The Guard (20 page)

What would happen if I pressed that button? Would I get someone on the line: a call center, a young woman asking how she can help me?

But when I inquire about the situation outside, she skillfully avoids answering. She repeats her question, asking how she can help me, if there's a problem with the elevator. She quotes the address. She looks at the dot in the area shaded red on the map on her wall. She has been selected for her high tolerance. They've taught her techniques; it's impossible to throw her off balance. I can curse, rant and rave, the woman's voice coming out of the speaker will sound just as cheerful and she will give away just as little. They have impressed upon her that someone can be listening in. Sometimes. She doesn't know when. She has to placate the client; that's her number one priority. She has to give the client the impression that help will be arriving shortly. That is the only service she is able to provide: lying. She has bunched her hair together in a ponytail on the top of her head. The ends curl in. In the toilet she dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue, controlled and systematically, until the tears stop coming. She introduces herself as Julie, but her name is Isabelle.

I get up and walk slowly to the light-filled cabin. Just to hear Isabelle's voice! I am willing to play the game. I won't make her lies any more difficult and I'll ask her if she can send someone soon to fix the elevator.

Close to the cabin I hear a double click and all at once the two doors slide toward the middle. I pull my arm back and stiffen. For a couple of seconds I have a clear view of the planks that make up the tabletop, with a lengthwise strip of unstained gray wood, a rough silhouette of a body.

The elevator stays where it is.

Has Harry sent the elevator because he's back in the basement with the last resident safe in the storeroom? But how would he know I'm on 33? It must have been me, groping around in the dark. I must have pushed the button to call the elevator myself. In the basement the doors resumed their struggle with the barrels of liquid soap and finally won.

I make myself scarce. My position is known.

153

I open my eyes. The sunlight is as sharp as broken glass, slashing my brains. Within seconds, pain has filled my head. I have slept. I'm lying on my back on a parquet floor and feel very precisely the points where my skeleton has been resting on the wood for hours. If I want to get up I'll have to move, but what should I try to move first?

I raise my arm uncertainly, as if I'm pushing my limits with an overly ambitious weight. The cumbersome thing waves over my chest and stops ten centimeters in front of my face. I read 11:17 on my watch. With a thud, the arm falls on my hip and rolls to the floor. Sleeping has exhausted me.

The radiator near my shoulder has thick, decorative elements. Descending from the high ceiling are several angular chalices, orange glass in black frames, finished with fringed trim; they hang down as low as the standard lamps are high. In a single, exhausting movement, I hoist myself up onto all fours. I let my head hang for
a moment, until the dizziness from my low blood pressure passes. Then I move to a squat, laying the Flock aside, picking up my cap and arranging it on my head at the prescribed angle. Dark blocks of wood are set into the parquet, forming dotted lines across the breadth of the room.

I lean heavily on a low, narrow table against the back of a long sofa. I see my hand lying next to a dish, an even dark blue with a gold rim, containing brooches, rings, bracelets and pearl necklaces, as if they were candy or pieces of fruit to pop in your mouth casually in the course of the day.

154

I see the newspaper from a distance. It's lying next to an antique crystal bowl on a gleaming cherry sideboard. It is folded neatly, but yellowed and wrinkled, as if it has been removed sopping wet from a letterbox and never read. That last bit is highly likely: the dateline is the day before the great exodus.

Like a dog snatching a piece of sausage, I grab the newspaper and throw myself on the floor. My heart is pounding, my hands trembling. I expect a headline that will explain everything in one glance, five or six words that will reveal all the things Harry and I could only guess at in the basement. On the upper left, in a typeface from the top of the case, I immediately strike gold: “Army ignores bills.” While running my eyes over the lead, “Defense launches internal investigation,” I try to reconcile this news with the events that followed it, but that proves difficult. I read the sentence in the middle of the article that has been printed in slightly larger, red letters to attract the readers' attention. “The water in the barracks was almost cut off because of the unpaid 10,000 euro bill.” I read the words again, perplexed. Then the start of the article, which repeats
everything I've read so far. Negligence in a few barracks, after which the ministry of defense launched an internal investigation.

