“Who sent you?”
The guard keeps the flashlight aimed at his feet, presumably overwhelmed by Harry’s bellow, which echoes off the walls, harassing him from all sides.
“Who’s your employer?”
“The organization,” we hear, deep and calm.
“We’ve got our guns on you. Put the flashlight on the floor, light down. Then take three steps back.”
I see the beam of light contract and concentrate as a blinding disk, which is swallowed by the concrete.
“Where are your colleagues?”
“My colleagues?”
“The other two guards. Your comrades.”
“I don’t know. I’m alone.”
“You’re alone?”
“Yes.”
“Without any colleagues?”
After a moment’s consideration, “You’re my colleagues.”
Harry falls silent. He doesn’t stand up. I hear a deep dragging sound as he sucks breath into his lungs. The disillusionment has hit him hard. I decide to take the lead, ordering the guard farther back. I count his steps. At five I tell him to stop. As I walk toward the flashlight, Harry moves off to one side to cover me and make sure he doesn’t shoot me in the back by accident.
Shining the light on the guard, I immediately see the familiar uniform, the crease in the pants, the emblem: he’s one of us. Remarkably, the uniform seems to be standing up by itself, enclosing a figure that’s gigantic but absent. Then I see the whites of eyes under his cap, flicking on and off like two small beacons. I have to use my imagination in combination with the matte gleam of his pitch-black skin to make out his head against the darkness of the basement.
Under his arm he is holding a large cardboard box, whose bottom is bulging from the weight of its contents. He’s carrying it effortlessly, casually, as if it’s a beach ball that would blow away if he let go of it.
88
The flashlight is standing the other way around on the ground and casting a glow on the ceiling, so that it feels like we’re sheltering from the darkness under a tarpaulin of light. I don’t know what I’m eating. I recognize the taste: it’s fruit, in syrup, I must have eaten it before. I can’t put a name to it and at the moment I couldn’t care less. My left hand squeezes the enormous tin, at least five times the size of a corned beef tin and all mine. I concentrate on eating, greedily gulping down pieces of soft slippery fruit, chewing just long enough to avoid choking. Peach. I’m dizzy with excitement and haste. Harry’s eating frankfurters, stuffing them into his cheeks and washing them down with the liquid they came in. We’re eating as if the cardboard box isn’t filled to the top with tins. Extraordinary colors and shapes we haven’t seen for years, but they leave the guard cold. He doesn’t say a word, watching us indifferently. He’s sitting on his backside on the ground on the other side of the box and the flashlight. Kneeling and full of mistrust, we keep our eyes on him as if he could take the food away from us again at any moment.
Harry grabs the flashlight and shines it in the guard’s face from close by. The whites of his eyes are yellowish, but not unhealthy. The irises are so dark they’re absent. The pupils, provocatively large as a result, seem to go against the laws of nature by dilating in the bright light.
In answer to Harry’s question as to what’s going on outside, the guard shrugs. He claims to have spent an hour or two sitting in the back of a vehicle before they dropped him off. He couldn’t see anything and he didn’t hear anything either. He asks sheepishly if we can tell him what our location is. No, he doesn’t know, he was picked up without any explanation and brought here. At his previous post he was prohibited from communicating with his colleague, who manned the next box a little farther down the road. He doesn’t know why: he was used to it, he was taught not to ask questions. It was a remote storage depot. He’s not able, or allowed, to tell us anymore. No, he has no idea, but whatever it was, the capacity must have been enormous. Besides his colleague, the guard never saw anyone in the complex. There could have been fifty guards stationed there, it might have been just the two of them. He speaks calmly, his words babble along; that’s just the way things go.
His stubble is extremely unusual, in my eyes at least, a white man’s eyes. The hairs are stuck together in little knobs that look stiff and hard. On his cheeks they’re spread out with lots of space between them, lonely, as if they don’t actually belong there. On his chin they’re closer together, but not close enough to cover the skin.
90
Harry stays aloof. For the first few hours he’s too unsteady from the blow to pay much attention to the guard. He answers my suggestion of temporarily turning three of the lights back on with silent assent. After all, the guard needs an opportunity to familiarize himself with the peculiarities of the location as quickly as possible.
While the guard and I set to work with the chair, the stool and the light covers—with Harry in position near the entrance gate—I think about the specific smell I noticed after eating the tinned fruit, when the tension had become a little more bearable. We’re reconnecting the lights along the longitudinal axis of the basement, which we have divided neatly into equal segments. That is still very far from lighting all of the corners. We give the guard a floor plan too and let him keep his flashlight, which is now swinging from a loop that is attached to the waistband of his pants, but missing from ours. I decide that the smell of his body tends toward the odor of scorched horse’s hooves, albeit strongly diluted.
91
Harry grits his teeth and looks down at the toes of his shoes, his clenched jaw muscles distorting his face. The guard takes a discreet step backward. He’ll have to lie down somewhere, but there are only two beds, even if both of them are free when the guard is allowed to sleep his hours, because from now on a minimum of two guards will patrol together at all times.
I’ve come up with a rotation system for the chair and the stool. Every two hours we move over so that someone else has to either sit on the ground or stay standing. This only applies in the daytime, during the hours we’re all awake, and doesn’t include the time we spend on patrol.
We were going to apply a similar system to the flannels and towels, which I wash weekly, but in the end Harry couldn’t reconcile himself to the prospect. A few minutes later he made a gruff offer to donate his pillowcase, from which we could tear a washcloth and a cloth for the guard to dry himself.
The guard said that was a fine suggestion and thanked Harry for his generosity. It didn’t sound like an ambiguous remark to me, but I might have been mistaken. The guard always speaks in the same deep tone, at the same tempo. It’s difficult to tell how he really means things. His face stays the same. It’s coarsely modeled, like the rest of his body: in combination with the uniform, it evokes memories of old footage of military dictators in sweltering African countries.
92
“Has Harry told you something about the building?”
“No,” the guard says. “Harry hasn’t done that. He hasn’t spoken to me about anything.”
We’ve only just started the inspection round and I feel obliged to talk. We are alone in each other’s company for the first time. I find it hard to believe that Harry didn’t speak a word to the guard in the five hours I was asleep. Maybe it’s a matter of persevering. Maybe not talking starts to feel natural after fifteen minutes of silence, making continuing in the same vein simpler for both parties and a more pleasant alternative.
I guide the guard while walking next to him, my purposeful footsteps making it clear that we don’t neglect a single corner of the basement. It’s like a dance he hasn’t yet mastered, partly because his paces are longer than mine, less maneuverable. As far as the inspection round is concerned, I’m a better instructor than Harry. Now and then, in the darkest sections, the guard clicks on his flashlight because he’s lost track of me.
On the way back to the elevators, I say, “It’s better not to talk in the vicinity of the entrance gate.”
“It’s a forty-story building.”
“Forty,” he says. “Forty stories.”
It sounds like he’s questioning the figure. Has someone told him different? Or had he expected more than forty?
“There’s a lobby on the ground floor, but that’s just for show. There’s no entrance there. This is the entrance.”
We stop in front of the three elevators: something from the distant past, a strange historical phenomenon we’ve come to briefly view.
“Residents, staff, visitors.”
He’s not particularly impressed and doesn’t ask me to elaborate. He seems to me like a man who is seldom impressed or upset. He lives inside his body, his fortress. Wherever that body might be, whatever the company or situation, it’s irrelevant. He is always safe at home.
Although, in essence, his arrival is bad news for us, there is also a good side. We are now in greater numbers to resist hostilities. More than anything, I feel a degree of excitement. Whatever else, the organization hasn’t forgotten us. The guard is living proof that they have been appreciating us in silence the whole time.
We continue our patrol: past the bunkroom door, which is open so that the sleeping guard will be woken by the first hint of an engagement. Inside the light is turned off. A few meters farther along I lay my hand flat against the toilet door without pushing it open. “There is something I have to tell you,” I tell the guard. “Something about the toilet. More specifically, something about flushing the toilet. It’s important that you listen carefully.”
