The Unit (3 page)

5

I remember the debate and the referendum. I also remember that it wasn’t really much of a debate to begin with, because the idea came originally from a newly formed party called the Capital Democrats, or something like that, and very few people took their proposal seriously.

I wasn’t particularly interested in politics, and I was far too young to be able to identify with concepts like middle age. Every time the topic came up, in the media or with other people, I heaved a bored sigh and turned the page or switched channels or changed the topic of conversation. Social issues of this kind just had nothing to do with me, in my opinion, and when I got pregnant by accident during the first phase of the debate, I had an abortion. I was young, after all, I was in high school, I wanted to travel, go to college, do some casual work here and there, paint, write, dance and enjoy myself. It was just as impossible to imagine myself as a mother as it was to imagine myself as middle-aged. But if I had known that at the very moment when I allowed myself to be anesthetized and scraped out I was throwing away the only chance of becoming a parent I would ever have, then things would probably not have been quite so clear cut. If I had been able to work out how things were going to be in the future, if I’d had the slightest idea, I would have given birth to my child. At least I would like to believe that’s what I would have done.

The question came up again in different guises and different packaging, and somehow it had slipped into the manifestos of some of the bigger and more established parties, and when the referendum finally took place, opinion had shifted. At that stage I was already more or less a grown woman with my sights set on a career as a writer. As I got by with various odd jobs I was determinedly working on what was to be my debut book. Around that time I started to toy with the idea that I would probably like to have a child before too long. But as I was living just below the poverty line and without a partner or other adult who could share the responsibility and the expense with me, I never pursued the idea. And when the new law came into force, I was well over thirty. I was a complete person with my character fully established, and unfortunately stamped more by the spirit of the times I had grown up in than that of the present situation.

When I was a child and a teenager, the ethos of the day advocated that a person should acquire some life experience and some experience of working life; you should learn about what made people tick, look around the world and try out different things before settling on a way of life you enjoyed. Enjoyment was important. Self-realization was important. Earning lots of money and buying lots of things was regarded as less important, in fact it was hardly of any importance at all. As long as you earned enough to get by. Getting by, coping, standing on your own two feet—financially, socially, mentally and emotionally—was important, and that was sufficient. Children and a family were something that could come later, or even something you could choose to do without. The ideal was first and foremost to find yourself, to develop your character, become a whole person who loved and respected yourself and who was not dependent on others. This was particularly important for women. It was extremely important not to become dependent on a man who would provide for us while we were with the children, looking after the house. At that time such a division of labor was actually still possible, and something my mother often warned my sisters and me about. From time to time she would gather the three of us together and give us a feminist talk. It started when Ida was just about three years old, and I was five. Siv was twelve, and the only one who had any idea what my mother was talking about for the first few years.

“Don’t you go having kids before you can stand on your own two feet,” Mom would say. “Don’t go letting some man support you, not financially, not intellectually, not emotionally. Don’t you get caught in that trap!”

Getting caught in a trap became my greatest fear. To begin with, it was a very concrete fear. I looked carefully for traps around me, and didn’t like to go into narrow passageways or enclosed spaces, for example elevators or airplanes—what if there was a man in there threatening to support me! I didn’t know what this supporting business actually was, but I was sure it would hurt a lot and that it might kill you. In stores, museums, cinemas, theaters and other large public indoor spaces I always wanted to stay near one of the doors, and the first thing I looked for when I went into an unfamiliar building was the emergency exits, the fire escapes, the escape routes.

When I got older and understood more clearly what my mother meant by children and men and supporting and traps, my fear of crowds and narrow spaces diminished somewhat. It no longer had such a concrete expression. But I was still—and would remain—afraid of getting caught. In every situation where there was a choice, I opted for the alternative that would give me the most freedom, even if that usually meant I was also opting for the alternative that was the least financially rewarding. For example, I have never had a permanent job with regular hours, a monthly salary, a pension and paid holidays. My jobs were always on an hourly or freelance basis so that, at least in theory, I could choose from day to day whether I wanted to work or not. Whenever I was forced to sign a contract—of whatever kind: a rental agreement, a book contract, a purchase agreement—I did so with great unease. I would sometimes get palpitations and break out in a cold sweat as I stood there with the pen in my hand, about to sign and therefore lock myself into something, irrevocably.

In my mind it was strictly taboo to be, or even to dream of being, emotionally or financially dependent on anyone, or to harbor even the tiniest secret desire to live in a symbiotic relationship with another person. And yet—or perhaps for that very reason—I have always felt a strong attraction to that kind of life. An attraction and a secret longing to be dependent and taken care of. That’s right: to be taken care of, to be taken in hand—financially and emotionally and sexually, and preferably by a man.

