The Unit

Vivi led me over to her chair behind the circulation desk. I sat down. She fetched me a glass of water and pulled out a chair for herself, then sat down beside me with her arm around me. I drank a little of the water. Then we just sat there, behind the desk, until some borrowers came along needing Vivi’s help.

6

Elsa was lying on the lawn in the winter garden. She was lying on her side in the sun on a blanket. She was resting her head on her arm; an open book lay beside her. But she wasn’t reading, she was sleeping. Her rib cage was heaving, long deep breaths, even, almost completely free of that rattle now, but she coughed in her sleep from time to time. I stood in the shade on the gravel path just a few yards away from her. Stood there missing her. Dare I go over? Dare I go over and sit down next to her, be there when she woke up?

I did it, I walked from the crunching gravel onto the silent grass, sat down cross-legged an arm’s length away from her, in front of her, so that I wasn’t casting a shadow over her.

I had thought a great deal about what Alice had said. “You haven’t forgotten what it feels like to lose a friend because of a child, I hope?” Of course I hadn’t forgotten that feeling of being abruptly pushed out of a close circle to some distant periphery. Coming second, third, fourth, last. Being treated like someone less knowledgeable, someone inferior. Being shut out-and yet, paradoxically enough, being taken for granted. The old friends out in the community who had become parents had continued wanting to see me, but when we did meet up they were distant, sometimes condescending and always inaccessible, as if they were wrapped in invisible padding, at least when the children were small. The strange thing was that this only applied to my female friends; the men were certainly very much preoccupied with the child and with the upheaval involved in becoming a parent, and later with the chaos that ensued when they had their second child, which intensified when they had the third, fourth, fifth and so on. The men were absorbed, yes, but it was as if the women were on Valium: they talked and laughed and nodded and smiled, but they weren’t really there. It was as if they focused all their energy and all their interest in others on one single entity: the child.

I had always thought this was a deliberate stance, that they actually chose to close themselves off to more or less everyone except the child, who of course was dependent on them for its existence. I had always been convinced that this was a conscious decision to prioritize. But now I wasn’t so sure anymore. Now, while I was carrying something that would be a child, I noticed that I was changing; I was becoming self-absorbed in a new way that was hard to define, and I was begi

When I had perceived this change in my own attitude, I couldn’t help asking myself if there might be a biological cause, if this might be some form of primitive behavior on the part of the female mammal that women couldn’t escape, just as we couldn’t escape the fact that if we were to become a parent naturally, then unlike men we didn’t have all the time in the world.

At any rate, I had to admit that Elsa was right, and I intended to tell her so as soon as she woke up, which I did. She had just about realized that I was sitting there, when I said:

“You were right, Elsa. I am indeed waddling around looking smug and important and on a higher plane, just like all those needed stuck-up bitches out there in the community.”

She sat up, pushed her hair back, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. “Oh yes?”

“But,” I went on, “I have to tell you that the smugness has nothing whatsoever to do with human economic growth. It’s not that kind of self-sufficiency; it has absolutely nothing to do with what I can do for society or how good and valuable I am. Everything is here-and here.” I placed my hand on my midriff, then on my head. “And I can’t help it. It isn’t something I have any control over, that’s just the way it is. I’m at the mercy of my hormones!”

“Okay,” she said. “I understand. I understand that’s something I don’t understand. I don’t suppose you’d like to go for a swim instead of sitting here talking in riddles?”

I couldn’t help laughing. I stood up, held my hand out and pulled her to her feet in a gentlemanly ma

We swam, slowly and for a long time, side by side, in silence. Afterward we had a sauna. I sat at the bottom, closest to the door, pushing it open slightly from time to time, unsure what I had actually heard about pregnancy and saunas: had I heard that it was a good thing, or had I heard that it wasn’t? Elsa sat right up at the top where it was hottest, on the third bench, and leaned back against the wall. We didn’t say much, we mostly just sat there being friends again. From time to time one of us would say lazily to the other something along the lines of: “Have you heard that so-and-so is involved in an experiment with this and that?” or “So-and-so has finished with so-and-so, did you know?” or “Do you remember that guy back home in the village who was like this or that and who used to do this or that?”

But when we eventually decided we’d had enough, and Elsa climbed down, she said:

“Dorrit, do you remember what we promised each other at the start?”

I remembered. Shortly after Majken’s death Elsa and I had promised each other that the day one of us found out we were on the list for our final donation, we would tell the other-and not only that it was going to happen, but also when. So that the other person wouldn’t have to run around looking for someone who no longer existed.

“Yes,” I said, looking up at her as she stood there in front of me, the sweat pouring down her wiry body, which was quite scarred by this stage.