93
The guard has withdrawn to the bunkroom for his night’s sleep when Harry gives me an angry little poke near Garage 12. “Couldn’t you have objected?”
“Yes, objected. You just stood there like a sheep. You could have rejected the suggestion out of hand. Didn’t it even occur to you to object?”
Apparently Harry’s grievances are not insurmountable because he keeps walking.
“And why were you so keen to start ripping it? It looked like you were enjoying it. What were you thinking? I’ll lend the poor twerp a helping hand?”
“Harry, it was your own suggestion.”
“We have more right to a pillowcase than somebody who’s just strolled in here. Am I wrong? How long have we been here now? Hey, Michel? You and me, how long? Tell me. If you ask me, long enough to have a right to a pillowcase. My own pillowcase. That’s what I think about it.”
“The linen isn’t ours,” I offer later. “It’s property of the organization, we can’t lay any claim to it.”
“Then you should have objected to the destruction of organization kit. We’ve committed an offense. Fourth degree.”
“If you like, you can use mine.”
“Of course not. Keep your pillowcase.”
The realization that the guard is now sleeping in my bed, between my sheets, with his head on my pillow must have finally got through to Harry. Things could be worse, much worse.
“Why didn’t you tell him anything about the building?”
“Did he say that?”
“I asked him. I asked if you’d already told him something about the building. He said no.”
“Did he ask you anything?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Not a thing. Nada. Did you tell him anything?”
“A few things. General stuff. Why didn’t you?”
“He kept his mouth shut. He didn’t give a peep so I thought, then I’ll keep my mouth shut too. I don’t want him thinking I’m going to bend over backward and get all chatty just ’cause he’s come to reinforce us.”
“He’s new.”
“Doesn’t matter. Or maybe it does. You started talking first, remember? When you came.”
The memory brings a smile to his face.
“There was just the two of us. This is different.”
With revived interest, I pull the plug out of the crack to the side of the entrance gate. I peer first with my left eye, then with my right. The view hasn’t changed. The bare tree against the night sky, which is clear. Yes, clear. Have I ever seen it like this, so very clear? There is no wind. I can’t make out many stars, but the sky is still clear. I can tell from the tree and its branches, which are black with sharp edges and not hazy at all. No shadows cast by a full moon outside my field of vision. Is it because I haven’t looked for so long? I stick my nose into the opening. Stone and iron, the familiar smell. With a touch of rot in the mix. Wet, dead leaves.
“There’s no comparison,” I whisper. “When I arrived you were here alone and the residents were still living in the building. It’s totally different for the guard.”
“Did he say anything about it?”
“About what?”
“The residents. Their not being here, with one exception.”
“No.”
“Did you say anything about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Don’t you find that a little strange? He doesn’t even ask what’s going on. We’re totally used to it, but it must be very weird for him, not seeing any residents, not a single car in the car park. Think about it, Michel. Wouldn’t you find it strange? I know I would.”
Deep in thought we pace the invisible line of our inspection route. At the bunkroom door we hear light snoring. His sleep, too, seems untroubled.
In the daytime there are moments I forget him for minutes at a time. Generally when it’s his turn to stand: Harry on the chair and me on the stool. He never sits on the ground, none of us do. I forget him. Then I see him again as if in a vision. He’s as large as life but not really here; I’m imagining him. Harry and I are on guard duty in the basement alone. Soon we’ll hear the service elevator. It’s Claudia. She’s bringing us a plate covered with an upturned soup bowl. Lamb stew. A black giant. With kidneys, eyes and a backbone. It’s too drastic to accept as reality. And yet he’s standing here, leaning against the wall with a loaded Flock 28 on his hip. Breathing the same air as us.
When Harry and I talk to each other it’s like we’re putting on a play. Our words fall into their fixed patterns, the sentences are old friends, but the dialogue sounds stilted and rehearsed. The presence of an observer in the darkness behind the footlights changes us into a couple of hams. The guard himself doesn’t say much and hardly a word in Harry’s presence. He does display an occasional tendency to briefly repeat statements or phrases, including some that are totally trivial, for no apparent reason. Is he taking mental notes that inadvertently leak out of his mouth? Do they combine to form a report he leafs through once more just before falling asleep?
95
After a single five-hour night the linen is saturated with his body odor, which mine is powerless to resist. It is not as pungent as Harry’s, not as sharp, but strong all the same. According to Harry there can be no doubt about it: the last resident is in acute danger. That’s why they’ve sent the guard after all. The danger is evidently so acute that the organization didn’t have time to arrange things properly and is counting on us being able to share the linen peacefully in the meantime. He doesn’t exclude the possibility of a logistic follow-up. Maybe within a couple of days. A week at most.
I hear their footsteps build up and then fade back into silence and each time I hope it’s the last time I’ve heard it, that I’m about to fall asleep. I’ve got three hours left, I have to relax. The pistol is lying on my stomach with the barrel pointing at the door. I practice what I hope will be a controlled reflex.
After yet another pass, I slip out of bed. Barefoot, I look out through the opening into the basement proper, lit by three fading fluorescent tubes. Harry and the guard don’t deviate from the set trajectory. I can hardly make them out. I don’t think they’re talking. Sometimes I see the movement of feet and legs, but rarely higher than the knees. They seem to be avoiding the light, circumnavigating it as if strolling on the banks of a deep pond. Still black water that makes you gasp for breath. If you go under, you’ll never resurface.
96
The guard says he spoke to him twice. I jump and realize I was almost nodding off; I only got an hour’s broken sleep. I can’t remember asking any questions. Not Harry—his previous colleague, the one in the next box. He went to see him twice, even though it wasn’t allowed. Speaking to colleagues was forbidden. He has no idea why, but it wasn’t his favorite rule and in the end he broke it twice. He wants to know if that bothers me. I shrug. He asks me to be honest. I tell him it’s nothing to do with me and water under the bridge anyway. It’s in the past, he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. He shakes his head disparagingly, straightens his shoulders and takes a deep breath: he shouldn’t have done it. It’s something he will never be able to undo. Rules are rules and a guard has to respect them. He understands my disapproval and also my reluctance to express it bluntly. He says he’s deeply sorry about it. It was stronger than he was. One day he saw his colleague waving. The gesture was unmistakable. It was a greeting, directed at him. He waved back; as far as he knew greetings were not forbidden. It started very innocently, with a full sixty meters separating them. While the guard blathers on, I wonder what’s got into him: he’s talking as if we’ve already spent two days walking around chatting together. I don’t think I’ve asked him anything. He says that they were best friends long before they exchanged a word with each other. He can’t explain it, but it was something he just knew, he knew it for a fact. He had a sleeping schedule, presumably adjusted for a skeleton security staff, and he followed it precisely. After waking up he always prepared himself quickly and went to stand in front of his box with his heart in his throat. Almost always, his friend waved to him right away, asking with a thumbs-up sign if everything was okay. After his friend had gone to bed himself a little later, the guard kept his eye on his watch and made sure to look in the direction of that box about five hours later when it was time for him to reappear. It was like that every day. They were best friends, anyone could see that.
97
Harry grabs my sleeve. With gentle pressure, he pulls me into the narrow gap between Garages 34 and 35. It’s pitch black, but Harry doesn’t slow down. At the first crusher I feel his hands grasping my shoulders as he pushes me up against the iron wall. His face is close, his breath as warm as blood.
“How do you mean?”
“Where he asks you what you think about it.”
“He was talking about rules, the regulations, and him breaching them. He was very sorry about it.”
“And he wanted you to be honest? About what you thought of his offense?”
“Yes, he honestly wanted my opinion.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“Not really. I just said it was water under the bridge. Then he said he understood it, my disapproval. He understood my not wanting to express it in so many words.”
“What was your answer to that?”
“Nothing. He was in the wrong of course.”
“I know that. But you didn’t add anything else?”
“No.”
“Was that the first time he’s made a confession or admitted something?”
“It was a complete surprise, Harry. He just launched into the story. I was dumbstruck.”
I hear him scratching his throat, his fingernails rasping through the curling hairs. “So they give each other the thumbs-up now and then and wave hello . . .”
