The Guard (17 page)

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 ask if he can hear me.

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.

124

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.

Three

125

We're walking to the elevators. It is inconceivable that we're doing this. Residents, visitors, staff: Harry and I walk toward them. The only entrance to the building, a solution that has been forced upon us. Forty luxurious floors, virtually forgotten, rise above us in full glory. We've never seen so much as a glimpse of them! It is inconceivable that we're doing this. With the intention of leaving the basement, Harry and me! And yet we're walking to the elevators. Our exit. The basement, where we live, will become a basement again, an empty car park. With each step, I'm dreaming. My pulse pounds in my temples; I can feel it shaking my head. The excitement. As if the resident has been hiding in one of the elevators since the exodus. Harry and I have finally discovered him, soon we'll meet him. I see the distance growing smaller and know that it is inconceivable. I try to remember what Harry has said about the man, the man we have to save. I get no farther than a shaven head and black clothes. A few meters before the elevators we stop and stare silently at the smooth gray doors, impassive in their steel frames. Everything has been an exercise, preparation. Now it's time for it to really start.

126

The service elevator, a little larger than the other two, is the only one with double doors that meet in the middle. Harry sends me to
the staff storage cupboard for two barrels of liquid soap. When I come back, I see him working at the rubber. He's used the paring knife to gouge out a notch. He digs at it and pulls pieces and long black strips out of the seal.

“Shall I get two more? There's another two.” I nod at the fifteen-liter barrels.

Harry's blank face bursts into a smile. He winks to show his appreciation. “Hurry.”

A little later we're standing next to the double doors facing each other with our fingertips in the crack Harry has opened up. We both slide a foot past the halfway mark, crossing our legs. We puff up our cheeks. We form a strange but completely symmetrical figure, Harry and me, guards.

A long, hopeless period of strain and exertion follows. But once we've achieved an opening of about ten centimeters, the sliding doors suddenly capitulate and retract mechanically. Inside the elevator, the light flicks on, giving me the fright of my life. Momentarily blinded, I automatically let go. It's as if we've tugged on a living creature and woken it, in God knows what kind of mood.

“Quick,” Harry says.

We slide the barrels into position. Thirty kilos on the left, thirty on the right. They do a good job of cushioning the blows of the sliding doors, which keep on wanting to close again. We stand there with our hands on our hips, like road workers looking at the new asphalt.

“Do you think the elevator still works?”

Harry nods, surprised by my question. “Of course, look.” He takes a couple of steps back and points at the small red light set into the top of the frame. “If the light's gone back on here, it will be working on the other floors too. Try it, if you like. But not me. I'm not taking the elevator, Michel. I don't know what's waiting for us. Do you know what's happened up there? Have you ever been there? I know I haven't. If we use the elevator, we'll have pretty little lights announcing our arrival. Don't you think?”

I feel the heaviness in my exhausted shoulders. I have to think faster, I have to stay awake. There's only one absolute certainty
and that certainty is called a Flock 28 and it's strapped to my hip. Everything else must at all times be appraised. Gauged. Sniffed out. Fortunately Harry is experienced. Together we can't be outsmarted. I disappoint him, but he doesn't hold it against me.

Harry steps tentatively into the elevator, saying that Arthur once told him about stairs that run down past the staff apartments to the ground floor.

I can hardly believe it. Not what he's said about the stairs, but his unexpectedly mentioning Arthur's name when I was thinking about him less than ten minutes ago. How strange it is after such a long time, even though it's nothing special.

127

Harry doesn't need to ask me for the chair. He only needs to glance up at the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator cabin. He moves over under the hatch to study it carefully, looking straight up with his head tipped so far back that his mouth hangs open.

“In and out,” he says, stepping up onto the chair. “We have to do it as fast as possible, not staying a minute longer than necessary. Upstairs is forbidden territory. But we're both going, Michel, there's no alternative. The alternative is very dicey. If something happened to one of us, preventing him from coming back, what would the other do then?”

