The Guard (6 page)

37

“But that doesn't mean we don't stand a chance. Don't worry, okay?”

The door is ajar. I start to undress, slipping a coat hanger into my jacket and hanging it up on one of the three hooks on the wall. My shirt follows on the same hook. I hold my pants up by the folded legs and lay them and my tie neatly under my mattress. I wonder how you hang up one of the elite's liquid suits.

“Our chances are actually very good. The organization has shown its trust. Our efforts haven't gone unnoticed. You and me, Michel, we're a good team. We don't shirk our responsibilities. In all this time, the organization hasn't heard from us once. That still means something. That's quite an achievement. And considering
the dangerous conditions outside, the demand for the elite will only increase. The demand always goes up.”

I wash my face and rub my teeth with my index finger, scratching at the plaque near my gums in an attempt to remove it. Some of the plaque is calcified, I can never get the surface properly smooth. I hope the elite are provided with toothbrushes. It seems highly unlikely that they wouldn't be regularly kitted out with new brushes. With hard bristles, hopefully, the hardest bristles you can get, ones that scrape and polish. And toothpaste. I try to summon up a memory of the taste of toothpaste. It helps if I look at my old toothbrush, a fossil on the side of the washbasin. The nylon bristles have been pushed out in all directions, unraveling into bunches of fine pointy threads. It helps, even though this object cannot possibly be called a toothbrush anymore. Without prior knowledge, no one would guess its purpose.

38

“It's possible that one of them eventually decides to call it a day. I admit, it rarely happens, but that's not the same as never. We have to pin our hopes on something like that, Michel, a coward pulling out and making room for a real guard. That's our chance of being liberated from this basement.”

Although I dozed off the moment my head touched the pillow, my sinking consciousness crashes into his words, boulders of the here and now. They block the passage, forcing me back. I open my eyes but lie there motionless, pretending I'm still asleep.

Harry is keeping watch on the chair. “The way we keep the situation here under control,” he says after a long pause, “is actually our training for the elite. You couldn't come up with better training. It's impossible to simulate. How could any training situation simulate what we have to achieve day after day, completely independently,
with a minimum of facilities and equipment? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if our replacements, three of them that is, are ready and waiting right now to take over from us. Lying on their bunks and twiddling their thumbs. Like us, they're nervously awaiting orders. I wouldn't be surprised if we have to pack our gear during the next resupply and get taken straight to headquarters. Instructor Perec will be there to meet us. The old blowhard won't have changed a bit. Maybe he's died in the meantime, who knows? Who cares?”

I hear him scratching his beard—on his neck—because he's stopped talking. He stretches the skin and uses all of his fingers. The ends of the curls grow back into his skin, irritating and itching. The hairs lie flat and escape my attempts to trim them with the paring knife. If I tried to cut them off shorter I'd nick his throat. Shaving him wet doesn't work either. The knife is blunt and slides over his beard. Sometimes I pick at a loop with the point of the knife, but it's not sharp enough either; I need a needle. Very occasionally I do hook one and then I can very carefully pull back the ingrown hair. They're always centimeters long and watching them slowly appear is repulsive and fascinating at once. I don't tell Harry about my idea that one of those hairs might finally reach his oral cavity and poke into the bottom of his tongue or find a crack in his larynx and cause a constant tickle in his throat he can't get rid of no matter how much he coughs.