“He said they were best friends. He just knew it.”
“Best friends?”
“Yes, he was convinced of it. He thought so, anyway.”
“He was wrong?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of his story. One day he sees the guard make a gesture he doesn’t understand. Not giving him the thumbs-up or waving, but something less obvious, surreptitious, from the hip. After fretting for a couple of hours, he decides that something might be going on; it must have been some kind of signal. He said that a friend in need is a friend indeed. He asked me if he was right. If a friend in need was a friend indeed.”
“Yes. He made a point of it. I said I hoped so.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He nodded. He hoped so too. And what happens? That friend of his is rather upset by his visit. He tells the guard to piss off. He knows it’s against the rules, doesn’t he? But we’re friends, says the guard. He says that a friend in need is a friend indeed. His colleague puts a finger to his lips and keeps his mouth shut. Meanwhile the guard has cast a glance into the sentry box: it’s identical to his. Different colors, that’s all. He sees a simple figurine on a shelf, a porcelain cat. There are others too, five or six, but not on the shelf. Back in his box he can’t get that figurine out of his head. When he sees his own bare shelf, he thinks of that white pussycat. It has a blissful smile on its face and its long-lashed eyes are closed, and it’s made so you can put it against the wall or next to some object and it will look like it’s rubbing up against it.”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“That’s how he told me about it, in one big gush. There’s more. The next day the guard goes back. After having brooded about the incident all night, he throws caution to the wind and goes over to his friend’s sentry box a second time. And again, wordlessly, the friend shows him the door. The guard says that although he appreciates his colleague’s desire to stick to the rules, he still finds his behavior extremely unfriendly. As a token of his good character he could lend him the figurine on the shelf. After all, he has figurines to spare, whereas he doesn’t have a single one. He’ll take good care of it and bring it back at the end of his service. He says that since their last meeting he’s had to think about that pussycat constantly, he found it so beautiful. But his colleague snatches the figurine from the shelf and threatens to throw it down on the ground and smash it to smithereens if the guard doesn’t get the hell out of there . . .”
Harry doesn’t react.
“That’s his story,” I say.
“That’s it?”
“How’s it end?”
“I don’t know. He clammed up. He didn’t say another word. I guess he just slinked off.”
98
I get Harry to smell too; reluctantly he puts his nose in the crack. The wind is blowing straight at the gate again and carrying silence, the silence of the country, I think. Maybe the countryside starts just a couple of kilometers away. The smell of rotting leaves is almost gone. Instead I think I can detect manure. At least, it’s the smell I associate with manure. A steaming mixture of hay and dung, shoveled out of a shed and spread on a field. Has agriculture recovered? Will the crops grow normally? Will the harvest be any good, will it be edible? Or is the farmer ignoring my questions and doing what he’s done his whole life: farming. Hoisting himself up onto the seat of his old tractor and chugging over his fields with his last few liters of fuel. Preparing the soil for sowing regardless of any prohibitions or restrictions that have been put in place, despite the warnings of a poison he can neither see nor smell. Acting instinctively by following his nature, true to the calendar and the seasons. Wearing the threadbare blue overalls that are more familiar to him than his own wife. Carrying on the way a cow produces milk, a chicken lays eggs and a pig just grows. Is that possible, two kilometers from here? A bent-over farmer, chickens scratching in the dirt, a nervous mutt? Cows shoulder to shoulder in a muggy shed? Sparrows chirping in the farmyard. Harry turns away from the gate. As if he can read my thoughts, he purses his lips and shakes his head. He can’t smell any manure. Plus, he says, it would be unusual anyway. The tree is bare, not a leaf in sight, not even any buds. It’s too early for plowing and farming. Unless they’re piling the dung from the sheds on the fields in preparation. But him, he can’t smell a thing.
99
We’ve just started moving again, in step, when Harry suddenly stops. Half a step ahead of him I prick up my ears, hand on my Flock. The buzzing of the middle tube keeps getting deeper, the end is near. I am trying to concentrate on sounds from the sally port between the street and the entrance gate when Harry says that the guard deliberately left his story unfinished. Because he wants us to keep thinking about it. That’s exactly what he wants. He very consciously left it open, without a conclusion. Whereas the outcome of the story and what we think about it are actually irrelevant and meant to distract us from the heart of the matter. That’s obvious! It’s not about that stupid porcelain figurine. Am I crazy? A pussycat to put on his shelf? What a load of bull. Come on. What kind of guard has porcelain figurines in his sentry box? He wants me to tell him that. He asks me if I’ve ever heard anything so ridiculous, porcelain figurines in a sentry box? When I shake my head, he hisses emphatically, See! He tells me the guard is a sly one. And to think that someone like me, who’s been to university—now pointing a finger at my chest—didn’t see through his trick at once! The guard deliberately wove an absurd detail into his story—porcelain figurines—to make Harry and me think, This is so extraordinary, it can’t be made up. Damn sneaky.
When I ask why it’s so important for the guard to have us believe his story, Harry says, Confession. Because that was what it was after all, a confession. It was a confession of a breach of regulations he’s fabricated to the best of his abilities. What can that mean?
Harry is going to tell me what it means and as he whispers the words into existence, I realize that his understanding has only just preceded them. Didn’t the guard ask me to be honest? Hadn’t he understood my disapproval, which I didn’t even need to express? Hadn’t he been immensely sorry for a violation that was essentially rather trivial? For Harry it’s as plain as the nose on my face: the guard’s half-baked confession was designed to lure me into his net. He wanted to arouse my sympathies, pretending to open up his heart to me to draw me out, trying to tempt me into confessing violations that were possibly worse than his, committed here in this very basement. That was his goal. That was what he was after. Come on, Harry says. First absolutely nothing, two days with his lips sealed and then suddenly a whole spiel? Do I think that’s normal? He wants me to tell him that. He thought all along that the explanation was bizarre: why wouldn’t two guards be allowed to speak to each other? Why doesn’t he know where he was stationed or what he was guarding? And then out of the blue, up and at it, off he goes, sixty meters to visit his friend for a chat? Get out of here.
100
I stand on tiptoe and press down on the gray mass with my full weight, arms straight. Puddles of gray suds appear around my fists, only to be absorbed again by the sheets the moment I stop pushing. Harry is keeping watch at the entrance gate, the guard is at the bunkroom door, which is wide open; his figure fills the doorway. He looks over his shoulder and asks if it’s okay, if he shouldn’t help. He likes getting his hands wet, he doesn’t mind it at all. He wants to thank me. For letting him sleep in my bed and being willing to share my sheets with him. That is, he says, a friendly gesture. The least he can do is wash the sheets himself. I’m wary. At the same time I do my best to sound casual when I say that I prefer to do it myself, that I’m used to it. It’s no picnic in a small washbasin, there’s a knack to it. Before you know it, I hear myself joking, the whole room’s flooded. Yes, the guard replies earnestly, he understands. The whole room flooded. He turns back to the basement proper and crosses his arms, his arched shoulders pulling his blue jacket tight.
He is a remarkable figure. As remarkable as the porcelain figurines in his supposed friend’s sentry box. Maybe that’s a tried and tested tactic the organization uses for its special agents, the guards who, besides guarding something, inspect other guards while they’re at it. Maybe the organization always deploys striking characters for that purpose, characters who are so striking it doesn’t occur to the guards under surveillance to suspect them of anything, least of all a secret and highly delicate evaluation. It’s just too implausible.
Harry and I can fulfil our duties alone, we don’t need anyone’s help, that’s what we need to show the guard. He knows exactly what’s going on outside, what we’re up against and the dangers we can expect. Harry says he’s deliberately keeping us in the dark so that the lack of information and resulting tension will test our mental resilience to the limit. But we’re not soft. We won’t weep and beg and bombard him with questions. It doesn’t bother us, it just hones our concentration. Like always, we work independently. We’re attuned to each other and don’t need anyone else. Harry is right. We stay calm and just do our job. That’s all we need to do, he says. As soon as we start to act strangely, the guard will know we’ve unmasked him and our evaluation will be compromised. We have to make sure we don’t give ourselves away. That’s why I’m being wary. I play along blithely, but keep a certain distance. From this point, Harry says, we’ve as good as made it. The darkness when he arrived must have made quite an impression on the guard. He’s seen the primitive conditions we’ve survived; now he’s experiencing them first hand. As long as the situation with the resident doesn’t get out of hand, we’ve got it all wrapped up. In no time Harry and I will be out in the fresh air in the uniform of the elite.
