Read Online The Room by Jonas Karlsson - Free Book Online Page A

know what grounds I could refer you on…”
    “No, of course not,” I said as I stood up and took my flattened coat from the back of the chair. “Maybe you could talk to someone who does know?”
    “Do you know what I think?” he said, in a completely different voice, almost a whisper.
    “No,” I said, suddenly noticing the loud ticking sound that the big clock on the wall was making.
    “If you’d like my own personal opinion,” he said, “I’d have to say…”
    “Yes, what would you say?”
    He looked at me for a brief moment.
    “I’d say that you’re putting it on.”

28.
    Inside the room there was a calm. A concentration that felt like early mornings at school. It contained the same relaxed feeling and limited freedom. Each line seemed perfectly connected to the next. Everything messy and unsettling vanished. Precision returned.
    I ran my finger over the desktop and felt the utterly straight line that was held at precisely the same plane by first the flawlessly sanded and varnished veneer chipboard, which in turn rested upon the perfect frame: spray-painted legs made of metal tubing. I was sure that a level would prove the evenness of this generously proportioned work surface.
    Beneath the desktop, inside the legs on one side, was a varnished drawer unit on wheels with a cedar-wood frame. It was fronted by a matte wooden shutter that folded smoothly back along its rails as I put my palm on the front and slowly moved it upward.
    The whole room breathed tradition. There was an air of old-fashioned quality to it. Is this what monks feel like as they walk the corridors of their monasteries?
    On the desk was a low-energy lamp, 20 watts, attached to a clock of shiny, stainless steel. The armature of the lamp was adjustable. One setting for the strength of light. A firm base on the desktop.
    By the side of the desk I discovered a lever that could be loosened so you could adjust the exact angle of the desktop. You could tilt the whole top to get the exact angle that you preferred. I adjusted it slightly to suit me, tilting it fractionally forward, downward, and felt how my other arm, which I had left idle, ended up in a perfectly relaxed position in which each part of the arm was firmly supported. Perfectly in tune with the furniture.
    As I was sitting there my cell phone rang. I picked it up and answered it, and the sweetest music streamed out of it into my ears.

29.
    The next morning we were summoned to another meeting in Karl’s cramped office.
    Karl tried to say something funny about small spaces, concluding with “tight passageways.” No one laughed. I took this as further evidence of his incompetence as a manager. Naturally, he ought to have chosen a more neutral topic for humor, as there are plenty of innocent jokes about animals or ketchup bottles that didn’t necessarily have any association to the conflict in which we found ourselves, and which could function more generally as a means of raising morale. If he felt he had to make a joke. Because this really wasn’t amusing.
    Håkan had sat down on the desk with Ann beside him. He was wearing his black jacket, and I definitely preferred it to the corduroy one, but I tried not to look at them. Jörgen and John were squashed up against the wall, and I couldn’t help noticing that Jörgen kept nudging one of the big pictures, knocking it askew.
    “I think this is very unfortunate,” Ann said before Karl had even started. “Is he really going to stay? I mean, we said—”
    Karl stopped her. He went behind his desk, and spoke in a loud, clear voice.
    “Björn and I have had a little talk. Björn has been to see a psychiatrist. Together we have agreed to get rid of…”
    He held his fingers up in the air on either side of his head to indicate quotation marks.
    “…‘the room’ for the time being. Björn has promised…”
    He turned to me.
    “…not to go there anymore. Isn’t that right, Björn?”
    I assumed I didn’t need to nod. After