The Guard (19 page)
I'd like to ask Harry if he's heard it, but I don't want to erase the bellowing with my own voice. I feel that my silence draws his attention to the sound. A cow. A living animal not far from here, that hasn't been eaten.
141
“Harry?” More than really whispering, I mouth his name. We were making our way up the hall when I heard something behind us and
stopped: a vague murmur, suddenly drowned out by the rustling of Harry's uniform, quite far away from me, short but remarkably loud, as if he's done something like quickly rub his arm over his torso or raise a knee, just once. I turn in that direction and mouth his name again, panting it out a little louder. I feel in the pitch darkness with one long arm. He's no longer there. “Harry?” More than five seconds pass. As if someone is holding me underwater and I've used up all of the air in my lungs. I can't stay here. I grope my way back to where I think I last heard Harry. “Harry?” I press the button on my watch three times, pointing the light in different directions, because I'm standing in a doorway and a meter farther, the pale gleam of the dial shows another hall at right angles to the one I'm in. I wait, listen, stare. I think of Harry who could be standing still and waiting somewhere close at hand. I speak to him in my thoughts, beaming out my concentration like an antenna. I shuffle around the corner, to the right, searching for doorways, rooms. “Harry?” I squat; my mouth is dry, my tongue swollen. Why doesn't he flick the flashlight on just once? Has something happened to him? Has he discovered something? I crawl on all fours back to the spot where I lost him twenty minutes ago. I curse myself. Perhaps we've lost each other because I didn't stay put. Why didn't I stay where I was? I try to summon up the sound of his uniform again, the movement that made it rustle. Has someone overpowered him? “Harry?”
142
The dawn comes as deliverance. When the black has changed to the deepest blue and the sky is unmistakably growing lighter, Harry disappears from my thoughts for a moment. I look up from the floor at the large window as if it's a cinema screen. It's a spectacle I haven't seen for a long time and after a tense night it moves me to tears: the
comforting proof that at least these certaintiesâthe earth revolving on its axis, the existence of the sunâhave remained unaffected.
143
I spend the whole day hiding behind a tall armchair. I have ripped open two cushions, with embroidered hunting dogs and flying ducks, and slowly saturated the pale balls of cotton wool with my dark-yellow pee. I haven't been able to make out any other sounds. No bellowing, no rustling garments, no man climbing out of a wardrobe. Lying down, I've stared out over the floorboards.
Either Harry's dead or Harry thinks I'm dead.
And where is the last resident? Is he the one who got Harry? Is Harry's lifeless body now lying somewhere on oak floorboards just like these, stiffening in position?
The chance of Harry walking in, saying my name and then laughing as he asks what I'm doing hiding behind a chair, that chance only existed briefly at daybreak. Still, I try to banish all other thoughts. I wait for his footsteps, the tap of his trouser hem against the smooth shoe. I wait where I am.
144
Late in the afternoon my tummy rumbles. It must be audible in the adjoining room and the two halls that lead into this one, maybe even farther. I grab my ankles and curl my body up tight, tensing my abdominal muscles to drive out the growling.
Later cooling sweat sends shivers down my spine.
Toward dusk, the confined space behind the armchair is a prison and the urge to stand up grows too strong.
My perspective changes dramatically.
I fit the interior.
Otherwise nothing else happens. The air in the room stays still. I could just as well have spent the whole day standing like I am now, with my hands on the back of the armchair. I could have sat in the chair all day. Nobody would have noticed.
145
I can only see high-rise. It undoubtedly adds to the charm of the apartments, their looking out over the other tall buildings in the center of town. Especially now, at the start of the evening, the view is irresistible. The streets remain hidden, as if intentionally. Again there are electric lights, but again there is an absence of any movement that suggests the presence of humans. In the clear sky I can't see any dissipating vapor trails from passenger jets. Only a purplish dot, far away, that soon disappears between invisible layers of air. The sky is empty and endless. The sunset casts a spell on me. For more than fifteen minutes, I don't look over my shoulder; until the sun has gone down, I am immortal. Maybe Harry and I were profoundly mistaken and right now parents are popping out to the supermarket to buy some meat, a carton of milk, some butter. A beautiful blond in a black dress rearranges the wine glasses on Table 18, while the first customers enter the restaurant, waiting politely in the entrance hall for her to come over. In a vending machine in the train station concourse a chocolate bar with peanuts slides toward the edge of the abyss.