101
The guard runs his gaze over the well-ordered shelves. It’s the first time I’ve taken him into the storeroom with me. I detect a measure of surprise in the dark gleam of his eyes, bordering on childish joy at the precision with which the boxes are arranged. Are other guards less meticulous? Or is it recognition of a case of best practice?
“Don’t touch!”
Startled, he pulls his hand back as if he’s burned his fingertips on a red-hot box.
“I mean the cardboard’s got fairly soft. They could rip.”
“Rip?” His voice is flat.
“Yes, rip. I carry out an inspection every day, so I know how to pick them up. Someone who’s not used to it would tear one of those boxes right away.”
I realize that I’ve used the word “inspection.”
The guard moves closer to the shelves and stares at the Winchester cowboy, before reading the details on the label out loud. It’s as if he’s making another of his mental notes despite having exactly the same cartridges in the pistol on his hip.
“Shall I show you?”
He nods vaguely, but looks at the top row with interest. I slide out a box, demonstrating how I squeeze the cartridges together at the bottom, between thumb and index finger, so that the cardboard doesn’t have to carry any of the weight. The pressure has to be just right. A touch too little and the cartridges could suddenly fall through the bottom, a touch too much and there’s a chance of them pushing past each other, hopelessly breaking out of their rectangle and irreparably crumpling the weakened box.
The guard understands and immediately masters the technique. He is elated by his success. “Now we can both do it,” he says.
He lays a hand on my shoulder, a bear’s paw, briefly tightening around the top of my arm.
I feel a strange smile on my face.
“But, of course, you’d rather I left them alone,” the guard says, carefully sliding the box back into the row. “I understand. You being used to it.”
I can’t come up with anything better than a slight shrug; a mild protest seems the least risky at this stage. I reach up past his face to get the first box down from the top shelf, open it and count the cartridges.
102
Harry says he heard us. He heard me and the guard talking to each other. It sounds like a casual remark that requires neither confirmation nor explanation, but several minutes later, far from the bunkroom door, he adds that he slept terribly. I ask him if those two things are related, which is something I can hardly imagine: the guard and I were always careful to keep our voices down near the room. Harry must have been wide awake to even tell our voices apart from so far into the basement. He doesn’t answer. He asks what the guard said. I need to think about it for a couple of steps; the five endless hours have blurred together. I can’t remember very much, an exchange of generalities about the profession. Harry wants to know if he made any more confessions. Nothing about porcelain figurines or suchlike? he asks contemptuously. He turns his head and gives me a meaningful look. No, I say, nothing like that. After a few minutes’ silence, Harry says again that he clearly heard us talking. I don’t understand what he’s getting at. It’s as if I’ve claimed the contrary. I tell him I’m sorry if our voices kept him awake, but would nonetheless be surprised if they had. He takes a while to react and that makes his reaction, if possible, even more astonishing. He asks if the guard is funny. Funny? Yes, funny. He heard me laughing. Maybe, Harry says, the guard has a side he only shows me. A funny side, because he clearly heard me laughing. The words rasp out of his throat, bitter on his tongue, as if we have shamelessly kept him awake. No, I say. If I laughed, it wasn’t because of any jokes. The guard is no humorist.
103
Harry is sitting on the chair, left of the bunkroom door. The guard is on the stool to the right. I stand behind him and slowly tip his head back until his skull is resting against my stomach or, more accurately, my chest; he’s a good bit bigger than Harry. The paring knife is blunt. There are notches on the blade that tug painfully on the hairs. But the stiff knobs on his cheek have short, compact stems that are much easier to cut than our separate beard hairs. I only need to move the blade slightly to feel numerous hairs in the bundle give way. The hair is also coarser than ours so that the knife seems to grip better.
It still takes me a good hour to pick the harvest on the guard’s face. All that time Harry stares sternly into the middle of the basement. Now and then a sigh escapes his distended nostrils. The frizzy hair on the guard’s head is too intimidating. It’s like there’s a cap over the top of it holding it together. I wouldn’t know where to start.
The guard goes into the bunkroom to wash his face and—after giving himself an extended appraisal in the mirror—returns with a beaming smile. He pulls his tie tighter, rubs his cheeks and thanks me. He says I’ve done a good job. He’s as happy as if he’s received an unexpected, beautiful gift. He says he looks good. And a lot younger too, I add. Harry jumps up, the legs of the chair scraping back over the floor. He hesitates for a moment, as if surprised by his own action, then resolutely reaches for his Flock. In no time the guard and I are pointing our cocked pistols at the entrance too. The guard stays at his post; Harry and I creep closer along opposite sides of the open space, meter by meter. Nothing unusual at the gate. We keep watch without speaking or moving. Outside it’s deathly silent. The building could be on the moon. After half an hour Harry shakes his head. We look at each other in the darkness, still listening. Then Harry shakes his head again and holsters his pistol. False alarm.
104
Harry pulls me into the bunkroom by the arm, whispering that I have to come have a look, quick. The guard has just got up. He has dressed and withdrawn to the toilet and that can take quite a while. The narrow sleeping area is saturated with his smell and warmer than the rest of the basement. At the washbasin Harry steps to one side so I can come up next to him. Shoulder to shoulder we stand before the mirror, but Harry directs his gaze lower. He tells me to have a good look. Hanging over the edge of the gray washbasin are two identical flannels and a piece of pillowcase. Harry asks if I’m blind or what. I look closely. My flannel on the left, Harry’s flannel on the right, the guard’s washrag in the middle. Harry claims it’s not the first time. I stare and wrack my brains until suddenly Harry grabs my hand, pushes it down on his flannel for a couple of seconds and then on the guard’s washrag. One is cold and wet, the other dry. He says, somewhat superfluously, that he washed himself five hours ago and always wrings out the flannel. The guard just washed and his rag is as dry as a bone. Still holding my hand, Harry asks if he needs to draw me a picture. We look at each other in the mirror. His eyes are sunken but wide open. He asks if I understand what’s going on here.
105
It’s not the first time. I have to realize that. Maybe it’s the kind of thing I would never have expected from the guard, Harry says with a touch of triumph in his voice. Him trying to stir things up like this. And isn’t it peculiar, to say the least, that the guard doesn’t ever speak to Harry? He wants me to explain that to him. When he’s the one who donated his pillowcase to him. What, do I think, is the significance of that? For his part, Harry wouldn’t be surprised if the guard, with this kind of baiting on the one hand and blatantly sucking up to me on the other, wasn’t trying to drive a wedge between us. It’s probably to his advantage. Yes, it may sound strange to me. The question is, can we exclude it? Can we safely exclude it? No, says Harry, absolutely not. He might be a special agent, but maybe he has his own agenda too. Who’s to say? Harry says we have to keep our eyes peeled. We have to evaluate the situation daily or, better still, hourly! It’s of the utmost importance. Wouldn’t it be terrible after all this time in the basement to let ourselves be outsmarted? By a newcomer? Harry and me? Us?
The guard might not be withholding information simply because it’s to his own advantage. Who’s to say he’s not doing it to see how well we hold up under pressure? Because, Harry whispers in the darkness near the crushers, let’s not beat about the bush, whether he’s a special agent or not, the organization must have briefed him, no two ways about it. And not just regarding the situation outside. That’s why he doesn’t ask about the last resident or the residents who have disappeared and it’s why he doesn’t bat an eyelid about not seeing a single motor vehicle in a basement car park. Harry repeats that, in the same situation, he would find that last bit very weird and I would too, of course, for Christ’s sake. But not the guard. He’s not bothered because he knows a lot more about what’s going on here than we do. I can take that as read, Harry says. And his sucking up to me might not be blatant, no, maybe it’s not blatant, it’s more cunning than that. I should just think about those porcelain figurines of his if I don’t believe him. What a trick! It’s clear that the guard is trying to win my confidence. And according to Harry that’s not just to set us against each other. At the same time the guard wants to wheedle as much out of us as he can, anything that might be useful, anything that increases his head start. Because that’s how I should see it. That’s how Harry sees it. With the hair of his mustache brushing the top of my ear, he asks if I’m aware of just how scarce positions in the elite are? We mustn’t lose sight of that. Do I hear him?
