Peter Terrin - The Guard

The box is a good bit smaller than the previous one and exudes the smell of stale lavender. It once contained fabric softener, eight two-liter bottles.

Harry is almost beside himself with impatience but his hands stay glued to the Flock 28 while the driver, with growing reluctance, kneels to pull the bottled water back out of the depths. “Hurry up,” Harry snaps, coupling his order with a poke with his foot just when the youth is at his most defenseless. “Take it easy,” he says, remarkably unmoved. “I’m almost done.”

Afterward, leaning on his door, his right leg already in the cab, he looks us both in the eye by way of farewell. To me he seems much more mature all of a sudden. While dropping onto his seat, before slamming the door shut, we clearly hear him say the words, “Be glad I still bring you anything.”

58

We’re sitting next to the cardboard box, in front of Mrs. Privalova’s open garage, at a reassuring distance from the entrance gate, and neither of us is inclined to stand up and put an end to this party. For one and a half hours we’ve been sitting here as if in the company of an old mutual friend, who is telling us about long journeys, summoning up images of small harbors enclosed by steep mountainsides, sunbaked fishermen on strangely shaped boats who toss the morning’s glittering catch onto the dock while the cool breeze rattles the rigging. There is a blissful peace on our faces. We have earned this, even though we wisely stopped after a quarter of an hour’s gorging. Our initial regret about the lack of anything sweet, which evaporated at the sight of the tins Harry arranged around the box, now starts to nag again. Sugar would be a welcome change after the rich taste of fish in oil, but of course we don’t complain. I saw my own overwhelming desire reflected in Harry’s eyes as he tore open the first tin and shook the chunk of fish out onto his hand as if it was coming out of a baking tray and the sensuous golden-yellow oil ran down between his fingers. Fortunately our stomachs have shrunk and the deranged flurry passed quickly, before we did even more damage to our limited month’s supply. We know what we have to do; we just don’t feel like it. Everything has to go straight into the storeroom, under lock and key, we have to put an urgent end to our debauchery or face another period of devastating hunger. Harry leans back on his elbows, a pose people adopt on the beach, gazing out to sea. He says he could fall asleep just like that. If he closed his eyes for three seconds he’d be gone. I remind him that by rights I get to sleep first. He sniggers and agrees and says that, given that it’s now early in the morning, I have the right to go to sleep first in approximately sixteen hours; we’d do better to come up with something else. He’s in a playful mood and suggests that whoever makes it to the bunks first gets to sleep first. His words curl around between us before stopping and hanging motionless in the air over the cardboard box. Then, as if our fragile bodies have already made a full recovery from days and days of starvation, we scramble up and run to the door of the bunkroom, clawing at each other’s arms and screaming with laughter.

59

An hour later, I’m baking bread. Harry is snoring as if he’s faking it, his eyes resting deep in their dark sockets. Bread will alleviate our most pressing needs, delivering the desired volume to our stomachs. It would be better if we didn’t open anymore tins in the coming twenty-four hours. We have to battle the temptation with fire and sword. And after that, we need to reinstate our former iron discipline and keep ourselves going on a minimum of fuel. After the tyranny of blind hunger, I consider myself capable of living off the smell of baking bread alone.

60

I think of Claudia.

She’s dozens of meters above our heads in the Olano family kitchen, which is equipped with everything a chef desires and where this bread maker, before the arrival of a newer model, once stood. Every lunch Claudia is the center of a circle of braising, steaming and simmering, sautéing, hissing and spattering. The smells she brings to life cling to her, hanging onto her skirts like children, refusing to let go. After lunch the cheerful crew descend to our basement. A cloud that completely engulfs us, veiling the sharp-edged world.

61

We are sitting in our vests on either side of the door, which is ajar. The armholes hang loose under our arms. No matter how much liquid soap I use, the cotton stays gray without hot water. I’ve polished our shoes. The new shine keeps catching my eye. Our blue shirts are hanging upside-down to dry on the side of Harry’s bed.

“Do you know what your brothers are guarding?”

“Apparently Jimmy’s elite. An embassy. I heard something about it just before I got stationed here.”

He slides his cap back to scratch his head as if he’s about to launch into a complicated story, but doesn’t elaborate. He uses both hands to put his cap back at the prescribed angle. His broad forearms are deathly pale with the occasional long curling hair here and there, ginger like his beard.

“And Bob?”

Harry shrugs. “Bob’s Bob. He’ll have blown away a few bad guys by now. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

I don’t know why I brought up his brothers. Maybe because he told me about Bob and Jimmy himself when I started as a guard, about their special bond. And because that made their being posted to three different districts so peculiar. Were we subject to a special policy designed to protect families from multiple losses from a single incident? Or was it their own free choice? Thinking back on Harry’s stories now, I realize that they were all set in their childhood, on the farm; I can’t remember any others. Three young men in a hole up north. One beautiful, fickle girl would have been enough.

“No embassies for me,” Harry says. “We’re going to a villa. A white villa surrounded by gardens. You and me, Michel.”

It’s detectable, albeit with difficulty, the slight hesitation in his voice. The euphoria after the absence of the guard and the arrival of food seems to have ebbed a little. We are both being drawn back to the driver’s last words, spoken as if he was exhaling them while moving toward his seat. As if, rather than being formulated, they were being forced up out of his chest by his rising diaphragm. They have put down roots, deep in our subconscious, and are now pushing up quickly toward the light.

62

We’re doing a round when I break first and raise the subject of the resupply.

“That’s right,” Harry says. “The cardboard box was in the furthest corner…”

“Do you think he could have been keeping the rations hidden there? Out of sight of someone who happened to glance in through the windows?”

“Hidden? Then he would have thrown a blanket over it. The ration was right there in the back of the van. Why would he want to hide it?”

I shrug. “There weren’t any other boxes in the load compartment.”

“I noticed that.”

We shuffle on for a few meters until Harry gradually picks up the pace and we’re back at our normal tempo.

“We were the last address on his route,” he says. “That’s why the box and the water were right up the back.”

Were we the last address? It was the dead of night.

“If we were the last post on his route,” I say, “then it’s strange that there weren’t any empty trays in the back of the van. Trays he gets back when he makes a new delivery.”

“Maybe they put everything straight into storage at other posts?”

I see four or five beaming guards in a storeroom. One stands at the trays, the others at the shelves. The first says the name of the provisions out loud, then tosses them to the right man. In a few minutes everything is in its place.