I assume he means it as a rhetorical question, but either way, I try not to think about it. First things first, starting with the little things in my immediate vicinity that demand my attention.

Harry uses the paring knife to scratch away the dirt and paint. The hatch has almost certainly never been used. He keeps the base of his clenched fist close to it as if waiting for a signal. One firm blow makes the hatch pop up before falling back with a much louder clang.
Above the cabin we hear the noise echo shrilly in the confined space, fading away and surging back, up and down the interminable shaft.

To climb up through the hatch we'll need the table.

128

Harry shines the guard's flashlight up the shaft. Its beam shows us the steel elevator cables and a black hole where they dissolve in the distance, creating an illusion of us holding long, fist-thick bars that stick up from the roof of the cabin. Harry shines the light back down at our feet to make sure we don't stumble over anything. The shaft smells like a building site. It has never been subjected to any air but its own.

We assume the same positions as before. We're halfway up to the ground floor, tugging on the doors at head height. I feel like I'm doing permanent damage to my back, muscles and joints. This time no mechanism comes to our aid, but the resistance does drop off noticeably after about ten centimeters. The light is dim, the polished stone floor gleams faintly. Finally there is no more resistance and the door stays open of its own accord; we gape with surprise for a moment and only then bend our knees to drop below the opening. My shirt is soaked, stretched over my skin like a chamois. Harry turns off the flashlight.

Minutes pass.

Together we peer over the edge. I feel a draft on my eyeballs. The slight gleam on the floor is the result of artificial lighting, tucked away somewhere to the right. We clamber up out of the shaft, making so much racket that I feel like they're only holding their fire out of pity.

One behind the other, we creep along the wall, avoiding the open space like rodents. I don't think Harry knows where we have to go. There were two possibilities. We've gone left. Into the darkness.

129

I hear Harry's hand sliding over the stone skirting. If the entrance to the stairwell is on the right next to the elevator, we'll only discover it after covering the entire perimeter of the ground floor on our knees and elbows, more or less the distance of our basement inspection round.

After what I imagine to be about thirty meters, we still haven't found anything. After another five, I tap Harry on the calf. He stops immediately, lying there as if he's dead.

I crawl up next to him and feel for his head and ear, which I move my mouth close to. I whisper that we should turn back, telling him that it looks like the door is located to the right of the elevators.

“Right,” Harry says into my ear in turn, “is toward the front of the building. The staff apartments are probably at the back. That sounds logical to me. Residents at the front, servants at the back. What do you think?”

Harry isn't being cynical, he waits for my answer. And while I answer, I feel that I'm right. We can, after all, save ourselves an awful lot of misery by going back first to make sure. In my experience stairwells and elevator shafts are built close together.

I am now crawling in front and keeping up a good speed.

We creep past the yawning elevator doors. The indirect artificial light seems to increase a little in strength, shining along a wall. I see the bottom of an ornate frame, not much more than a shadow really, a jagged edge dissolving into darkness. As we get closer to the light, I am able to make out the veins in the light marble floor. The skirting stops. I feel a corner and, around it and set back a few meters, I see light under a door. Nothing on the sides, but at the bottom the gap is so big that I can see in past the door: the floor carries on and the reflection of another door is floating in the gleam.

I crawl into the niche. Harry follows me. Together we stand up. The handle is on Harry's side. Slowly he pushes the door open. When he's seen enough, he turns to me and whispers, “Toilets.”

The emergency lighting is on and nothing like the emergency lighting in the basement. It's a series of recessed wall and ceiling lights that would be invisible when turned off. Toilets on the ground floor where nobody ever comes. On the dark washstand a pile of folded towels is waiting next to the washbasin; the wicker basket is empty. Our uniforms look good in the large, tinted mirror. Two doors with, behind each one, the same dark washstand, the washbasin, the towels and the empty wicker basket. Wooden coat hangers in a built-in cupboard. A real painting on the wall: flowers with thick daubs of paint, as thick as the flowers themselves. Under the painting, a tall, two-person sofa with old-rose upholstery, armrests and a white varnished back.

