2

The longer a person remains in the reserve bank unit, the more risky the experiments he or she is expected to participate in, while at the same time he or she moves closer to donating vital organs.

Now, knowing that there was a shortage of dispensable individuals, I could see that the situation in the unit had changed somewhat: fewer new arrivals came in each month-now it was usually two or three, whereas earlier it had been between five and ten. People were used up more quickly, and the generations grew shorter. Alice, for example, who had presumably been exposed to experiments involving chemical weapons, had only been in the unit for a year and a half. And during the time immediately following the dinner with Vivi, my closest friends had to undergo the following:

Elsa took part in a series of short but debilitating humane experiments, interspersed with donations. First it was a test involving some new super cleaning fluid, then an experiment with cigarettes and other tobacco- and nicotine-based products. Then her respiratory organs were exposed to vapor and gases from various chemical solvents. And between these experiments she donated part of her small intestine, the cornea from one eye, and the auditory bone from one ear. These operations just meant that she couldn’t see or hear as well, and that she got very tired, but the experiments gave her a horrible, itchy eczema on her hands and arms, bronchitis, and even asthma. Her general fitness and overall condition worsened. She was no longer the same athletic woman she had been just a year earlier; she got out of breath very easily and often had to rest. She stopped diving, and instead contented herself with quietly swimming the breaststroke in the shallow pool.

During the same period Vivi donated one kidney and a section of her liver; she also participated in all kinds of medical experiments, mostly involving psychiatric drugs that, as well as making her either listless and calm or euphorically high, also caused side effects including dizziness, palpitations, swollen limbs, rashes and hair loss. Within a very short time she and Elsa became old ladies, slowly hobbling along, arm in arm, as they went for their daily walk in the winter garden, stopping every few minutes to cough, catch their breath, or clutch their chest.

Lena, who by this time was one of the seniors, having spent three years in the unit, was taken in to donate her pancreas, liver, kidney and intestinal system. She did what Majken had done: told us that she was going to make her final donation, but not when, so that one day she simply wasn’t there anymore. The same thing happened to Elsa and Vivi as had happened to me: they went to Lena ’s room to look for her just as the section orderlies were busy clearing everything out.

But in my opinion Alice was the one who had suffered most because of the increased demand for dispensable material.

Meanwhile I was safe, protected like a sea eagle, and was sent for regular checks, given tried and tested dietary supplements, and went to yoga and dance and Friskis & Svettis. And the humane experiments I took part in involved harmless things like sleep or dream studies, or comparing and charting a person’s ability to see in the dark or to distinguish different tastes, smells and sounds.

It was only a matter of time before Elsa, Vivi and Alice would notice that I was being treated completely differently from them, despite the fact that the four of us had been in the unit for roughly the same length of time. It was of course also only a question of time before they would be able to see that I was pregnant. I had already filled out: my hips were broader, my breasts were bigger, and my stomach was protruding under the loose clothes I had started to wear to hide the changes for as long as possible. So far I could just about get away with looking like someone who had just put on weight-at least as long as I kept my clothes on. But at around this time I started to avoid changing or showering in the sports center, I stopped taking a sauna, stopped swimming because the shape of my stomach under my swimsuit was unmistakable.

In other words, it was high time I told the others about my condition. Since I still regarded Elsa as my best friend and confidante, I decided to start with her, and took the opportunity one evening when the two of us were alone together in her room. Vivi was busy with library inventory and wouldn’t be there until late-they always slept together nowadays, just as Johannes and I had done.

Elsa was lying on the sofa, breathing heavily and gasping for air from time to time. I was sitting in the armchair across from her.

“Elsa,” I said. “There’s something I have to tell you, something I’ve been… carrying for a while.”

She looked at me, closing her cloudy eye-the one from which the cornea had been donated-and squinting anxiously with the other.

“Don’t tell me you’re sick too, Dorrit?”

“No, I’m not sick. I’m pregnant.”

“What?” Elsa’s arms and legs flailed as she struggled into a sitting position, turned her good ear toward me, coughed, cleared her throat noisily, then said hoarsely, almost hissing: “What did you say?”

“I’m pregnant,” I repeated.

“Are you joking, have you gone mad?”

“I’m not joking,” I said.

Her expression-she had never looked at me that way, I didn’t recognize the way she was looking at me, didn’t know how to interpret it-disbelief or envy or disgust or what?

“How the fuck did that happen?” she spat out eventually.

I felt as if I’d been stabbed, she’d never sworn at me before. I didn’t reply.

“How long have you known?” she asked.

“Since the day before Johannes’s final donation,” I answered.

“But that was several months ago. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m saying it now,” I said. “It’s…” I was stumbling now, a lump in my throat, “it’s not unusual to wait for a while before you tell friends and acquaintances; the risk of miscarriage is highest in the early weeks.”

“I know that, for fuck’s sake! Do you think I was born yesterday, do you think you’re the first person I know who’s ended up pregnant and started handing out a whole lot of completely superfluous information?”

Once again I didn’t reply.

“How far along are you?” she asked, then gasped for air.

“Seventeen or eighteen weeks,” I managed to say before her chest started rattling, and it was as if her windpipe was somehow blocked, as if something had gone down the wrong way, but then came a thin, whistling sound. I imagined a very, very narrow, flattened tube through which a minute amount of air managed to filter, down into her lungs. She grabbed her inhaler, which was next to her on the sofa, held it to her mouth, and pressed the button; there was a faint click and she breathed in. After a little while she began to breathe more evenly, more calmly, but the whistling sound was still there as a faint accompaniment when she spoke:

“So you’re going to have a child?” she said. “A baby? Here?”

I shook my head.

“No. Not here. Are you going to go out there and live a needed, worthwhile life, showing off with your offspring and spreading yourself out all over the streets and squares and public transportation, pushing everybody else out of the way with your stroller and all the rest of the stuff you’ll find it necessary to carry around with you?”

I shook my head again, then told her as briefly and matter-of-factly as I could about the two choices Petra had given me: have the fetus transplanted or have the child adopted. Of course I didn’t say anything about the third alternative, the one connected to the key card that was still in the right pocket of my pants; I put my hand in my pocket and touched it from time to time, undecided. So far I hadn’t been in any state to make my mind up on that particular question, or even to look for doors that might lead out of the unit.