Unpaid bills? Could unpaid bills have been the germ of a conflict that, for reasons unknown to me, led to the city emptying shortly afterward?

At the bottom of the page is another article about the army: the three large cities in the south of the province have called in the army to assist with garbage collection until an agreement has been reached with the unions. On page three, again: “Army helicopter hits power line.” The emergency landing turns out to have been successful, the crew unharmed: seven soldiers thank and praise the pilot.

I race through every headline in the paper. Not one sounds like something big is about to happen. But . . . if the catastrophe had emerged a few days beforehand, would the newspaper have been left unread on a sideboard?

In the culture section I discover a photo of the celebrity I saw red-eyed and with a man on her arm in the magazine on the first floor. She's beaming happily. Her dazzling evening dress only just covers the secret of her success. The man is not in the picture. A mourning band has been superimposed on the upper left-hand corner of the photo because the woman jumped out of a window of the Hilton Hotel the day before. The awning over the entrance did a good job of breaking her fall but the solid radiator grill of the parked limousine, a Hummer, still crushed her skull. Her death is considered in detail over four pages. Some people point the finger of accusation at the popular media. Others are sure she was pushed.

155

I reread the newspaper from front to back, concentrating on every sentence. Somewhere among the events that took place
two days before the exodus and were reported on its eve, there must be some indication of the spark, the flicker that seemed innocent at first but soon caused an inferno. I have the solution in my hands. But the longer I read and search, the more it seems as if the words and sentences are willfully barricading the path to an explanation. It's as if my view of the news is being blocked by a smokescreen of banality raised by a select group of writers acting on the orders of the security services. A practice that virtually everyone knew about, but no one rebelled against. Perhaps out of fear of reprisals or social isolation. Perhaps from naked indifference. Maybe everyone knew what was going on, but no one wanted to be reminded of it. That could explain the disproportionate attention for this celebrity and the account of her suicide. A story, what's more, that fell into the writers' laps ready-made.

I close the paper and look across the parquet and between the furniture at the doors. Then I try to forget all the thoughts I've had so far. In my hands I am holding a completely ordinary newspaper, which contains facts about things that really happened, covered by an independent editorial staff because of their newsworthiness. These facts may cast a light on the events of the following day. I take a deep breath and begin reading at the top of the page on the left, about unpaid army bills.

156

The fridge looks as massive as a monolith. The corners and edges are rounded off, even the door is slightly convex. The brand is shining in small signature letters on a stripe on the door. Everything in the kitchen interior is matching and wearisome because of the excess of bright colors.

With one hand on the handle, I feel like I am breaking an unwritten law. As if it is only after opening the fridge and revealing what they eat that I will have fundamentally trespassed in the residents' intimate sphere; me, a guard who is meant to protect the residents from such infringements.

I look at my hand, at the determined white of my knuckles, the precursor to a release of the energy building up in my shoulder.

What am I doing here?

This fridge, this kitchen, these colors: they were never meant for me.

What, after all, did the guard tell us that gave us the right to leave the basement and enter the clients' apartments?

The organization hasn't given us a mandate. It's true that Harry and I are searching for the last resident to move him to safety, but no one ordered us to do so. We are still only authorized for the basement of this building.

157

I smell her perfume, the herbs and spices, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, I smell the simmering, the sizzling beef, fresh soup vegetables chopped up on the board, onion and bay leaves, boiled marrowbones and steaming meat stock, chicken pastries in the oven, a joint of venison braising in port, spoonful by spoonful, the lid in the air while the steam is sucked up by the extractor fan, billowing up around the sides of the hood, condensed steam dripping from the lid and dancing on a glowing hotplate. She wipes her red hands on her apron, which pinches her waist like a string tied around a joint of rolled meat and covers the skirts that surround her thighs like layers of puff pastry. Her fingertips scored with dozens of nicks that always contain the taste of food.

158

She doesn't tug on the handle, but opens the door with a twist of her wrist. She is shorter than me, about ten centimeters, and it's a big fridge; she doesn't need to bend to get a good view of its contents. If she wants something from the back of the top shelf, she has to stretch and go up on her toes, just slightly, as if giving her weight a nudge, momentarily bouncing it up into the air, just long enough for her plump hand to grab what she needs.

