but surely make him realise that I was a man of the future. Someone worth keeping in with. Not the sort of person to pick unnecessary arguments with. About trivial things.

I looked over towards the little kitchen with the broken light above the stove that still hadn’t been fixed. It seemed astonishing that it was still like that. Was it really so hard to screw in a new bulb?

I sighed, tilted my head back, gazed up at the ceiling and looked at the various fittings. The cables for the fluorescent lighting were attached to the outside of the ceiling tiles, fixed in place by little clamps that made the whole thing look rather provisional. A sausage-like cornice between the ceiling and the walls. I counted the lengths of wallpaper along the wall by the toilet corridor, and made it sixteen.

For some reason I thought that was rather low, so I counted them once more. And made it sixteen again. I spun gently on my chair and wondered how that could be right. Each length must be about half a metre wide. Making eight metres for the whole wall. I looked down at the bookcases and cabinets lined up against it and tried to work out the distance. Yes, eight metres — that could be about right. But there were five lengths inside the room alone? How narrow could the toilets be, lined up alongside it? I wondered. They couldn’t be less than one metre? Not when you took the walls into account?

I got up from my chair and went over to the wall. I stood there for a while looking at it. Three bookcases, a filing cabinet and a photocopier were lined up against it. I went round the corner into the toilet corridor. There were the three toilets. The first one was vacant and I stood in the doorway and held my arms out to measure it. It must be at least a metre, I thought. I went back out into the corridor, past the room and the big green recycling bin, and reached the lift. I looked at it.

Then I went round the far corner and came to the wall with the bookcases and cabinet again. I backed away slightly and counted the lengths of wallpaper again. Sixteen.

I went up to the wall and put my lower arm against the wallpaper. I had heard somewhere that a grown man’s lower arm and hand together make up about half a metre. That seemed to fit.