107
It all comes down to one thing, Harry says: us not knowing who this bloke really is. We haven’t got a clue. And the guard might have convinced me that he’s the second-to-last in a family of seven boys and that his father worked in the mines for forty years, but so what? What’s that tell us about him? That he’s learned to take a back seat? To be obedient? A hard worker? Is that what we’re supposed to deduce from his words? No fucking idea. We don’t even know if he’s speaking the truth. We don’t know him. We only know one thing: he’s not stupid. He’s not stupid and he’s a competitor. Let’s not forget that, for crying out loud. He’s a guard, he’ll back us up if necessary. Harry doesn’t doubt that, he credits him with that much of a sense of honor. But he’s also a competitor trying to coax as much out of us as he can, anything that can improve his already advantageous position and bring him closer to his goal. He’ll shrink at nothing. And I might be cautious, of course I’m cautious, that goes without saying, but no matter how cautious I am, it’s difficult to prevent him from picking up little titbits of information the moment I relax. The guard doesn’t try it on with Harry. And with good fucking reason. He knows he won’t get anywhere. Harry’s not giving anything away, do I understand that? And do I also understand that the guard wouldn’t mind a position in the elite either? He might be a special agent, who’s to say, but he still has to feed his face out of the same tins as Harry and me. And like the two of us, Harry says, he’s still locked up the whole God-awful day in this godforsaken hole. Don’t I think that, just like us, the guard wants something else? Fresh air? Some greenery? Do I think he’d turn his nose up at a chance to guard Mr. Van der Burg-Zethoven’s white villa? Do I think he’d look the other way if Mr. Van der Burg-Zethoven’s fiancée was stretched out on a white sofa in front of the window stroking her hairless pussy? Harry’s just giving an example. And can we blame the guard? He’d be an idiot if it was any other way. No, we understand completely. But not at our expense. Not Harry’s and mine. No way. The guard will have to get up earlier in the morning if he thinks he can steal all the credit by playing us off one against each other while he acts the innocent. The credit we, Harry and I and no one else, have earned twice over, more. Because that’s what it comes down to. That’s what we have to keep in the forefront of our mind every second of every day, says Harry. The positions are limited, don’t forget. The competition is murderous.
108
Do I know what suddenly occurred to him today? Do I know what’s been on his mind all afternoon? The resident. The man on 29, the last resident. It’s like this. We, Harry and me, don’t need the guard’s help: for us that’s as clear as crystal and maybe the organization will see it that way soon too. We function just fine shut off from the world and whether they’re big or little, fat or thin, we don’t need any blacks down here helping us. But there’s also a flipside to this miserable affair. A side that far surpasses the guard’s underhand interests . . .
I hear Harry pacing to and fro in the pitch darkness, a meter or two in front of my feet, short lengths; the grit under his shoes crunches as he turns. I wonder how he manages to keep his orientation, if he’ll soon bump into the crusher or, worse, my forehead or knees.
It is unacceptable, Harry says, that the client’s interests should suffer in any way at all because of the secret ambitions of a clown like the guard. That is fundamentally wrong; it goes against everything the organization stands for. The whole point of all this is the client’s security, which is under serious and acute threat. That’s why the organization’s sent the guard. And what is a guard’s number one priority? For all guards, wherever they’re stationed, irrespective of any ambitions they might harbor? Harry is going to tell me: the client. It’s the client who digs deep into his pocket for our special services, the client who is our priority, the client and no one else. We, as guards, as individuals, do not actually exist. We live for the client. Anyway, says Harry, how long have we been locked up in this basement now? How long without faltering even once? Harry and me, us? I know it better than he does, says Harry, no, he doesn’t have to tell me. If we, with our service record, can’t lay claim to a pillowcase or a flannel of our own, to give an example, then we at least have the right to information that is crucial to the protection of our client? Surely?
109
What do I think about it? Surely I must agree with him that the situation is absurd. We’re stuck here like sitting ducks. And by “we” Harry doesn’t just mean him and me but, more than anyone else, the last resident too. At the mercy of the pettiness and disgusting lack of professionalism of a fellow guard, who is also putting his own safety at risk in the process. Like some kind of suicide bomber who’ll stop at nothing to reach his goal. An insult to our profession and a personal humiliation for both of us because isn’t it so that, by consistently withholding information, the guard is constantly laughing in our faces? I should just stop and consider it from a fresh perspective. After a while things get muddled of course. After a while the guard starts thinking he’s got a clear playing field, that there’s nothing stopping him. If I look at the situation from a fresh perspective, I’ll come to the same conclusion. I can take that from Harry. There’s just no other option. We have to intervene. We can’t let this state of affairs carry on any longer. What would the organization require us to do? Just keep plodding along? Do I know what it is? We misjudged things. We wanted to prove our independence by not asking the guard any questions and carrying on with our work as if he’s not even here. It hasn’t helped. Harry doesn’t exclude the possibility that the guard, if he really is an agent with honorable intentions, is waiting for the exact opposite: initiative. Engagement. If he’s a good agent, he’ll understand our intervention perfectly and value it. He won’t report it as a sign of weakness or stress. He’ll speak of dedication, praising us for our bold action, while fully understanding our initial reticence. That’s how Harry sees it. And if the guard isn’t honorable, we’ll have to come up with something to make him better his ways. We no longer have any choice.
110
“A what?”
“An agent,” Harry repeats. “Someone who’s been dispatched on a special mission. In this case, a secret mission.”
Just now, when I caught a glimpse of the guard through the crack, he was sitting on the side of my bed, lower arms on his knees. Slightly surprised, but imperturbable, he looked at the corner with the washbasin, where Harry had presumably taken up position. Harry thought he should interrogate the guard himself, to impress the seriousness of the situation on him from the start. We had no time to lose. I’m sitting on the chair outside the bunkroom door; someone has to keep watch. All ears, I stare absentmindedly into the middle of the basement.
After a silence the guard says, almost whispering, “I don’t think so. But if I was an agent on a secret mission, I obviously wouldn’t be allowed to talk about it. The organization would have forbidden it. A guard is obliged to respect the rules.”
“True,” Harry says. “But you could say whether or not you’ve been given a special mission, without letting slip what that mission entails.”
“I understand that,” the guard says.
“It’s in the interest of the resident.”
“The resident?”
“The last resident, on 29. You sharing your information with us is in his interest. You know that his security is under threat. That’s why you’re here. He’s the first priority, for you as a guard.”
“I don’t think I’m an agent. I’m a guard.”
“Sometimes you can be both.”
“An agent and a guard?”
Harry doesn’t deem this question worthy of an answer. Either that or he nods.
“What kind of secret mission would I have if I had one?”
“One you’d know all about.”
“What do you think?”
“No idea. Actually, it’s not important. What’s important is you sharing your information with us.”
“Don’t you want to tell me what you think?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I’m not a special agent.” Harry’s voice betrays the difficulty he’s having trying to control himself.
“And you’re sure they exist, these agents?”
“Maybe you can tell me.”
“Yes,” the guard says with conviction. “I think they do exist. In secret.”
“Are you one?”
“No. I’m a guard.”
“You’re a guard who’s putting his own life at risk. Do you realize that?”
“It’s better,” the guard says after a while, “to banish bad thoughts from your mind and only think about good things.”
“Are you taking the piss?”
I think I can hear Harry’s breathing.
“You don’t sound very friendly.”
“Maybe you’re not acting like a good colleague. You’re not just endangering yourself but also the resident, more than anyone else, and Michel and me. Not a very good colleague, in other words, and anything but professional.”