“In the mess, we'll be able to sit down right away for a full meal. With any luck there'll be fried potatoes on the menu and a slab of fresh meat with gravy. The dessert will be pie or custard. We'll take both back to our table, nobody will give a damn. While we're eating, they'll brief us about what's in store for us. There'll be no time to lose. They'll want us on the job as soon as possible. In less than a week we'll be ready. The training will be technical more than anything else, making sure we know how to handle the expensive gear the elite has coming out of their ears. Then we'll go out into the fresh air, Michel. Blue and green as far as the eye can see. It will take quite some getting used to. We'll walk around without masks; the local readings will prove it's safe. Fresh air in abundance. We'll get drunk
on oxygen. We'll be guarding Mr. Van der Burg-Zethoven's villa. You and me, Michel, we'll walk around his white villa side by side and guard his fiancée and her hairless pussycat. They're worth every penny, that's what Mr. Van der Burg-Zethoven will think when he opens the curtains in the morning after a refreshing night's sleep and sees guards, armed to the teeth, patrolling his English garden. No one, he thinks, will try to lay a finger on my fiancée and her hairless pussy, I'll make sure of that. And us walking rounds, you and me, under a bright sky. Nothing escapes us, and when a cloud drifts in front of the sun we can look in through the big windows and see his fiancée stretched out on the sofa while she slowly strokes her completely hairless pussy. We're happy, Michel, to see her so relaxed. Her blind faith raises our spirits. After all, we work long hours. We never relax our concentration. We're always on edge. That's part of our profession. And the elite's medicine chests really have it all. Every morning there's Modafinil to keep us alert and get the best performance out of our brain cells. Creatine to bulk us up, because in extreme situations we have to be able to take out intruders with our bare hands. If we're exhausted but can't get any decent sleep because of the stress, we get Temazepam. And so it goes. Whatever you need. Paradise on earth. Our ability, Michel, to effortlessly keep our heads above water in primitive circumstances like these is something that is discussed with awe by all ranks. Take it from me.”

39

Perec doesn't look back, he gestures with one shoulder that I have to follow him. We stick close to the front of a tall building, our shoulders sliding along the smooth stone facade. I can't hear any other sound in the whole city, not anywhere. There must have been a gas attack—not a single pigeon in the sky—but it's strange that we can
breathe without masks. How long ago did the attack take place? I can't see any bodies lying around, no people who threw themselves to the ground in the hope of finding some oxygen, salvation, while their features were eaten away, disappearing into the holes in their skull. And what are we doing in town? Why aren't we on site somewhere, why aren't we at our post? Guards stay at their post, they don't patrol the city. What's come over Perec? I should kill him. I could easily kill him. I only have to aim my pistol and fire a bullet into the back of his head and no more Perec. He's as vulnerable as any human being. I concentrate on the spot where his spinal column joins his skull. I can see the curve of the bone very clearly through his bristly hair. I could press the barrel against the base and aim up at his forehead to maximize the bullet's trajectory through his brain. I could do it; no one would suspect me. But I don't. I don't shoot him dead. I spare Perec's life out of self-preservation and follow him closely. It seems to be the only thing I'm still capable of doing. Without Perec, I would slump down against the smooth facade and sit on the ground next to his body, waiting for whatever was going to happen to me.

40

I can only have slept about an hour: my body is sluggish, as if paralyzed head to toe. As heavy as a walrus, I lie on my stomach. The left side of my face is pressed against the pillow. Something has woken me. It takes superhuman effort for me to move my right eyelid. The semidarkness in the room is different, disrupted. I realize that I am looking at a big shadow on the wall. The outline is hazy, but I recognize the shape of Harry's cap. He's standing at the foot of the bed, out of sight. He's standing there looking at me and stays like that for a while. Then he takes off his cap and lays it on the table. He hangs his jacket up on a hook without a coat hanger. I
feel his weight pressing down the side of the mattress. His hand is on the other side of my body and he's leaning on it, the way a parent sits on a child's bed before giving it a goodnight kiss or drawing a cross on its forehead with a thumb.

Harry pulls the blanket back and joins me on the bed. Behind my back I hear him spitting on his hand, twice; sometimes he does it three times. I grip the metal bedframe tight, it's icy cold, my hands go numb. I notice a vague smell of bark. Harry plants his right arm immediately in front of my face, a solid pillar. The play of the dim light emphasizes the veins that crawl over the back of his hand like fat worms heading for his fingertips. Instinct tells them where to go. Like Harry. No thinking required. You just follow the chosen path to the end.

