The Guard (10 page)

68

I spend a full hour standing at the crack to listen to the city. I try to put the cyclist out of my mind so I can resume my inspection round. On the way to the bunkroom, I can't control myself; I cross the basement and march back to the entrance gate.

That night I only do half rounds.

In the nights that follow I put the stool next to the gate. Now and then I walk a short distance so that I can peek around the corner of Garage 1 at the elevators and our room. Most of the time I stand at the crack, swapping ears regularly; the draft is cold. I get a headache from concentrating so hard in an attempt to sift the slightest of sounds out of the silence. I hear what I think is the extra tension on my eardrums, or the murmur of my overheated brain. I am aware of the danger of hallucination. The silence is like a desert.

69

By breaking the silence the cyclist has confirmed it. He's locked it down. The sound of his passing was the turning of the key. There is no one left in the city except an idiot on an old bike and two guards in a basement. Harry was wrong. There is no last resident left in the building; after all this time we would have picked up some sign of life. Everyone's gone, everyone has fled. The city wasn't evacuated, its inhabitants just ran for it. Harry, me and the crazy cyclist have been left behind. No one informed us. Just as some people predicted, a new kind of war has arrived—conveniently referred to as the New War. A war whose very existence is subject to question, no one knowing whether it's already raging or yet to start. Something from a futuristic novel. The weapons and the wounds they cause, the objectives and which parties have set them are anybody's guess. And
that
is the chief characteristic of this world war. That's what makes everyone flee: the enemy is unknown.

We've slipped off the organization's radar. After a nuclear strike on the south coast they would have come to pick us up. After a bioterrorist attack they would have done everything in their power to lift the quarantine in this crucial part of the city as quickly as possible. Harry and I have been left behind. There is no longer anyone here for us to protect and no concrete threat to the building. Our ongoing posting here is an administrative oversight made by a commander who has cracked under the pressure. That's why we no longer hear anything from the organization—not because we're carrying on in silence and doing such an excellent job. That's why the guard doesn't show up. They've forgotten us.

The driver has secretly stockpiled tins in the warehouse. He's delivered them to us in cardboard boxes, not the usual hard plastic trays. He has tried to amuse us with jokes. Gradually it's been getting too risky for him and he decided to postpone resupplying us for a week, eight days, he decided to come at night. He was not particularly pleased with the way Harry goaded him, but he
showed that he understood the reaction, he didn't get angry. And as for us, we can be glad he still brings anything.

70

After a long silence, Harry says that for starters he is quite capable of counting to forty. He speaks calmly. He says that if I had ever seen the last resident, I would understand why he's not the kind of person one casually overlooks. Particularly because he seldom shows himself. As there is no other exit, he would have needed to come past here during the exodus and Harry would have noticed him. He says, slightly louder, that the organization does not forget its guards. He keeps silent for a moment to give me an opportunity to recognize the absurdity of the inverse. He says that the delay in resupplying was either planned by the organization or a direct consequence of outside events. In both cases, a harsh trial for us. But we're not here for our enjoyment and I should know that. Lying in a hammock under a palm tree never got anyone into the elite.

71

I'm impressed by his ability to stay calm and his faith in the organization, which has revived in the few days since we've been resupplied and is once again irreproachable. He's also renewed his habit of dropping to the floor without warning every now and then to do fifteen push-ups. He again radiates the composure of a man who is living for a simple, unambiguous goal he has set himself or at least
accepted. No longer questioning the existence it brings with it. His dedication seems rooted in wisdom.

72

I've only been at the post two or three weeks when Harry announces early one morning that the profession of guard is always undervalued. His claim comes out of nowhere. The building is bathed in calm; even the domestics, as I imagine them, are still sleeping peacefully in their narrow beds. His words dissipate in the air of the basement. I've imagined the whole thing. Then he asks, “But how much more credit do you get for building a house or driving a train?” I don't answer him. I know he's not expecting me to. He says that people demand something superhuman from guards: do nothing, wait and stay alert. An almost impossible task. Repelling an attack is taken for granted. If nothing happens we seem superfluous, almost inconvenient. Idiots with side arms, that's what people take us for, interchangeable pawns. They—pointing up at the residents—don't have a clue. They think they're leading important lives, but they're just bubbles in the air and without us, they'd burst at the slightest resistance. This—pointing at the concrete between his feet—is the real world. “You and me,” Harry says, “we're in it up to our knees.”

