The Room

by Jonas Karlsson

  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.

  20

  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.

  21

  ‘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.

  22

  Håkan was wearing his rather worn, dark-blue corduroy jacket that day, and I could feel that it was having a negative effect on me. Blue really wasn’t his colour, and the corduroy was soft and threadbare. No substance to it at all. It made me think of poorly stuffed cushions in waiting rooms. It was making me uneasy and unfocused. And even more angry.

  It was as if he wasn’t properly concentrating on work.

  There was something about him that had long made me suspect that he had a hidden agenda beyond the watchful eye of the Authority. His hair, his sideburns, and that scruffy jacket; it all suggested a set of values different to the ones that we in the department set most store by.

  ‘Shall we go home now, Björn?’ he said.

  ‘Not before we’re done here,’ I said.

  As Håkan reluctantly explained, for the second time, what he could see in front of him, and stubbornly denied the existence of the room, I realised that I was going to have to be more obvious. I reached out my arm and pointed, so the tip of my forefinger was touching the door.

  ‘Door,’ I said.

  He
looked at me again with that foolish smile and glazed expression.

  ‘Wall,’ he said.

  ‘Door,’ I said.

  ‘Wall,’ he said.

  23

  The following day I decided to pay careful attention to everyone going down the corridor, and I was forced to admire the elegant artistry of whoever had constructed the secret space. What had the architect done to conceal a room so effectively, when it was right in front of the noses of everyone working here? And who had managed to get them to act so credibly as if it didn’t exist? Who had drilled this crazy exercise into them? And what was that room, really? Maybe it was dangerous, or did it possibly contain classified information? It seemed so unassuming, but perhaps that was the whole point? Maybe it was supposed to look innocent.

  Just before lunch I went over to Jörgen. I stood there waiting until he looked up from his papers.

  ‘Did you want something?’ he asked.

  I beckoned him towards me with my forefinger but he didn’t move from his chair. His jaw was hanging like a boxer’s.

  ‘Have you got a minute?’ I asked when he didn’t obey my signal, which couldn’t possibly have been unclear.

  Finally he got the message and slowly followed me round the corner into the corridor. I stopped outside the door to the room, just as I had done with Håkan the day before. I made an effort to adopt a confidential tone of voice.

  ‘Jörgen,’ I said, ‘I want you to be completely honest now. I want you to tell me what this room is for.’

  ‘What room?’

  ‘This one,’ I said, touching the door with my finger.

  ‘There’s the lift,’ Jörgen said. ‘And there are the toilets.’

  ‘Mmm, but what about in between them?’

  ‘In between? Well, there’s a recycling bin, if that’s what you mean …’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ I said. ‘What’s this room for?’

  I slapped my hand on the door, fairly hard. Actually harder than I had expected. I realised that this nonsense was wearing my patience. I had to try to keep a cool head.

  ‘Well …’ Jörgen said, looking at me.

  I could see that he was extremely uncertain. He was evidently disconcerted at having to talk to me.

  ‘… it’s a wall.’

  I glared at him.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘Yes, what do you want me to say? You’re fucking weird, you know that? Why are you so interested in this wall? Don’t drag me into this.’

  I realised that Jörgen wasn’t the right place to start. He was only a poor subordinate. Loyal, but entirely without influence. Whoever was responsible for this deception was on a different level of the hierarchy. I patted him on the shoulder and said he could go back and sit down again.

  That afternoon I went round and led my other colleagues to the same spot and carried out the same procedure as with Jörgen and Håkan. They were all reluctant, and they all stuck to the same story: there was no door there, let alone a room, and anyway, what was I doing when I stood there without moving?

  A certain anxiety spread through the department. People stood and whispered to each other. Håkan tried to put his arm round my shoulders and a number of people pointed at me. In the end I lost patience and gathered all the staff together. Apart from Karl, who was off at some meeting all day.

  I went from desk to desk and summoned everyone in friendly but firm terms to a short meeting. Some of them muttered, wondering what this was all about, wanting to know in advance. Some of them literally required a helping hand to get moving. But most of them came along without any fuss, and I told them all it would be best, as well as easiest, if everyone was given the information at the same time. Jörgen and Håkan laughed rather nervously at first and tried to make a joke of it, but when they realised that no one else thought they were very funny they quietened down noticeably. I herded them like a sheepdog out to the corridor, past the toilets, towards the room.

  When I stepped inside the room for the eighth time, I had the whole department with me, apart from Karl. Each and every one of them stepped through the door, and once I had them all in there I explained to them that I had seen through their little joke. I said I didn’t know who was the brains behind it, but that I’d worked it out well enough to let them know.

  24

  That night I lay in bed, still feeling the congenial inner calm that only arises when you’ve discovered, grappled with and successfully resolved a problem. I read four pages in the last but one issue of Research and Progress, and listened to Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ on the radio before I turned out the bedside lamp and fell asleep.

