The Americans were coming up the road. They were walking a cart. The road was visible from the hotel. There was no running water, no electricity, but we had our rooms, and in the basements boxes of canned food stacked high on a dozen pallets, and in the courtyard a well with cold water. We had staked our claims to our rooms, and at night we closed our eyes and if we dreamt, the dreams were of each other – all of us, in all of our rooms, dreaming of each other in a cutaway version of our hotel, rooms visible, beds visible, sleeping, heads on hand, cups of cold water on end tables. Or so it seemed, some nights. Just as by day it sometimes felt as though we all moved as one, all reached for our doorknobs as one, then stepped back, and listened, and waited.
Our rooms faced the long straight road. On this day, we all sat at our windows, watching. They were a mark on the pale road that grew in size, until it was visible for what it was. The cart they were walking must not have been so heavy – there were six of them, but only two or three had a hand on the traces at any given moment, and the cart glided along almost without effort up the dusty road.
On the back of the cart was a horse. It was dead, you could see that from quite a distance. It was evening by the time they reached the hotel. The lead soldier, he was smiling as he greeted us.
What are you doing here? we asked. We had gathered in front of the hotel. The Americans had not been here in a long time, and in fact the treaty did not permit them in our town.
It was the horse, the soldiers said – couldn’t we see that the horse had died?
The uniforms of the soldiers were covered in pale dust, but the creases were still sharp. The teeth of the horse protruded almost horizontally from the mouth, huge and gleaming.
We can’t just leave the horse, the soldiers said. We have to do something about this horse.
Yes, of course, we said, but what can we do?
They were already manoeuvring the cart around to the courtyard, to the well.
We will need you to take the roof off this well, the soldiers said, almost apologetically.
We argued with them. Why should we take the roof off our well?
But the roof came down.
Then the crossbar and bucket, soon they were gone, too – and the old rope lay loosely at our feet.
We’ll need a hand, the soldiers said. A hand with this horse.
The horse seemed to shiver, but the horse could not have shivered – the horse was dead. The soldiers grinned, almost apologetically.
It took all of us to lift her. She went in headfirst. She entered the water noiselessly, but all the way down there was the shrieking and cracking of huge teeth against stone.