I sometimes managed to live out this longing, which found its expression through daydreams and fantasies, in my sexual relationships. This would take the form of a kind of role-playing, where my partner and I would pretend we were an old-fashioned married couple: married man who is the provider comes home to housewife who has dinner on the table. And after dinner: active male subject services passive female sex object.

But, as I said, I only managed to live out these fantasies to a certain extent, because just as I have never had a permanent job, I have also never had a long-term relationship, only casual liaisons.

These days there is no trap of the kind that my mother talked about and warned my sisters and me about. First of all there was the law stating that parents must divide their parental leave from work equally between them during the child’s first eighteen months. Then day care became compulsory for eight hours a day for all children aged between eighteen months and six years. The housewife and her male provider have not only been out of fashion for a long time, they have been eradicated. And children are no longer a drag, a hindrance, for anyone. There is no longer the risk of ending up as a dependent, or falling behind on the salary scale, or losing skills in the workplace. Not because of the children, at any rate. There is no longer any excuse not to have children. Nor is there any longer an excuse not to work when you have children.

6

The welcome party started off with a five-course Italian meal: Parma ham with melon, minestrone, pasta with pesto and chicken fillets, aged cheese with pears and grapes, and for dessert,
panna cotta
. Freshly baked white bread was served with the appetizer and main course. Only the wine was missing. During dinner I sat next to Majken, who told me she was an artist; Alice, a short, plump woman who had been a stagehand at the theater in Malmö, and Johannes, a fellow author I had often come across in literary circles, but had never really spoken to. I had always thought he seemed difficult and deliberately kept his distance. Now, however, he turned out to be quite the opposite—easy company and socially adept. He seemed to be in good form, despite the fact that he had been in the unit for more than three years. But then so far he had only donated sperm to the sperm bank and one kidney to a father of five who was a primary school teacher. He had also taken part in various experiments.

“At the moment I’m involved in a completely safe psychological investigation to do with cooperation and trust and that kind of thing,” he said.

Then he told us about the time he took part in an experiment with a new kind of medication for depression and chronic exhaustion, and ended up so lively and talkative that they had to bring in extra staff working around the clock just to socialize and chat with him—or rather listen to him, since he was babbling nonstop—and to keep an eye on him so that he didn’t overexert himself or disturb his neighbors too much. He had been seized by an uncontrollable urge to make things and to renovate, and took the opportunity to convert his kitchenette and part of the living room into a proper little kitchen.

“I didn’t get much written at that time—I was way too restless and desperate for company—but I had a really good time,” he ended his story.

Majken had been in the unit for four years, Alice for four months. Majken had, among other things, donated eggs for stem-cell research, one kidney, and the auditory bone from her right ear. As she was now deaf in that ear, she always wanted people to be on her left, she explained.

“And in a few weeks,” she went on, “I’m going in to donate my pancreas to a student nurse with four kids. So I guess this will be my last welcome party.”

She was moving her spoon around in her dessert, a distracted movement, it seemed to me—as if she didn’t mind, as if it didn’t bother her, as if it were completely okay. All of a sudden I felt completely powerless. Majken stirred and stirred with her spoon and I followed her hand and the spoon with my eyes, and with every rotation it felt as if the air in the big room were becoming thinner and more difficult to breathe. My body grew heavy, my arms ached, there was a thudding and rushing noise in my ears, I couldn’t see properly. I broke out in a cold sweat, and through a black, flickering mist I saw Majken’s hand stop its movement, let go of the spoon and grip my hand as it lay there in front of me next to my dish, limp and damp and cold. As if from far, far away, beyond the rushing in my ears, I heard her voice:

“Darling, you get used to it. Don’t you, Alice?”

I couldn’t see Alice. My field of vision had shrunk. I could only see Majken’s hand resting on mine. Alice said something, she was talking, reassuring me, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying because her voice was surging and fading, growing in turn stronger and weaker as if she were speaking in a strong wind, and only odd words were getting through. I opened my mouth, tried to say that I couldn’t hear her properly, but there wasn’t enough air. I couldn’t get my breath. I couldn’t focus. The dark flickering mist grew more dense and became a dark veil, a curtain. I could hardly see at all, and it felt as if the chair and the floor were about to give way beneath me, as if I were being sucked down into a hole. But then Alice was there too, stroking my arm with her hand, and now I could hear her. She was saying:

“It’s okay, darling, it’s okay …”

And Johannes, who was sitting beside me, put one arm around my shoulders. He placed his other hand on my forehead. As if I were a little child who might have a temperature. But it worked, it felt as if he were propping me up, keeping me there, stopping me from being sucked down into that hole or falling headfirst into the
panna cotta
. It felt as if they cared about me, all three of them, and I have always been calmed by the feeling that someone cares about me. Johannes said:

“There now … Take a deep breath. There. And breathe out slowly. Good. And again, Dorrit, nice and calm. That’s it, there now …”

We sat like that for quite a while: Majken holding my hand, Alice stroking my forearm and Johannes stroking my back slowly, and they all carried on murmuring “There now, it’s okay” until my senses and my breathing returned to normal. When Johannes finally took his hand away from my forehead, he did it by allowing it to slide down over my cheek, like a gentle caress.

