Peter Terrin - The Guard

“Then the load compartment would be filled with the trays they’ve just emptied, surely?”

“True.”

“He was eight days late,” I say after a silence. “That’s a long time.”

“There could be numerous causes for that, Michel. Causes we can only guess at.”

“We almost starved to death.”

“We might not have been the only ones. Maybe we got off lightly. Maybe other places have suffered casualties.”

“You think?”

“I don’t know. The main thing is we’re not dead. Understand? You and me, we’re still alive.”

63

I’m washing our socks, kneading the wet, black lump against the sloping sidewall of the washbasin. Harry comes up behind me. When I neither stop nor turn around, he sits down on my bed.

“The driver said, ‘Be glad I still bring you anything.’ What he meant was: We should be glad he still brings us anything. We should appreciate it. He meant: I’ve been racing around all day. I’m exhausted. But I’ve still made it here with your provisions at this hour. And then you treat me like this. He must have been pissed off about me kicking him in the butt after such a long day. That’s what I think. That explains his reaction.”

“Maybe,” I say, “but I didn’t get the impression he was reacting out of anger. Plus, he didn’t look tired. He didn’t look like he’d been working all day.”

“Those guys are all front, Michel. Even when they’re tired. What were we like ourselves? Always ready with a smart answer. Never backing down.”

I wring the water out of the lump cautiously, trying not to rip the old material. I hang the socks up on the side of Harry’s bed. It will take hours for them to dry.

“His day’s almost over,” Harry says. “His second-to-last address is close to the depot and we’re more or less on the way back to base. So he thinks, I’ll unload the van first, then I won’t have to drive all the way back later. That’s why the van was already empty, except for our ration.”

64

It’s night. In these unchanging surroundings lit by emergency lighting, the days don’t differ from the nights. But still my wristwatch and biology have the capacity to color the hours, dividing the days into sections. It’s night and I walk past the garages alone.

I keep my eyes peeled, but let my mind wander. I feel like Harry and I have overlooked something. If only the driver had stressed the most important part of his sentence. That’s the problem. What, for instance, does it mean if he’d meant to say, “Be glad I still bring you anything?”

Should we be happy that he in particular has brought us these things? And what does that suggest? Does he mean that we already have another driver? That he’s not the only driver on this route, and we should be glad that he is still bringing us something, because he knows the other driver isn’t?

But maybe he wanted to say, “Be glad I still bring you anything.”

Has something caused a cutback in resupplying? Has there been a significant reduction in the number of drivers available and should we be glad he still comes? Is he virtually alone because no one else is willing to do the job? Because it’s too dangerous? Is there a strike going on or has a mutiny broken out?

Or was his rash outburst that we should be glad that he still brings us anything ? And should we conclude that daily necessities are in short supply, that there is an even more pressing shortage than the shortage which has been in force for so long now? And is that why he came at night, to avoid attracting attention? With a ration that was considerably smaller than the previous one? Is that why he came with just one ration, so that if he was robbed, he would only lose the one, and was that why it took him so long to resupply everyone?

I lean back on the entrance gate, close to the crack, the whirlpool in my head making me dizzy.

I hear a cyclist.

I hear a cyclist, no doubt about it! Every cell in my body stirs. The cyclist is coming from far away and headed in this direction. I recognize the sound as if he or she cycles past here every day, although I’ve pressed my ear against the crack countless times since the exodus of the residents and never heard anyone or anything. And now this, in this city, a cyclist, unmistakable. With each turn of the pedals, the chain scrapes over the chain guard, making an almost ringing sound, and when he or she is at the level of the entrance gate, I hear the groaning springs of what sounds like an old-fashioned bike seat, maybe a large one, a lady’s seat. I press my face against the crack. Vaguely I make out the wall tapering up to the street with the shadow of the tree above it: nothing else. But still I am certain that he or she is not cycling on this side, but on the other side, against the normal direction of the traffic, or at least in the middle of the deserted street. I listen for perhaps a full minute, until the rattling dies away and only the hum of the lighting is left.

I have heard it so clearly, my perception of it has been so acute that when I turn back to face the basement, the image of the cyclist is branded on my retina.

65

He feels the tension in his thighs. His muscles are as hard as steel, not just when he’s pushing down, but moving up now too. Tension that imperceptibly crosses the line to pain, at least where the bundles of muscle are attached to the knee joint, the spot that is taking the most stress because the bike is too small for someone his size and he never gets a chance to straighten his bent legs. The bike is the cause of his pain and this ride. They found it in an alley, a rusty lady’s bike, an alley here in the neighborhood, where they had no business being but still turned a profit, abandoned as if the thief had jumped off years ago and left it leaning against the wall, suddenly disinterested in his escape vehicle, dumping the evidence of his snatch and grab, a drug addict investigating his spoils next to the tilted bike, stashing money, credit cards, tablets and a cell phone in his coat and tossing the rest up onto a roof where no one will notice it and a suspicious stray cat will sniff it many months later before spraying it, day after day, so that years afterward the new inhabitant of the building will pick it up between two fingers with even greater aversion, this stinking, weather-beaten object, after having pulled on rubber gloves first and, to spread his weight, crawling out over the old tarred roof on all fours, studying it carefully and, without turning, calling back to his wife at the window that he thinks it’s not an animal after all but a handbag, he’s as good as certain, and then he holds it over the side of the roof and lets it drop into the alley next to an old lady’s bike. The alley on the edge of the neighborhood that is now restricted access, on whose borders they linger at night, bored out of their skulls. Until one of them slips on something disgusting in the dark, maybe a dead cat, and knocks over a bike as he falls.

A bike. None of them have ridden a bike in years, bikes are for kids and boring adults. But tonight this bike is a stroke of luck, a gift from the gods. After a bit of fooling around, he’s the one who suggests a suicide ride straight through the neighborhood that is the subject of the wildest rumors, with the real reason for it having been declared off limits lost in everyone’s memory. He should have kept his big mouth shut, he drew the short straw. The rattling chain drives him on, he swings his shoulders to push harder on the pedals. He has to go faster, faster. He feels naked to his bones. He’s an easy target. What’s he got himself into? Can the hair in his nostrils filter air? And what kind of microscopic germs will grip onto those hairs, his eyebrows, the inside of his ears? What will dissolve in the water on his eyes? Will the wind on the round surface drain it off toward his cheeks or push it back in the other direction? Entering his body through the tear ducts?