Peter Terrin - The Guard

I concentrate on the crown of his head: a flaky, off-white, coin-sized bald spot. His crown is not funny. It’s over. I have everything under control again. It’s over, I tell myself. Friday. It was funny, terribly funny, but now it’s already a lot less funny. Soon it will be over completely.

81

I sit down and ask casually how the night went. At the same time I see that his cap is missing; his relaxed, empty hands are lying on his lap. Where is his cap? Above his beard his cheeks are glowing. He’s sweating slightly, his forehead is gleaming, he’s staring straight ahead. He seems calm, but it’s like he’s still recovering from some exertion.

He says, “I caught a fly.”

“A fly? You caught a fly?” I hear my words, loud and clear. “That’s impossible. You can’t have.”

Slowly he turns his head toward me.

“The fly must be long dead by now. It’s months since I saw it. It’s winter.”

Harry is dumbstruck.

“It must have laid eggs…”

“Eggs? What are you talking about?”

“It can’t be the same fly, can it? Did you see the fly? A couple of days after the strawberry jam? I saw a fly then. It was sitting there on the jam stain. Did you see that fly then?”

“No.”

“Or hear it? You could hear it really well too.”

“What difference does it make, Michel?”

“I’m just curious. It seems so unlikely.”

Harry and I gaze into space again. The emptiness is not as empty as I thought. Could the fly have survived on our measly breadcrumbs? How long does a fly live, an ordinary housefly? It must have lain low, saving energy. This basement has laws no one can escape.

“It wasn’t easy,” Harry says.

Maybe he coincidentally woke the fly up out of some kind of hibernation.

“I followed it all night, losing sight of it more than once, but I always found it again. Fortunately it was fairly slow. It wasn’t really flying, just hovering. But whenever I got close, it shot off with a series of sharp, angular movements and I completely lost track of it. Then suddenly it would be hanging there as cool as you please in front of my nose again. As if it was making fun of me.”

It’s the same fly or a fly from the same family. Didn’t the other eggs mature properly? Is it possible for a fly to have just one descendant?

“A fly,” he says, “can’t keep flying forever. Eventually it has to land somewhere. I was more patient than the fly. It was an excellent test of my perseverance. Concentrating the whole time and waiting. When it landed on the floor I stalked it. Millimeter by millimeter. So slowly that I might have been able to grab it between my thumb and index finger. I just put my cap down on top of it. I didn’t even drop it; I just laid it gently on the floor. It didn’t notice a thing.”

“Is it still alive?”

“It’s under my cap. Between Garages 38 and 39.”

Harry stretches his neck and gives the curly hairs a good scratch.

“Can you remember your last shot, Michel? Do you remember when and where you last felt the recoil of your Flock in your wrist?”

I think of the bad guys in the training yard. Funny characters, short and stocky, some of them wearing large flat caps. The mothers with babies in their arms. I hear the quick, high song of the springs pulling on the iron weights, the dry hinges, the clang.

“Wasn’t that bliss?” Harry pulls his pistol out of its holster and turns it around dreamily in his hands, looking at it from all sides. “Isn’t it a magnificent thing? Look at it.” He lays the grip on the palm of his hand then wraps his fingers around it and extends his arm.

For a few seconds the Flock doesn’t move.

You could hear a pin drop.

“My last shot of significance,” Harry whispers, “was a steel bolt between the eyes of a stupid cow. ‘Bang!’” His arm swings up. He looks at me with a melancholy sneer. “Hardly a challenge… Shooting a fly out of the air would be a harder task. A test of our ability, you could say. With a bit of luck anyone could hit a stray dog or a bird. But a fly? Wouldn’t it be fantastic practice? We slide my cap over to a section with better light. Then we kneel down with our pistols at the ready, lift the cap slowly and wait until the fly has calmed down and takes off again to hover in the air. One shot each. You first.”

What happens to a fly that gets struck by a bullet in midair? A bullet that, in terms of size, is more or less of the same order of magnitude as the fly? The impact of a direct hit must be similar to that of a fly crashing into a wall with the speed of a bullet.

Since being detached here, we haven’t fired a single shot. Harry’s always been proud of that; it’s proof of our value as the ultimate deterrent, our cold-bloodedness. The organization will be sure to appreciate a remarkable achievement like that and it could very well be the deciding factor that leads to us being promoted.

Unauthorized use of ammunition is an offense of the first degree.

I rub my hands up and down over my face, tracing circles in my forehead with my fingertips. Then I tell him we can’t do it. I tell him we can’t shoot at the fly.

“Of course not,” Harry says, smiling. “You crazy? We’re not going to waste bullets on a fly.”

He struggles up onto his feet, his night has been long and intense. He collects the case with the brass rods and cleaning cloths.

What would have happened if I’d agreed?

Who would have heard anything?

We have 2,250 cartridges in stock, plus two times fifteen. Winchester, 9mm Luger (Parabellum). The cardboard of the boxes has grown velvety and slack from constant handling and opening. Soon the bottoms will tear off or give way, leaving the cartridges standing on the shelf in protest at their lack of employment, while I hold a tattered scrap of paper in my hand.

“But wouldn’t it be fantastic,” Harry says. “To take aim, pull the trigger and hit a fly?”

“Yes,” I say. “That would be a real experience.”

“Imagine the bang. In here!”

“We’d be deaf for a while…”

“Cover me.”

Harry opens the case and clicks in the safety catch of his Flock 28. I keep my arms stretched out in the direction of the entrance gate, finger on the trigger. In a flash the fifteen cartridges are in the pocket of Harry’s jacket and the stripped pistol is spread out on a cloth on his lap. Slide, barrel with chamber, recoil spring guide. The magazine tube, the feeder.

“What do we do with the fly?”

“Kill it,” says Harry.

82

Harry and I shake hands, exchange cursory New Year’s greetings and fall silent again.

We’re sitting at the entrance gate with a tin of corned beef each. We’ve saved up the last three days’ meat ration. It’s a moment we’ve keenly anticipated.

I stand up and listen at the crack. I listen for a minute, two. After about five minutes, my left leg starts to quiver. Just like last year, I can’t hear any fireworks going off, neither close by nor in the distance. I don’t hear any singing or cheering. I don’t hear any guns being fired in celebration. I don’t hear anything.

A quarter of an hour later I sit down on the stool. We stay silent, listening attentively to the world beyond the basement. Harry scoops up the meat with the teaspoon. I’ve cut mine into cubes.

At one o’clock, I stand up again. You never know.

At ten past one, Harry asks if I’m absolutely certain.

I don’t answer. I can’t be any clearer than that. He always ignores my date-keeping. Except for New Year’s Eve, or rather, New Year’s Day, a good hour after midnight.

Harry can go to sleep now but stays sitting.

He says we mustn’t fixate on the fireworks, they’re meaningless. It’s quite possible that the city is still partly populated. Fireworks have been banned for ages and they’re very hard to come by…