146
I creep around in the dark. The resident can't possibly still be hiding in a wardrobe. Harry has gone looking for him, just like me. The resident comes first. If I find the resident, I'll probably find Harry too. We just lost each other in the dark. I should have stayed where I was, but I didn't. Harry had his Flock in his hand, his finger on the trigger. Even taken by complete surprise, even if a piano wire had been tossed over his head and pulled tight around his throat by a burly man, he would have still got off a shot. That didn't happen either. Since he, just like me, doesn't know what's going on with the resident, he's keeping a low profile. On the other side of the manor, he's sweeping the dust and dirt away from the edges of the rooms, just as I'm doing in this wing. One thousand square meters. I turn onto my back, carefully pull my shirtsleeves away from my bleeding elbows and make a small calculation. It seems ridiculous to me: one thousand square meters, that's forty meters by twenty-five! The apartments are definitely larger. Whoever claimed they were a thousand square meters? I can't remember. Was it Arthur? Was he using “a thousand” as a figure of speech to show how big they are? As a symbol of the residents' extraordinary wealth? Their insatiable extravagance?
147
I lay the Flock on my stomach, then open and close my hand to avoid cramp. I am lying motionless on the floor, my arms alongside my body as if I'm waiting for the doctor and have already lain down on the bed. Has Harry started adding it up now as well? Does the apartment seem larger to me because I've never been here before and have no overview? Familiarity makes everything smaller.
What's more, I'm looking at it all in moonlight from floor level. The walls are two stories high.
On display in the middle of the room is a large design object with steel cables and several chromed tubes. A piece of fitness equipment. I can't think of any other purpose. Two serious men look down on the device disapprovingly from their dark portraits on the wainscoting.
I mustn't fall asleep. Despite everything, I feel as if I could fall asleep effortlessly, with a brief, blissful awareness of it happening, me disappearing into myself. I scratch my beard, stick a finger in one ear and jiggle it as quickly as I can. The pleasure spreads over my skull, opening my mouth and refreshing me. After the noise has left my head and I can hear the silence again, I press in the safety catch and strip the Flock: slide, barrel with chamber, recoil spring guide. I keep my eyes on the dark-swathed ceiling. Twice I overcome the resistance of the trigger: two clear clicks of the hammer and firing pin. For a few seconds, the parts are spread out on my stomach. Nobody notices it. Nobody seizes the opportunity. Then I click and slide everything back into place and it is as if the pistol, which I haven't really cleaned, is brand new again and extremely reliable.
148
Perhaps I'm leaving a trail. When it gets light, my trail will be as visible as the slime of a snail that has been dragging itself around all night. Although I am certain it's the same apartment, I don't encounter anything that fits in with last night's journey with Harry. The swing doors are unfindable, but the kitchen isn't necessarily close to the swing doors; nothing here can be taken for granted. Everything looks the same, but I don't recognize anything. I might as well be equipped with a faulty compass and surrounded by a swarm of mosquitoes in the barren landscape of the far North. I
wouldn't feel any more lost than here between the tapestries, candelabras and carved chests, faint with hunger.
149
A step. I feel another one higher up. I light the way with my watch. I'm far from any windows, in the heart of the apartment, somewhere in a small room. Narrow, wooden steps like the kind that lead up to a mezzanine or an attic. It's close to morning, maybe the other rooms are already getting lighter. I haven't heard a thing all night. The resident isn't on this floor. He's either dead or alive. If he's alive, he must have fled out of fear, upward perhaps, to a higher floor. He expected the danger to come from below, merciless, like water rising in a flood. I creep up. The staircase is short, two or three meters, that's all. I expect an intermediate level, a workroom, studio or loft, but my hand doesn't feel the oak floorboards I'm used to. I feel the chill of stone. I enter a room that amplifies every noise I make. It reminds me of the landings Harry and I crossed earlier. Some distance farther along a new staircase begins, made of stone like the stairs between floors. Have I found my way back into the stairwell near the swing doors? Or is there more than one set of stairs? Are the apartments not only larger than a thousand square meters, but with layouts and dimensions that vary completely from one to the next?