I'm sitting at the table with my hands on my thighs to avoid seeming pushy. I'll let Claudia give me whatever she likes. She slides sideways along the worktop with her stomach resting on the front edge, as if she's attached to it. This is her kitchen. At least, the kitchen she works in daily. Her kitchen would look different, more rural, chunkier, with a water pump and a big sink.

I see the way her lower legs taper down to ankle folds. There's something glittering on the left, a gold chain, as thin as if it's for the wrist of a newborn; resting on the top of her bare foot. Surprisingly, she is also wearing heels. They are low, wide at the top but descending almost to a point: timeless women's shoes, bordering on seductive.

Soon she will turn around. I'll look her in the face, which, as always, will be beautifully made up. Her eyes hardly need any color. The edges of her eyelids, her eyebrows and lashes are naturally coal-black. Bending over the table, she will lay spotless cutlery to the left and right of an absent plate.

159

In the salon, she fluffs up the cushions. She unties my laces and cautiously removes my shoes, as if suspecting pain. I'm ashamed of the
stench, but Claudia is discreet, she doesn't let it show. She lifts my legs up onto the sofa and sits down across from me, beneath a collection of handbags with solid, upright handles, ascending toward the ceiling on five columns of glass shelves. When she crosses her legs, her shoe slips off her heel and dangles from her toes. Dreamily, she looks out of the window at the clouds, humming. My gaze wanders to a black patent-leather handbag in the middle of the top row; it is shaped like a shell. Without looking at me, Claudia says it would be better if I shut my eyes for a moment.

160

We've secluded ourselves. We've locked doors to make a small home inside the enormous apartment. Claudia knows the ropes. She's worked here from the beginning. No one except Claudia has ever operated the cooker, apart from Mrs. Olano putting on the kettle at the crack of dawn to make some tea, or Mr. Olano during a sleepless night, when his sick wife or someone or something has prevented a visit to Claudia and he's venting his anger with food. He has a right to much more than her hands, though he's never claimed it. Instead of Mrs. Olano's stubble he wants to imagine pitch-black hair curling up exuberantly into her butt crack, and the beat of his pelvis sending waves up toward her waist, the tanned Mediterranean skin over her sploshing flesh; he wants to sink his teeth into it, really biting, tearing away a mouthful of this taunting abundance. It's his right; that is his deepest conviction. What would Claudia be without him, back in that impoverished country of hers with its pigs and peasants and suffocating traditions? He leans back on the cushions beneath the handbags, appraising his cigar while the smoke leaks out of the corner of his mouth. He wants me to tell him that. He says he's a reasonable
man, that he's never demanded too much of life, always meant well by other people. I can ask anyone I like, no one will speak badly of him. Someone who tries to please everyone must be self-centered: this insight comes to him at night when Mrs. Olano's mouth has dropped open and she's blowing her sour breath at the moon. He delights in the realization and, for its duration, he, Carlos Olano, comes first and wants to bite, really bite, but not bones. He could devour Claudia's flesh, did I know that? But the long, dark passage to the staff quarters weakens his resolve. Standing at her bed, when she rolls over toward him, he only lays a warm hand on her high hip. He doesn't stroke her, he doesn't bite her, he doesn't push a finger in anywhere. None of that. Once the fire has been quenched by her hands, he might run the back of a little finger over her cheek, but then he's gone, because sooner rather than later contempt will flare up out of those smoldering ashes. He doesn't speak and in the daytime he never touches her. He keeps an amiable distance. It's only after her very best dishes that he sends the butler to fetch her so that he can compliment her while resting one hand on Mrs. Olano's knee to reassure her, his beautiful, captivating wife, who grows melancholy from the desire in Claudia's eyes and realizes that she is attractive despite her size, not least of all to her Carlos, for whom she has borne two successors, two clever sons, two sweet boys, who are moved to tears by Mahler's Fifth, nestling their heads against her empty breasts; they will never leave her.