There was entertainment. There was dancing. A rock band played. I danced with Johannes, Majken and Alice. And with Elsa and lots of other people. But I danced the most with Johannes. He had rhythm and feeling, and he knew proper ballroom dancing, with the right steps and everything. He could lead like a real old chauvinist, like an old-fashioned gentleman. At first I found it a bit difficult to keep up. Partly because I had never done this kind of dancing before, I’d only seen it in old films, partly because I felt a little bit exposed somehow, it almost felt dangerous, not being in charge of your own steps. But after a while I decided to ignore that feeling and just let myself be led and managed. And then it felt just wonderful, right up my alley.

It grew late. Elsa and I were standing at the bar, each with a pear drink. They served only nonalcoholic beverages, and if you didn’t want a soda there was only orange juice and a pear drink to choose from.

“Would you like to meet up tomorrow morning and have breakfast together?” I asked.

“Would you like to have breakfast tomorrow and then spend the next four days together?” Elsa asked.

As new arrivals we had four consecutive free days, Sunday to Wednesday. It was so we could make ourselves at home in the unit before the compulsory health check; after that we would be allocated to appropriate humane experiments or begin to donate. We were being given a gentle start. And when Elsa mentioned spending the next four days together I felt—to my surprise—an enormous sense of relief, and it made me realize that I was afraid of those four free days. It made me realize that for the first time in my adult life, I was afraid of being alone. So I accepted her invitation. No, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone in a building without windows, where there wasn’t a living thing to fix your gaze on, not a thing to stop me from thinking about the fact that I would never again experience the feeling that flooded through me that morning in March each year when I opened my door and saw the first crocus of the year in bloom on my lawn. Or the first scilla or the first hepatica or the first scented violet. Or when I saw the cranes, trumpeting as they flew over in wide skeins on their way north to Lake Hornborga. And I didn’t want to think about Nils and our times together, his hands on my body, his kisses, his penis, his words telling me how much I meant to him. Above all I didn’t want to think about Jock, about the fact that we would never again run together in the forest or by the sea. Or take our walk along the tractor route to Ellström’s farm to buy fresh eggs and vegetables for me and a pig’s heart for him. I needed to erect a barrier of new experiences, a buffer zone between there and here, between then and now, before I had the courage to be alone with my thoughts again.

On the other hand, I wasn’t so afraid of the night. I wasn’t afraid to sleep without company. Since I wasn’t used to sleeping with other people in the same room, or even in the same house, I actually preferred it that way. And to be on the safe side I’d made sure I got myself some sleeping pills. Of course they were the kind that can’t send you off to sleep forever; they were the suicide-proof kind with a built-in antabuse effect: if you take more than two, you throw up.

When Elsa put her empty glass down on the bar and said she was tired and off to bed, I asked her if she wanted a sleeping pill.

She laughed.

“Thanks, but I’ve been to the doctor too and got myself some!”

We decided that whoever woke up first the next morning would ring the other, and after breakfast we would set off to explore the unit and make the most of everything being free. Then we hugged each other, said good night, and she left.

The last dance was a ballad. The singer stood in the middle of the stage, alone in the spotlight, the orchestra hidden in the darkness behind him. He sang: “This is for my girl, this is for my woman, for my world. Baby, baby, this is all for you …”

Johannes came over to me as I stood there with my lukewarm pear drink, swaying to the beat and humming along with the refrain. He bowed briefly and asked, very politely:

“May I have the pleasure?”

It was charming, I was charmed by his old-fashioned manner and his words, and without a second’s hesitation I put my glass on the bar, nodded graciously and held out my hand to him. He took it and placed his other arm quite formally around my waist. And we sailed out onto the dance floor. He led so confidently, in such a relaxed way and with such perfect timing that I didn’t even feel as if I couldn’t really dance like this. I almost fell into a trance, following him as easily as if I were a part of him, as if we were the same body.

“Thank you for the dance, Dorrit,” he said when the music ended. “And thank you for this evening.”

He took my hand, raised it to his lips, and just brushed it with them. I had read about this in novels, I had seen it in films and plays. I had dreamed about it. But this was the first time in my life that someone had actually kissed my hand.