The Unit

by Ninni Holmqvist

It was not the intention that those who lived here should be able to take their own lives or harm themselves in some other way. Not once you were here. You should have sorted that out beforehand, if you were thinking along those lines.

would have preferred to carry it myself, as it contained my most private possessions, but he insisted and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I shrugged my shoulders and let him take it.

Seems they have taken the first personal thing away, or at least her agency is being stripped.

If you live alone in the country you can’t afford to push away your neighbors, or fall out with them. In fact, the way I see it, you can’t afford to fall out with anyone at all if you live alone and no one needs you.

He never said he loved me, but for him, as for me, the word “love” was a big thing to say. But he said he “almost loved me”—he said it many times—and for me that was wonderful to hear. To be almost loved is as close as you can get to being loved without actually being loved.

Loving and leaving don’t go together. They are two irreconcilable concepts, and when they are forced together by outside circumstances they require an explanation.

The next moment a crowd of people surrounded Elsa in a semicircle, some sitting on chairs they had dragged along with them, others standing. Those who could reach were touching her. With steady hands they held her shoulders, or stroked her arms, her back or the nape of her neck. As if they were holding her together.

“It’s strange,” she said. “But this feels completely real. Totally genuine.” “Yes,” I said. “I know.” “Genuine, and at the same time…romantic,” she said, and her voice once again had something of that toneless quality, which might be either apathy or irony. “Perhaps they want it to be romantic for us. Warm and romantic. Eternal summer.”

Everything was either just coming out or in full bloom, but never yellowing, withering or dead. Nothing died in the winter garden. And yet everything was real; there were no silk flowers or plastic bushes or trees from some stage set.

“People who read books,” he went on, “tend to be dispensable. Extremely.”

What a sad statement.

You don’t get to know a dog by asking how he’s feeling or what he’s thinking, but by observing him and getting to know his body language. And all the important things you want to say to him you have to show through actions, attitude, gestures and sounds. People, on the other hand, can always be reached through talking. A bridge of words grows easily between people, a bridge of information, explanations and assurances. For example, one person can say to another: “It’s my birthday on August twenty-sixth,” which is a piece of information, or: “I’m late because I couldn’t get the car started,” which is an explanation, or: “I will love you until death do us part,” which is an assurance. But words between people also act as a kind of shock absorber; those in close relationships often choose to talk about something other than the matter that is weighing them down, worrying them or annoying them.

thanks to the pancreas from a person who had no one to live for.”

Fuck that last idea.

“Did Majken get to see that picture?” “Yes, of course.” “Does she—the recipient, the woman—know anything about Majken?” “No.” “Why not?” Arnold spread his hands. “That’s the way things are done. It would be unethical.” I nodded. “Of course,” I said. Then I said good-bye and thanked him, pressed down the door handle, opened the door and left.

Erik, who was so deeply depressed after the loss of Vanja that he could barely speak or eat.

She does not mention Vanja dying.

even the politically uncomfortable is taken care of and archived, presumably in some underground vault beneath the Royal Library in Stockholm. Partly because man is a collector, a fanatic when it comes to documentation, with a compulsion to preserve everything that can possibly be preserved for posterity. Life and existence have no value in themselves. We mean nothing; not even those who are needed mean anything. The only thing of any real value is what we produce. Or to put it more accurately: the fact that we do produce something—exactly what it is that we produce is actually of lesser importance, as long as it can be sold or archived. Or preferably both.” What he said sounded convincing. But I wasn’t completely sure he was right; I wasn’t completely sure that works of art weren’t destroyed. However, I did think that we probably had to assume they were not destroyed, that we had to live as if we believed everything people created was permitted to exist, somewhere.

With Nils (as with a number of other men before him) everything had happened in secret. We never met up with other people together, no one in his family or circle of friends knew of my existence, and none of my friends knew about him. And that wasn’t only because he was someone else’s partner, but because much of what we were doing was taboo. Nils was actually breaking the law. He could have gone to prison over and over again for both the oppression of a woman and the improper use of male physical strength. When we got together he would often spend time chopping wood for me, or mowing the lawn or cutting the hedge or pruning trees, while I was in the kitchen preparing lunch or dinner for us. He also sometimes changed the tires on my car, fixed a leak in the roof, put up new guttering and mended cracks in the facade of the house.

I think it’s beautiful when men show their physical strength openly without being ashamed of it or apologizing. And I think it’s beautiful when women dare to be physically weak and accept help with heavy jobs. I believe there’s a kind of courage in that, and courage is beautiful. If I can choose between mind and body, I choose body. If I can choose between brain and heart, I choose heart. With Johannes I could make that choice without being forced to hide it.

In the unit there are only days and nights, that’s the only thing that changes: darkness and daylight. In the winter garden everything is in bud or in flower, but nothing shrivels, withers or dies. It is never winter in the winter garden.

I wished I had lived at the time when people still believed in the heart. When people still believed that the heart was the central organ, containing all the memories, emotions, capabilities, defects and other qualities that make us into specific individuals. I longed to go back to an age of ignorance, before the heart lost its status and was reduced to just one of a number of vital but replaceable organs.

It was Birthmark.

The people she encounters are often identified by their own body.

this whole luxury slaughterhouse—which was one of Elsa’s descriptions of the place.

So how was I to know that this talk of the meaning of life was his way of saying good-bye? Was it cowardly of him not to say anything? Or was it thoughtful? I don’t know. I only know that whether he was cowardly or thoughtful or both, he did it out of love.

bone weary somehow—the sort of tiredness, I assume, that sleep doesn’t really touch; you just have to work your way through it, and either it disappears of its own accord, or it stays put and becomes a part of you.

I know this tired.

“I ought to be strong. Strong for you. But it’s just that I can’t stand—I hate—the thought of losing you!” “I know that, Dorrit,” she replied calmly. “It comforts me to know that. And that’s enough for me. You don’t need to be strong.” That was the first time in my life someone had told me I didn’t need to be strong.

Or perhaps the midlife crises of childless, single women—and men—are political, at least as long as childless, single women and men have a lower status than others.