“Yes. Michel and me too. Just like at your previous post. If we can believe your stories at least.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That I, for starters, don’t believe your story. And if those porcelain figurines existed, you also put your previous colleague in danger by going to talk to him . . .”
The guard is apparently dumbstruck, horrified.
The silence presses on my chest, pinning me to the spot.
“Only twice,” I finally hear. Words that float out calmly on the deep vibrations of his voice box. “I shouldn’t have done it. I thought he was my friend.”
111
After making sure the guard is asleep, Harry takes me by the arm. In the darkness between Garages 34 and 35 he asks what has happened in the last few hours. While I was asleep, the guard completely ignored him, as if he didn’t exist. Harry claims that the whole situation suits the guard down to the ground. His feigned indignation about our accusation gives him the ideal excuse for not saying another word. If he hadn’t known already, he now realizes what an enormous advantage he’s at. Harry says we’re facing a difficult, if not impossible task. I remark that I didn’t notice any great difference from before. Maybe the guard was a little quieter, a bit more introspective, but he talked. Not about the issue, that was a subject he avoided. Just a bit of chitchat now and then. I got the impression, I say, that he was trying to reassure me. Reassure you, Harry repeats softly. That was my impression, I say, yes. I say that I assumed he wanted to let me know that he didn’t mind and that I didn’t need to feel bad about it. That he understood me telling you his story. Something like that . . . Harry keeps quiet. It’s as if he’s dissolved into darkness. Just when I’m convinced that he must have heard something somewhere else in the basement, the soles of his shoes crunch as he turns.
112
Is he speaking loud enough? It really is true and there’s no need for me to worry. After all, it’s a test; somehow, it’s a test. But we’re one step ahead. It won’t be easy. We’ll have to act honorably. I can leave it to him. Am I listening? From out of nowhere, Harry presses his chest against me. He says everything will turn out well. He hugs me. Our caps bump and turn. I smell walnut. Everything will work out. He pushes me away and tells me I’ll see. He squeezes my shoulders and talks at me. I don’t need to worry, not for a second. Of course the guard would answer me that he doesn’t use flannels. The bastard. What did I expect? Of course he’d say he washes himself with his hands. His answer doesn’t surprise Harry in the least. Am I listening, do I understand? Have I given the situation enough thought? How long we’ve been here in the basement together, all the things we’ve been through. He doesn’t have to tell me that. No flannel! Harry heard us, me and the guard, he clearly heard us talking again. But that was last night. Water under the bridge. No flannel! The black shit. He’d do better to use one. Stinks to high heaven. Terrible. Isn’t it terrible? The way he manipulates and uses us. Not an ounce of respect. No, guys like him never have any. They rabbit on about it the whole time, sure—respect this, respect that—but when it comes down to it . . . It makes your skin crawl. It’s all behind us now. It’s in the past. We have to trust each other. We’re being put to the test, but it’s never simple. There’s no time left. We mustn’t neglect our duty. I needn’t worry. As long as we keep our faith in each other, we’re untouchable. Neither of us can lose sight of that. I have to remember that. I have to keep it in mind. We’ve earned our place in the elite. Him and me. We have to do what’s expected of us. Sometimes life is simple. Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder and takes you by the hand. Do I hear him? Harry presses up against me. His breast expands and contracts. It will all work out. I can leave it to Harry. He hugs me. I’ll see.
113
I let the Flock slip out of my hand and push the lowest button on my wristwatch to turn off the alarm. I stay lying on the mattress for a couple of minutes with my eyes open. Images that have visited me constantly for the last five hours sink slowly to the bottom of my clearing consciousness. I take my pistol, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and push myself up off the metal frame. I take two or three steps in the dark, put the barrel against the light switch and push.
It’s as if I can tell that something’s not normal from the mirror, from the reflection of my face, but my face is the same as any other day. It’s not my face, I realize that at once, it’s not me.
It’s the room.
Slowly I turn around. I’m standing in front of an empty floor.
I wave my arm cautiously and feel no resistance where the table used to be. It feels like I’m moving my arm straight through it, that’s how hard it is for me to believe my eyes. I have never seen the room without the table: it was already here when I arrived, right in this spot. A cheap garden table with gray weathered planks. Now it’s gone.
I wash my face, clean my teeth, rinse out my mouth, dress quickly and brush my uniform. Outside I wait at the bunkroom door. Harry and the guard must be near the entrance. I scan the sides of the basement, searching for a blur of movement. I can’t see their legs or feet anywhere. I can’t see the table anywhere either. After a while, I feel the seat of the chair. Cold.
I judge it better to stay here for the time being. It’s better for me to keep still and wait.
What reason could they have had for moving the table out of the bunkroom? And why do it when I was asleep?
The buzzing of the middle fluorescent light builds up. While I’m looking at it, the tube dies with a flash and a pop. A black hole drops into the middle of the basement as if that part of the ceiling has collapsed.
“I’ll replace that right away,” Harry says. “We’ve still got plenty of spares.” He is coming out of the storeroom. He pulls the door shut behind him and locks it. His jacket is folded neatly and draped over his forearm. He must have removed the key from the pocket of my pants while I was asleep. Ever since I’ve been stationed here, it has been my responsibility to inspect the storeroom twice a day, and especially the ammunition. That’s why I always have the key in my pocket.
114
As if he’s heading out for the evening or has just come back, that’s how his jacket is draped over his arm. The storeroom key disappears in his trouser pocket. He’s in a cheerful mood. It is so peculiar to see Harry emerging from the storeroom with his jacket draped over his arm that I don’t recognize him, even though it’s patently obvious it’s Harry. It’s as if I am now seeing him for the first time.
He’s hot, his shirt is wet with sweat. Not just under the arms, but around the neck and on the back too. An hour before washing it, I’ll rub liquid soap into those patches, the way I always do the collars. If you saturate the cotton with soap, you can hardly see or smell the sweat stains afterward.
Harry sits down on the chair, laying the jacket over his legs. Evidently he wants to calmly finish the count before withdrawing to the bunkroom. I sit down on the stool and pull the Flock 28 out of my holster, push in the magazine catch and let the cartridge clip slide out of the butt. I count in silence. Fifteen. I wait for Harry, for the result of his inspection. His Flock stays on his hip. When he makes no move to count his cartridges, I remember the table. Harry says the table is in the storeroom, it’s more use there. After a short silence in which I wait for an explanation, he says blandly that I won’t need to do any timing for a while. He taps his watch with a long fingernail. It won’t be necessary. He’s alluding to the guard’s long visits to the toilet, although the really long visits generally take place just after he wakes up. What’s more, I only time them in the day, when there are three of us.
We wait for the guard for a while, but then Harry tugs his tie loose and stands up. I say good night.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” he says.
“I will.”
“Maybe,” Harry says, “it would be better if you took up position outside the storeroom. Near the door. You never know with these guys. They’re slow, but they’re built like gorillas.”
115
A sledgehammer blow of his fist, which won’t let itself be stopped by a bit of compacted sawdust between two sheets of gray veneer. I constantly expect that first, pounding smash on the door. Almost an hour has passed in nerve-wracking silence.
The cylinder of the lock prevents me from looking in. I can’t see any light under the door.
A wild cat leaping up against the bars, spitting frothy saliva. I pass the pistol to my left hand to wipe the sweat off my palm. Long curving fangs clamped on the unyielding iron for hours. Forehead and face a bloody lump of raw meat. Caged beasts. Their nature.
An hour later I’m calmer. I lean back with my head against the wall so that I will pick up the least little vibration on the other side. I still have all the time in the world to get wound up. The guard is probably asleep.
It’s just a coincidence he’s not snoring tonight.
With my heart in my throat I slowly push the toilet door open. Empty. The seat is up. I return immediately.
I do two inspection rounds, each time hurrying back to the storeroom door. I seek out the gray rectangle from a great distance, my eyes homing in on it. I am attached by a line and slowly reeled in.