73

“Hundred times the size,” Harry says. “At least. More, I think. Anyway, it will be one of the most beautiful gardens you and I
have ever walked around in. That's what I mean. Just magnificent. And you know what it is? The owners, they just look at it. At most they sit in a chair out on the terrace and look at their garden. As if you just look at your stunning wife and never kiss her or pinch her on the butt, let alone do it with her. That's what it's like in those circles. A garden is something to look at.”

Harry digs the dirt out from under his fingernails with his thumbnail. A garden is something to look at. It doesn't sound like he's made that up on the spot.

“It's a question of days.”

“Days?”

“It won't take much longer. A few days. Maybe a week.”

We're standing left and right of the bunkroom door. We are both fully dressed. I've washed everything except our suits and caps, carefully soaking the ties, then letting them drip dry from the side of Harry's bed. I've tied knots in both of them, because when Harry puts his on from scratch he ends up with a rock-hard lump halfway up his throat. The last sheet is hung to dry over the chair and the stool, which we have set up in front of the residents' elevator on our left.

“But we've just been resupplied.”

“They could bring our replacements in between times too. There are three of them. That's a lot of people for a full van. Instead they could be part of a special deployment, together with other new guards, in a truck that covers the whole city.”

“Wouldn't that be a little risky?”

“Why?”

“For the organization, I mean. A truck full of new guards. You could see that as precious cargo.”

“They'll scout out the route first, Michel. The truck will be armored and accompanied by elite troops.”

“Do you think we'll get to leave right away?”

“What would we stay here for? There's three of them.”

“To clarify certain things. You know. The way things go here in the building.”

“We jump on the truck and we don't look back. You hear me? I had to work it out for myself too. There was nobody here.”

“Nobody?”

“No,” Harry says. “Nobody. I was the first. Two months later another guard joined me. The way it was actually meant to be from the start.”

The question about the fate of my predecessor is on the tip of my tongue. I don't know if the silence that follows means he's waiting for my question or, inversely, that he doesn't want to talk about it.

“There's three of them,” he says. “They're better trained than we were. The training keeps getting better. We don't owe them a thing, Michel, we've more than earned our promotion. We've served our time, so we shake hands politely, wish them luck and jump on the truck. Headed for a new life. You and me, in a fabulous garden somewhere. Trees, flowers, birds. Waking up to the chirping of sparrows, just like on the farm. But without the stench of pigs and cows, without the racket, without the drudgery. With any luck we'll be able to pick peaches, oranges and soft sweet pears straight from the trees. What are the owners going to do with all that fruit? Just eat it, they say. The juice runs down our chins. We're sitting out of the wind on a bench, having a little rest, turning our faces to the sun. Fresh air. Everything is green and blue. Enough to drive you crazy.”

74

“I think we'll be requisitioned.”

Harry takes another large bite of the piece of bread he's holding. He keeps staring ahead into the dark corners of the basement, knowing he has my attention.

“By a resident,” he says, nodding his head to swallow. “It goes against organization practice. The organization prefers an
impersonal guard-client relationship. That's proved more favorable for both parties. In the long term, definitely. But these residents are extremely wealthy. If clients like them have a preference, if they make an explicit request, what's the organization going to do? You think they're going to give them a lecture on company policy?”

He rests the spout of the plastic bottle on his lower lip and lets the last bit of water glug into his half-open mouth. In a flash he's screwed the bottle up into a ball. Returning from the crusher, he paces to and fro for a while in front of the empty chair with his hands in his pockets.