150
Slinking is ridiculous and pointless. Except for the white marble columns, a double row of three, the imposing hall is virtually bare:
every corner is exposed. I am alone. I stand up. I stand on two feet like a man. Is this a mosque? I see a vision of gray prayer rooms hidden behind faded warehouse gates, with cables and pipes visible on the walls, with low, false ceilings. But this makes me think of Mohammedan temples on the banks of the Euphrates. Every square centimeter is covered with tiles, together representing garlands of flowers, olive branches and symmetrical vines, blue, yellow, reddish brown, green, in numbers and patterns that make my head spin. I can hardly bear it. So much profusion is overwhelming. I concentrate on the low benches against the walls: they're continuous, they pass under the keyhole-shaped windows and trace the perimeter of the hall like overgrown skirting boards. On the very far side there is a small interior balcony. But no carpets, not even a doormat. In the middle, the floor is a kaleidoscopic compass rose, a mosaic of the most colorful kinds of stone beneath a gold-leaf-covered chandelier as big as a treetop.
There, in the center, I also see myself. I see my uniform, stained and sagging. My cheap black shoes, my ruffian's face. I feel like a desecrator. I'm still wearing my cap on my head.
151
I sweep the aluminum plate with the dim light of my watch. Two threes. I'm on the thirty-third floor. I repeat the sentence in my head, as if putting a seal on a certificate. With my back against the wall, I slide down onto the floor.
The stairs connecting the floors to each other are meant for domestic staff only. They share a single employer, after all. The residents have purchased the service, but that doesn't make them their bosses. That's why the staff can disappear into
trompe l'oeils
like Regency period servants and slip down secret corridors on their way to another floor, climbing wooden attic stairs to get there if necessary.
I stare at the red light in the frame for so long that the â1 becomes meaningless and it takes me a while to realize that it's suddenly gone off. I keep looking at exactly the same spot. When I blink, I see it appear again as a vague glow. The after-image is displaced by a new light. It's the same red, at most a little brighter, and now shaped like a zero.
For a short period I am convinced that I am controlling the light with my brain, through my gaze. I think of 1, I think of 2, and,
look
, the numbers light up before my eyes. It's only at 4 that I hear something, a weak, subterranean rumbling, and only at 5, a handful of seconds after the disappearance of â1, that it hits me like a bucket of ice water: the service elevator is moving.
Breathlessly I follow the numbers, trying to avert them. 20 is a turning point. The moment I see that I haven't succeeded in stopping it at 20, I realize in the darkness preceding 21 that the elevator is headed for this floor, 33, and me.
152
I'm sitting in front of the elevator with both hands clamped around the grip of the Flock. My relaxed arms are resting on my raised knees. I'd hit the bull's-eye at fifty meters.
I concentrate on the sliding doors, no longer looking at the red numbers.
A sucking sound as it brakes, starting high and getting lower.
The familiar signal.
After a moment's hesitation, the doors slide swiftly open.
I see the table in a sea of light.
It is as if the elevator is presenting me with the table.
The hatch through which Harry and I climbed up onto the roof of the cabin is still open.
The door stays open longer than usual.
I start to get a nasty feeling that something is expected of me. The elevator has come to visit me of its own accord to present me with the table. It's my turn.
Again I check the corners of the cabin. The table can't hide anyone, therefore there is no one in the elevator. Just the table.
Then I catch sight of the control panel. Because I'm sitting on the ground, I notice a slightly larger button at the bottom, separate from the long row like the dot of an exclamation mark. There is a picture of a red telephone on it. Next to it, thin vertical stripes indicate a built-in speaker.