I cough, by chance, then deliberately. I cough and listen. It’s a small room and it’s quiet. If the guard is awake, he now knows I’m here. He’ll understand I’m on guard here and not at the bunkroom. I can hear him easily, even if he whispers.
I scratch with my nails. As if lightly tickling the door.
He knows I don’t want to wake anyone up.
Does he think, having just woken, that he’s heard a mouse? A mouse?
I clear my throat. I recognize my voice in the sound.
Is he sleeping on the table?
Is he sitting in the corner between the rations and the ammunition, on the concrete ledge? He has wrapped his arms around his legs. Is he thinking of his old dad, bent over in a mineshaft? Is he trying to grasp how long forty years is?
He thinks, I have to keep quiet.
He sits in a corner and waits for his time to come.
The convenience of only having one possibility. The advantage.
He thinks, this is my chance.
He thinks, if I keep quiet, sooner or later he’ll open the door and then I’ll grab the little runt by the throat and squeeze it tight before he can let out a peep.
He hangs his cap over his jacket on the hook on the wall. The door is wide open. He lingers by the foot of the bed. After twenty-four hours almost everything is back to how it was before. We sleep either side of midnight, the best hours. I’ve scrubbed the smell of the guard’s body out of the linen with my fists. I push my nose into the pillow and sniff. I want to keep smelling this all night: liquid soap, no matter how artificial or industrial the perfume. I’ll be able to drift off into a deep sleep again without any trouble. I’ll be able to dream calm dreams and wake up refreshed. It’s like the old days. The guard isn’t here. He has never been here. We’re guarding the building alone again. It’s the first time since he suddenly appeared. Harry spits on his hand. Twice. He’s angry, I feel that at once. It hurts, but of course his anger isn’t directed at me. “A few more days,” he growls in my ear. “When he’s hungry enough, he’ll start to talk. We can count on it.” He’s angry. I hold tight, but he’s angry about the guard and all the things he’s keeping secret. Harry laughs with anger, saying they can’t touch us. He is rough and presses down on me with all his weight, but that has nothing to do with me.
117
Harry slips in for the interrogation. He holds the Flock at the ready, close to his cheek, turns the key in the lock, opens the door no wider than necessary and shuffles in sideways, flicking the light on and immediately closing the door behind him.
After three days he no longer greets the guard.
No more, “You know what we want to hear.” Or, “Are you ready for some more?” Or, “Shall I undo the gag so you can get it off your chest?” Or, “Come on, man, don’t be shy.”
After three days Harry goes back to eating his meals outside, next to me.
The time Harry spends in the storeroom now passes in almost constant silence. As if he’s keeping vigil at a relative’s deathbed: a question of hours.
Now and then I jump from the sound of a blow striking home and Harry screaming that the guard has to stop, that he has to stop his little games, that it’s for his own good, begging him to once, just once, think of the resident, the client after all, who doesn’t know what’s hanging over his head, and what kind of gutless guard is he anyway? As long as he doesn’t think someone’s going to clean up after him. He can just lie there in his own filth. It’s either talk or stay lying there like that, it’s either stay lying there like that or eat and drink, and what’s it going to be?
Harry says that the guard is lying on the table. He’s sacrificed his sheet, tearing it up into strips. He says he tied the guard up right away and since then he hasn’t made a single attempt to get loose. He asks me if I know why. He’ll tell me: it’s his guilty conscience eating away at him.
118
One morning Harry appears in his gray vest with his jacket, shirt and tie draped over his arm. Drenched in sweat and with his pale, freckled shoulders drooping, he locks the storeroom door and slips the key into his trouser pocket. He scratches the hair on his throat irritably, removes his cap, then puts it back on at the correct angle.
“It’s hard,” Harry says after catching his breath on the chair. “It’s a hard, merciless test and you and me, we just have to get through it. It’s about determination, Michel. For the sake of that one human life above us. For the sake of his security.”
He fills his mouth with bottled water and shakes his head gently while swallowing it in two gulps. “If the guard’s an agent, he’s a kind of agent we could never have suspected. A completely new kind, for insane fucking missions they reserve for niggers.”
119
Although it’s the middle of my sleep, I’m immediately awake, as if I’ve been lying here for three hours with my eyes closed waiting for this scream. Now that it’s come, I’m hardly surprised. It is the first sound from the guard in six days.
He screams that he doesn’t know a thing about a last resident.
I hear it word for word.
He doesn’t scream aimlessly, this is no uncontrolled eruption. His scream has a purpose. His voice and the way it’s raised tell us that this first time will also be the last time. His contribution is once only and definitive. He won’t be adding anything else. It’s over and out.
I am staring into the darkness when Harry comes into the bunkroom and switches on the light. He paces back and forth from the door to the washbasin, keeping it up for a couple of minutes. With the table gone, his steps ring in the small room.
“Did you hear what he said?” Harry asks. “One sentence. That’s enough. He gave himself away from the word go. Did you hear it? The last resident? He claims he doesn’t have a clue. Yeah, that makes it obvious, doesn’t it? The last resident is the reason for his posting! Are we really supposed to believe the organization hasn’t informed him about the reason for his posting? If he knows anything at all, then surely that there’s only one left, one single resident who’s in great danger, enough danger for three instead of two guards.”
Later—I’ve washed and dressed and am sitting on the stool next to the door even though I have almost an hour left in which to rest—Harry says he needs my help. From now on we have to keep the guard awake the whole time. If we also keep him awake in the hours that Harry’s asleep, then we’ll manage it. No doubt about it. He’ll definitely snap.
I have to go into the storeroom with him, Harry says. There’s something he needs to show me, a trick. The way he does it.
120
With the Flock up near my cheek I follow Harry into the darkness, creeping into the stench, a musty cocktail I can’t break down into its constituent elements. Urine, in any case, stale urine. I feel my eyes watering and press back against the wall. I shut out the idea that this foul air is entering my lungs, settling in soft tissue, contaminating my body with horrific complaints that will only reveal themselves after an incubation period, starting with small, unmistakable signs: itching, subcutaneous blisters, blurred vision, blood-streaked stools, fungal infections. I am firmly convinced that it is not the absence of electric light, but the unutterable stench that is responsible for the darkness in the storeroom.
Once Harry has locked the door and turned on the light, I am able, after an intense bout of blinking, to see again. I don’t know what reaches my retina first. The boxes. Sideways. Without casting a conscious glance in that direction, I see that the ammunition on the shelves hasn’t been touched. The boxes stand in rank, exactly as during my last inspection. There’s no time for this vague consolation, because my brain is faced with the task of deciphering what the table, in the middle of the room, is presenting me with. Limbs, spread slightly, and bound to the planks by the white cotton tentacles of a powerful creature that is concealed under the table and reaching up through the cracks. The limbs are defenseless and naked and the planks are no longer gray, but black, saturated as if after a cloudburst. The guard isn’t wearing his uniform: I don’t see any blue anywhere, I don’t see any underwear. His large feet are angled outward. One of his hands is turned up, his right. In the pale palm I see dead insects, worms, grubs. His mouth is fixed in a grin by the grimy gag. His eyes are closed; he’s already sound asleep. Exhausted from his scream. No, not grubs. Gradations of the rosy color have spread all over his immense black body. It’s on his face, his penis, his calves, the soles of his feet. I screw my eyes up out of instinctive revulsion. He is covered with it; the guard is no longer entirely black. The new color has soaked into the tentacles close to the wet wood. The marks on the white stripes merge into pale brown. His penis, as thick as a smoked sausage, is resting on a swollen, pitch-black pouch and nestling against the inside of his thigh. Under a wreath of knobs of hair. He is circumcised, no, the foreskin has been pulled back, bunched up and wrinkled against the edge of the glans as if he has just had an erection. There is plenty of pink on the glans, on the pouch, on the shaft. This is what I see in a few seconds. It’s not grubs, it’s cuts. It is bulging flesh: pink, whitish pink, gray and purplish red. A lot of yellow too. I see greenish yellow. I smell stale urine and suppurating flesh. I concentrate on the flat underside of his big toe, close by, to suppress the rising nausea. The pale, flat underside of his big toe. Miraculously spared. Or used as a lever to stretch the sole of his foot.