Harry stands still in a cubicle and looks into the toilet bowl for a long time with me watching his back. I am wondering what has caught his attention, what he has found there, when a powerful jet breaks the water surface. In the midst of the tumult, Harry stares straight ahead as if there's something of interest on the wall in front of him.

130

We crawl farther to the right and find another two doors, both locked. Almost on the opposite side, more or less where the entrance is in the basement, we come upon a door with a bare corridor behind it, tiled in functional white. My elbows and knees are sore and, without agreeing anything between us, we stand up and shuffle through the corridor with our backs against the wall. Now and then Harry flicks on the flashlight. The corridor is narrow and has a low ceiling, more a tunnel really. Three corners later, behind a heavy door with a hydraulic closer, we find the stairs, no wider than an ordinary staircase in an ordinary house.

Harry sits down on the bottom step and shines the flashlight higher. It reveals little: after a narrow landing the stairs change direction. Strands of dust hang from the bottom of the next flight, swinging slowly and weightlessly like unknown sea creatures in the depths of the ocean, illuminated for the first time.

We let the images sink in until we are familiar with every detail. In Harry's face, lit by the glow of the flashlight, I recognize my own horror at climbing the stairs and leaving the safety of the ground floor behind us. One well-chosen word, spoken in the right tone of voice, could change everything. I don't know where to find them, but that word and tone of voice do exist. Harry's sitting down betrayed their existence.

Maybe Harry will suddenly say the word, thirty or fifteen or five seconds from now, without suspecting my thoughts. The way he didn't suspect I had been thinking about Arthur when he suddenly said his name. Nothing special.

Afterward Harry will stand up. Without making any fuss, we'll simply turn back. Giving each other a comradely pat on the shoulder or symbolically shaking hands before walking side by side down the long corridor to the lobby, which we cross calmly. This time we'll feast our eyes on it all. We'll take the towels from the toilet, the coat hangers, the perfumed toilet paper. We'll climb up one last time to fetch the wicker baskets and say goodbye, then pull the elevator doors back until they meet in the middle, let the hatch bang shut and slide the table and soap barrels out onto the basement floor.

131

We've climbed four times sixteen steps without any sign of the first floor.

We carry on cautiously, making sure not to let the soles of our shoes slide on the steps. As soon as Harry's head reaches the level of the next landing, he stops and inspects it with the flashlight.

We keep climbing. There are neither doors nor windows on the landings. I've stopped counting. I am convinced that the stairs lead directly to the roof. Stairs for maintenance access. How else would they get to the machine room if the elevators broke down?

A little farther up, the stairs come out on a small floor or spacious landing, the size of the garages in the basement. A lost space without any objects. No continuation of the stairs. We can't possibly be near the roof yet.

Harry slides the light slowly over the walls.

The door doesn't have a knob. On closer inspection we see the prints of dirty fingers where the knob would usually be. Hesitantly I press the spot with my index finger: the click of a magnetic lock. The fiberboard door swings a few centimeters toward us. Harry and I drop onto our left knees, out of the firing line, and aim, together with the flashlight, our Flocks at the crack.

Behind the fiberboard door, in a room not much larger than a shower cubicle, an ironing board is leaning against the wall, palm trees on its bleached and tattered cover.

A blue bucket is hanging from one of the legs.

It's so unexpected that the whole strikes me as some kind of greeting or secret message, set up here for us long ago.

132

Daylight. It is dim, the light of a cloudy afternoon that has reached here after detouring through rooms and around corners and down meters of hallway. But there is no doubt that it is natural light which, as dim as it is, demotes the flashlight to the level
of a toy, a battery-operated gadget for projecting circles. Daylight comes first. The moment Harry pushes the door on the opposite side of the tiny room away from its magnet, there is daylight on our black leather shoes, on the scratchy carpet, on the plaster decorations on the hallway walls, on our hands, on our gray faces, in our ears: daylight everywhere. Its wholesome effect kicks in immediately.