“And what of it?” he says. “So what if the organization kicks up a fuss? So what if they politely but firmly inform the client that they alone decide who guards what, with all the accompanying explanations? A client like one of the residents in a building like this will just slide a few extra notes over the table, won't he? Simple.”

75

Harry says he hopes Mrs. Rosenthal won't requisition us. For five days now the requisition scenario has had us in its grip. Harry is in bed and still drowsy. It's 5:30 in the morning and he has only just woken, which makes his announcement about Mrs. Rosenthal come across as the end of a nasty dream. The bunkroom door is ajar and I ask him through the crack if she was the elderly woman on the thirty-second floor. He says the Jewish bag lived on twelve and must have been around forty-five. A real face-ache, she'd never give you so much as a smile. He says I must know her son, a skinny little guy with an undersized hat and a patchy beard. A permanent grin on his stupid mug. Begging for a beating, according to Harry. He daydreamed about it
often enough: whacking him over the head as if he was a naughty boy, just slapping him smack on the cheeks. After which the Jew would undoubtedly grin even more, now that he had tempted him into physical violence, which would almost certainly lead to Harry's dismissal. After which Harry would then punch him full in the face, smashing that big schnoz of his. He'd like to see him grin with blood all over his mouth. It would make things a lot more bearable. A little later Harry says he wouldn't be surprised if Junior begged Mommy to requisition him specifically, as his plaything, in the sick hope of one day being worked over by him in reality. He probably can't keep his hands off his pee-pee just thinking about it. Yes, Harry says, that gets the little twerp hot alright, Sabbath or no Sabbath.

While getting dressed, he asks if Jews are allowed to keep dogs. He thinks it's the kind of thing I'd know. He says he's never seen a Jew with a dog. I think about his question. The combination of Jew and dog is hard to picture for me too, but I'm not sure why. I'm not even able to come up with a reason why the Jewish religion would prohibit the keeping of dogs. Harry says, either way, we should hope for a post where they don't have dogs. No matter how good you keep your eyes peeled on patrol, sooner or later you step on a turd and get to spend quarter of an hour scratching the orange shit out from the tread of your shoe. As depressing as it gets. If it's up to Harry, preferably no dogs. Anyway, despite their masters' claims to the contrary, dogs always stink.

76

The residents' names come and go. Day after day they visit us in the basement offering us panoramic views of fabulous gardens in which we can move freely, in which we can breathe and live freely,
providing security under the very best of conditions. We've got plenty of choice.

Some names emanate an intoxicating perfume as if someone, hidden behind a pillar, presses an atomizer the moment the name is spoken. I've stopped going over to sniff the residents' elevator; it was foolish to expect the door seal to smell of anything except, vaguely, rubber.

77

I try to explain that both Mr. Toussaint and Mr. Colet had white cars, but Harry won't listen. He thinks I'm trying to put him in his place. I clarify my position by saying that I'm not correcting him when he says that Mr. Colet drove a white car. He's right. Mr. Colet did have a white car, something American. But in the particular incident with the frangipane, although it's trivial, he actually means Mr. Toussaint, not Mr. Colet. Because Mr. Toussaint also drove a big white car and that's probably why Harry has switched the two men. After all, Mr. Colet had nothing to do with Claudia. Harry says that Mr. Colet definitely liked them plump, or women with a fat backside at least. But that is beside the point because Mr. Colet didn't know Claudia from Adam. He just happened to also drive a white car. That's why Harry confuses Mr. Colet and Mr. Toussaint. And it is, by the way, Mr. Toussaint, not Mr. Colet, who is a distant relative of Mrs. Olano, with whom Claudia was in service. Harry looks at me and says he can't believe it. He turns away and sulks in silence for a long time. I say that it's not important anyway. It's a detail, it doesn't matter. Then Harry says that I was asleep at the time. If I was asleep, how can I know whether it was Mr. Colet or Mr. Toussaint? I tell him that I still know Claudia. Claudia told me about it herself.