  25

  The next day the whole department was called to Karl’s office. It was quite a squeeze, but Karl said it would work if we squashed up a bit. Håkan was wearing a black jacket and I felt at once that I was much happier with it. It had a decent, classic cut and looked relatively new. It made him fit in better with the rest of us, and made me feel calm.

  Everyone was talking at the same time. Once the whole team had gathered Karl knocked on his desk.

  ‘Okay, everyone. Right, Ann, there was something you wanted to discuss?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ann said, blushing. ‘Not just me. I think I can speak for the whole department …’

  She fell silent, as if she were waiting for some show of agreement from the others.

  ‘Well?’ Karl said, looking around at the others. It was clear that he found this situation uncomfortable. Never previously had we all had cause to gather inside his office. Something was obviously going on. He turned towards Ann again.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to start, then?’

  Ann cleared her throat, and it looked like she was standing on tiptoe as she talked. It made her look a bit like a schoolgirl. Even though she was over fifty.

  ‘I … We think this business is all getting a bit unpleasant, Björn,’ she said, looking at me.

  Everyone turned towards me.

  ‘What’s unpleasant?’ I said.

  ‘Shall we let Ann finish without interrupting?’ Karl said, completely unnecessarily, because obviously I was going to let her finish. But all of a sudden it was as if his supposition that I had interrupted her were true. I could feel everyone’s attention focus on me even more intently.

  ‘Yes,’ Ann went on. ‘We’re all getting worried. About you.’

  ‘Why would you be getting worried?’

  ‘Well, when you stand there like that.’

  The room was silent for a long while. It was as if everyone had suddenly realised how absurd the situation was. They were looking at me: I realised that I was supposed to say something. I stood there without speaking for a few more seconds, trying to look as many of them as possible in the eye. Then I lowered my gaze and sighed.

  ‘Didn’t we deal with this yesterday?’ I said, raising my head and looking from face to face. No one said anything.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you it was pointless trying to conduct psychological warfare against me? I don’t fall for that sort of thing. No matter how well you synchronise your stories.’

  Karl cleared his throat.

  ‘What are you talking about, Björn?’

  ‘I’m talking about systematic bullying,’ I said in a fairly loud voice, so everyone could hear, while I pushed my way through towards Karl’s desk.

  ‘Bullying that has evidently been going on for several weeks.’

  I twisted round so that the others could see me properly. I touched the collar of my jacket so that a little of the lining became visible. I thought it made a good impression.

  ‘To start with, I’ve noticed that some people in here have adopted an unnecessarily harsh tone, and have demonstrated a rather unpleasant attitude towards me and not made any great effort to make me feel welcome. This is probably because you’re unsettled by me. There’s nothing strange about that, creative people have always encountered resistance. It’s perfectly natural for more straightforward individual
s to feel alarmed by someone of talent. I would imagine that this has its origins in the fact that one or more of you have observed that I have taken the liberty on two or three occasions to take myself aside and gather my strength alone. Having a short rest in that little room beside the lift. To some extent I can understand that this might strike some people as annoying. Obviously, we need to do our work and not take breaks whenever we feel like it, but I can assure you all that I have always taken care to make up for any concomitant loss of efficiency. And if it is the case that you have any secrets in there that for some reason you don’t want me to see, you’re welcome to tell me. Right here.’

  ‘As I understand it,’ Karl began, but now it was my turn to speak.

  ‘You haven’t understood anything,’ I said. ‘On the contrary, you’ve kept your distance. And in the meantime one or more individuals have taken it upon themselves to play some sort of psychological trick on me. Instead of coming straight out and having a normal discussion. A decision has been taken to test my limits.’

  ‘Who—’ Karl began.

  ‘Everyone,’ I interrupted. ‘Who knows, maybe you yourself are involved somehow?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Karl tried once more.

  ‘Would you mind waiting with your analysis until all the facts are on the table?’ I said, in a reasonably stern voice.

  Karl fell silent again. It was obvious that he had nothing to offer in response. He stood there stiffly and listened as I went on.

  ‘I have reason to believe that my – shall I say closest? – colleague, Håkan here …’ I pointed at Håkan, who immediately looked down and began to scratch his sideburns. ‘… is one of the people behind this. At least he was the first person to raise it with me.’

  I let the accusation sink in, then turned back to face Karl again. I fixed him with a steady gaze.

  ‘I have no great expectation that you will be able to resolve this situation, Karl. But I presume you can’t bury your head in the sand indefinitely, and that that’s why you’ve called this meeting? It can’t be any secret that you feel threatened by me, and would like to get rid of me, which is why I’m taking the liberty of uncovering this charade. This attempt to destroy me.’