In my mind's eye a light shines on a portrait of my parents, a framed photo that doesn't exist, which I compose while looking at it. My mother is in a lady's suit with her knees turned aside and her ankles crossed elegantly, sitting on the edge of a French armchair: carved wood, curved legs, lion heads. Her hands are resting on her lap, relaxed but self-assured. Half-hidden behind her is the unassuming figure of my father: a servant charged with sliding up the chair. They didn't endow me with any distinct talents. They gave me their kind support. They increased my confusion. With infinite patience, they sketched panoramic views when I needed coordinates and precise orders.

41

We clean our pistols daily. Every morning after the second inspection round. We never do it simultaneously. We sit either side of the bunkroom door. As Harry clicks in the safety catch of his Flock 28, my arms are stretched out toward the entrance with my finger curled around the trigger. In a flash the fifteen cartridges are in
his jacket pocket and the pistol is disassembled on a cloth on his lap. Slide, barrel with chamber, recoil spring guide. The black, steel-reinforced polymer frame. The magazine tube, the magazine spring, the feeder. I recognize all of the parts in the corner of my eye. In my mind I speak their names out loud, as if they're essential information I must never forget, words I have to be able to retrieve even when semi-conscious, long after I've forgotten my own name.

Harry only does what's strictly necessary. Neither of us says a word, the procedure demands absolute concentration. Having your pistol in pieces on your lap is an extremely vulnerable position. But it is incontrovertible that we also love the ritual and the reassurance of understanding the technical side of the tool we use and, given our profession, rely on to protect our lives.

In less than two minutes, Harry has carefully cleaned the barrel and tested the sear and the firing-pin spring. A dry, insignificant click. And then another, in full accordance with the regulations: the joy of twice pulling the trigger. Then the rapid succession of precisely fitting locks and engagements that turn the inconsequential pieces of metal into a deadly weapon.

42

I can hear it clearly. The sound has been absent for a month; I recognize it instantly. The toilet is to the left of the storeroom, our bunkroom to the right. When we're not using the toilet, we always leave the door ajar to let it air. I can hear the whistling to about midway through the basement, beyond that the sound is too vague and I'm no longer sure whether I'm actually hearing it or just imagining it. Like a month ago, the sound is just below the hum of the emergency lighting. I imagine it as taut, extremely thin gauze. Other noises pass through it freely.

43

Perhaps Harry's hearing isn't as good at those frequencies. “A whistling sound?”

“Do you hear the lighting, the hum of the fluorescent tubes? It's just under that.”

Harry looks at the light fittings for a while. He tilts his head to a ridiculous angle, horizontal, as if to literally catch the whistling sound in his ear as it falls from above.

“No, I can't hear a thing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I hear the emergency lighting.”

“Not the whistling?”

“No whistling. I don't hear any whistling.”

“Just under the lighting.”

He shakes his head. “I don't hear it.”

We continue our round: the hems of our pants tapping against our polished shoes; the heavy material of our uniforms rustling and rubbing as our legs cross. Underfoot, now and then, the grating of a stone, stowaways smuggled into the building in the tread of expensive tires. Harry slows and stops. Frowning, he looks at me.

“Do you hear other noises too?”

“What do you mean?”

“Whistling sounds. Have they been bothering you long?”

I search his face for a clue, reading the lines and folds around his mouth, nose and eyes. I take my time, giving myself two seconds, three, four if necessary, to discover that he's having me on. That he's simply been slack and neglected to push the button back up, so that the float jams and the water keeps trickling. That he can hear it just as well as I can, the running water, and now I notice that the sound is as clear here, on the opposite side of the basement, as it was over there. As if the toilet has been moved behind my back to Garage 5. If I couldn't see where I am with my own two eyes, I would swear I was standing next to the toilet.

44

In the end we completed the round, marching all the way back from Garage 5 in silence. I heard the whistling constantly, but didn't ask Harry about it again.

I push the toilet door wide open, ignoring what I experience as an increase in volume, ignoring what my ears tell me. I want certainty, confirmation. I mustn't exclude the possibility that the never-ending exposure to almost constant silence has affected my hearing.