Jonas Karlsson - The Room

Once again I went back round the corner to the toilet corridor. Three toilets, a recycling bin and a lift, all of which combined came to about eight metres. So what about the room?

I went back and sat down at my desk. Took out a pad of squared paper and did a simple sketch of this part of the fourth floor.

Impossible, I thought, as I looked at the sketch. There’s something that doesn’t make sense.

I put down the pad and went round to the lift. I went down and got out on the third floor. It was almost as empty as the fourth floor. A man in a cap said hello to me as I went round the corner into their toilet corridor. I didn’t bother to respond. I was taken by surprise, and because I didn’t know him I didn’t think there was any reason for us to waste time saying hello to each other. Besides, I was busy with this peculiar discovery, and I wasn’t about to be sidetracked. I was on the trail of something. I could feel it in my whole body.

The layout was the same down here, toilets and recycling bin. But no room.

I went round to the other side where a large whiteboard had been screwed to the wall. I counted the lengths of wallpaper. Sixteen. Exactly the same proportions, I thought. It’s all here. Except the room.

I took the lift back up again and stopped on the office side of the wall.

I looked at Jörgen’s fairy-lights up by the ceiling. They stretched all the way from one wall to the other, and down to the plug-socket by the floor.

I grabbed hold of the string of lights, unplugged it from the wall and pulled it down from the ceiling. It was more firmly attached than I had expected and when I finally managed to get the whole string loose, small flakes of plaster broke away from the top part of the wall.

I tied the part of the wire that had been hanging down towards the socket, then went round and laid it out on the floor on the other side where the toilets started. It reached just past the green recycling bin.

I knew it, I thought, then said it out loud to myself so that I would be sure to understand.

‘It’s invisible. It’s a secret room.’

I heard someone say my name. I turned round and caught sight of Ann in the doorway to one of the toilets. Her face was completely blank. She was staring at me, so I spoke as calmly as I could to her.

‘Have you got a ruler?’

‘What did you say?’ she asked.

‘A ruler?’ I said. ‘Or a tape-measure?’

She shook her head.

I got the long ruler from Håkan’s desk. It was fifty centimetres long. He’d borrowed plenty of things from me. It was only fair that I finally had a good reason to borrow something from him.

I started with the photocopier wall, in towards the office, and measured along the carpet. 8.40 , I wrote on the sketch on my pad.

On the other side I sat down and started measuring the carpet where the first toilet started. I held my thumb in place, moved the ruler, and counted the number of lengths as I did the calculation in my head.

When I reached the lift I had got to 12.20. Impossible, I thought. That makes three metres and eighty centimetres that don’t exist on the other side.

I went and stood by the lift to see if the corridor was angled somehow, in a way that would distort the measurements, but the wall and corridor were perfectly parallel.

It was an excellent viewpoint. From there you could clearly see that the corridor ran parallel to the wall on the other side. No distortion, no angles. But with one room too many on one side. It was extremely professionally done.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Håkan said when I gathered up my things at the end of the day. I had just decided to stop lending him my Staedtler pens with the 0.5 and 0.05 mm tips, seeing as I had noted that he seldom, if ever, put the lids back on them. Next time I would say no.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘What are you doing?’ Håkan said.

I took my coat and scarf off the hanger and went round to Håkan. We were almost the only people left in the office. Lena by the window was still there, as she usually was.

‘When do you mean?’ I said.

Håkan folded his arms, leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

‘What are you doing when you stand like that?’

‘Stand? Like what?’

‘When you stand still like that. By the wall.’

‘Which wall?’ I said.

He nodded his head towards the toilet corridor.

We both fell silent and looked at each other. I realised that this was a defining moment. A moment when I might be able to find out what was really going on in this department.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Show me. Where do I stand?’

Håkan squirmed and suddenly didn’t seem so interested any more.

‘Oh, you know.’

‘No, show me. Where do I stand?’

He hesitated. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, down his cheek and under his chin. He scratched his long sideburns. It was obvious that he felt unsettled.

‘Look, never mind, we can talk about it some other time.’

He slowly gathered together his things on the desk. I caught him glancing over towards Lena by the window.

‘No, show me now,’ I said. ‘What do I do?’

‘Come on, surely you know?’

‘No. I don’t know.’

He folded his arms again and looked me in the eye.

‘You stand there, completely still,’ he said.

‘Where do I stand?’

‘Over there. By the wall.’

‘Show me, Håkan. Please. I want you to show me exactly.’

Håkan looked at me suspiciously. Finally he got up and went off round the corner. I followed him. We stopped right outside the door to the room.

‘Here,’ Håkan said.

‘What do I do here?’ I said.

‘You stand here. Completely still.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, it’s almost a bit creepy. You’re so bloody still. How can you do that, without moving a muscle? It’s like you’re just not there.’

‘Show me.’

‘No.’

‘Go on, please.’

‘No, damn it. You just stand here completely still.’

‘Do I say anything?’

‘No, you’re completely gone. It’s like you’re somewhere else. Completely out of reach. Hell, your phone even started to ring in your inside pocket. I asked if you weren’t going to take it, but you didn’t move a millimetre. It was like you couldn’t hear. As if you were somewhere else.’

‘When did I do this?’

‘The other day. You made me come with you. And then you just stood there like that.’

‘How long do I stand like that?’

‘It varies. Last time it was about five minutes, but last week you must have stood for at least quarter of an hour.’

‘Has anyone else seen me like that?’

Håkan shuffled uncomfortably.

‘Well, yes. People have to go to the toilets.’

‘So they’ve seen me.’

‘Yes. I mean, it’s not like they stand and stare, but they can’t help wondering. Me too. What is it you’re doing?’

I looked him in the eye and he looked back. We looked at each other as if we were playing some sort of game where you had to make the other person laugh or look away. I thought it felt uncomfortable and somehow infantile. I felt a sudden burst of impatience. Was this the start of a message? Some sort of code that would initiate me into the secret? Was he trying to tell me something, or was this whole thing a test?

‘Can I ask you something, then?’ I said.

‘Sure,’ Håkan said.

‘What do you see in front of you here?’ I said, pointing at the door.