121
This is what I see in a couple of seconds. With these hundreds of colorful bulges, his body looks like it’s engaged in a horrific struggle, molecular warfare, blossoming flesh erupting through his old skin. He’s undergoing a metamorphosis.
Harry goes over to the table and bends over the guard’s head. He says that for two days now he’s been too feeble-minded to open his eyes so that he can never be sure if the guard’s awake or not and has to keep at it the whole time.
From close by, Harry stares at the shining eyelids. Their noses are almost touching when he bursts out screaming, “Yes, Michel, Mr. Sensitive is taunting us!” Harry yells each word separately, as hard as his lungs and vocal chords can manage and all in the same tone.
Suddenly, without drawing my attention to it, Harry is holding a tool in his hand. I recognize the transparent, light-blue plastic of our water bottles. It surrounds his fist. It’s the bottom of a bottle. A short blade is protruding from this protective covering. The paring knife.
He says, “This is how I do it.”
Harry emphasizes the “I.” He does it like this. He’s giving me a tip, not an order. If I can find a better way, he’d be glad to hear it.
At first, Harry explains, he thought he had to nick him in a new spot every time. He did it more or less every ten minutes, it made sure the black bastard paid attention. Eventually, however, he discovered by chance that cutting open old wounds is more effective. Generally he observes a reaction over his whole body. A bit like a cow that’s bumped an electric fence. He asks if I understand him. He still needs to keep nicking him in new places as well because it takes a while before the wound is infected enough to give his lordship a good shake. As strange as it sounds, Harry says, I’ll need to lay in a supply. The simplest, he’s found, is to alternate every ten minutes: new, old. But I’ll find out myself. The situation is constantly changing.
Harry studies the guard’s body. On the side above a knee he finds what he was looking for. He indicates a position on the other side of the table that will give me a good view of the procedure. When he pulls the blunt paring knife forcefully over the swelling, green fluid splats out against the light-blue plastic. The intense contraction in the guard’s arms and legs keeps up for quite a while. “No two ways about it,” Harry says. “He’s awake now.”
Outside, at the bunkroom door, before going to sleep, Harry urges me not to forget one thing. The guard is silent because he knows something. If he didn’t know anything, or if he wasn’t an agent, he would have made something up long ago.
122
A half-hour passes. The guard’s breathing is regular; he’s probably sleeping deeply. I’m sitting on the concrete ledge in the corner between the rations and the ammunition and staring at the stains on the ground. The resident is our priority. He is my priority. I repeat that to myself.
I hear mumbling. The guard has opened his eyes and turned his head toward me. He is looking for me and as soon as I stand up and come into his field of vision, his deep voice sounds again, incomprehensible because of the gag.
Is it because I’ve given him a respite of half an hour that he is now willing to talk?
The material is damp. The hard double knot is difficult to loosen. The dark eyes are fixed on me constantly. When I carefully remove the strip, from one corner of his mouth and then the other, he tries immediately to say something, but this time it’s his cramped tongue that’s getting in the way. A few seconds later I understand the word he is struggling to pronounce.
“Friend.”
A strange smile appears on his face. It’s a smile that doesn’t go with the state he’s in.
What makes him think I’m his friend? How could I be his friend? What kind of conceit is that, laying claim to someone’s friendship just because they were polite to you?
“I’m not your friend.”
I am surprised by the sound of my voice in the storeroom.
The guard’s smile gets bigger, he whispers, “My friend.”
He thinks, this is my last chance. He thinks, I’ll wind this gutless good-for-nothing around my little finger. I’ll flash him my most beautiful smile. I’ll call him my friend. He’s got no backbone. Piece of cake. He fell for those porcelain figurines too, of course. I’ll grin in his face and throw him off balance. If I just lie on my back like a dog and look at him faithfully with big eyes, he’ll pat me on the stomach.
“Have you got something to say?”
The guard lies on the table, relaxed and shameless, smiling his stupid smile.
He doesn’t think, when it comes down to it, Michel is a guard too. I mustn’t be blinded by his good manners. If I don’t immediately stop grinning, and if I’m stupid enough to insult him again by making another wild claim of friendship, I’ll set him off. He might hesitate, but once the faltering knife has been lubricated by the rising blood, he’ll carve to the bone.
123
Two days later, five o’clock in the afternoon, Harry opens the storeroom door and asks if I would like to come in. He walks around the table and says I should feel the guard’s pulse. With the tip of my middle finger on a small, untouched patch of skin, I look at the turned head, the closed eyes, the crack between the dry, fleshy lips. There is a silence without any perceptible movement: three men under a bulb in a storeroom. Like a canvas by a seventeenth-century master, captured in the light.
Harry and I take small, jolting, sideways steps. We’re not synchronizing and that makes carrying him even more difficult. Sometimes the guard’s ankles are almost ripped out of my hands. We should count—one-two, one-two—but now we’re in the middle of it and making progress, we muddle along through the basement. Occasionally his buttocks drag over the concrete.
“The resident,” Harry pants, “has paid for his security . . . If we want to prove our dedication . . . We have to go to any lengths . . . If we want to have a chance . . . We have to get him . . . Thanks to this bastard we’re in the dark . . . It’s up to us now . . . We have to save him.”
“Save him?”
Harry nods confidently. “We’ll bring him down to the basement . . . In the storeroom . . . One of us on the door at all times . . . He has to be spared . . . One human life, Michel . . . By saving one human life, we save humanity.”
We drag the guard over the ground on the curve of his hipbone. We don’t have any strength left. In the middle of the basement, we let his trunk and legs flop to the ground and slump down next to him. The very thought of leaving this basement! The concept is too enormous, it pushes out against the inside of my burning head, pressure on the back of my eyes.
“You and me,” Harry says a little later. “No one can match us.” He grins over his shoulder, waiting for me to smile back. “But this job first. Come on, we have to hurry.”
Again I wrap the guard’s torn vest around my hands. I tell Harry that we have to count, moving in time to make it less of a load.
“I’ve got a better idea.” Harry removes the big, soiled shirt he has been wearing like a bib with the sleeves tied around his neck. He passes one of the guard’s hands to me and grips the other wrist tightly. We set our feet firmly on the ground and throw our weight into the struggle. Stretching the arms changes the pressures in his organs and bubbles of gas escape from the lower body, one after the other, as if our quick backward steps are pulling a string of marbles out of his intestines.
We cover a good fifty meters without stopping. At the entrance to the narrow space between Garages 34 and 35 we let go. The back of the guard’s head cracks down on the concrete.
“Somehow we’ll have to get him up onto my shoulders,” Harry says. “Otherwise we’ll never get him over the edge.”
I’m glad of the darkness near the crushers, glad that, during the struggle that ensues, the growling and the raging, the stench and the filth, I don’t have to see what I’m touching, what I’m pressing my cheek against, which body part I’m supporting with the top of my head. Or how Harry’s coping with the crotch around his neck.
I hear it rustle as it falls, shorter than a moment. In the absence of a visual denouement, the abrupt release from the heavy weight makes me feel like I’m floating a couple of centimeters above the ground. The impact is a cacophony: empty tins shoot off in all directions, rolling for meters in the steel container. When the very last sound has died out—clearly a round tin which, after defining ever-decreasing circles, produced a crescendo by spinning around its center of gravity—I hear Harry flick a switch on the control panel. There is no electricity to start the motor, we know that, but Harry still messes around with the buttons and, as I’m thinking, it’s impossible, it can’t be, after all this time the crusher can’t have even a remnant of hydraulic pressure left, generated by one of the servants for God’s sake, and as Arthur appears in my mind’s eye, Arthur from the Poborskis on 39, Arthur in his dark-blue dustcoat, there is a click and the wall slides slowly over the floor, reaching the first tin, the second, sweeping the rattling tins into a pile, pushing the guard along too, and, as I’m thinking, now the slide is going to stop, now it’s run out, now it’s too heavy, I hear the internal rumbling increase and, just before the crusher dies on us, a sound like a trash bag popping in the depths of the container.