Peter Terrin - The Guard

86

I am calmer than ever. I didn’t jump when I heard the colossal mechanism start up. Nobody appears in the nighttime light streaming in through the half-open entrance gate. It is not nighttime light, it is more a shadow, free of artificial lighting or moonlight, a slightly different version of darkness over there, past Garage 1, on the far side of the basement; I can point it out. The gate can’t be any higher than a meter above ground level. I am sitting motionless outside the bunkroom door. Yes, I am almost sure of that. I’m calm. It’s a nightmare threatening to take shape before my eyes, but I’ve always been prepared for the worst. I know what’s coming and what I have to do. I am a guard. I won’t need to think. My self-assurance surprises me and I wonder how long it will last. I have to keep thinking, especially when I feel it’s no longer necessary. A scream germinates in the back of my mind. This is no optical and aural illusion because the gate starts up again: the shadow disappears, the shock of the heavy gate on the concrete. I feel it all the way over here — in my feet, up through the legs of the stool and in my bottom — I’m as sensitive as an insect’s antennae. Then a flash, a pinprick deep in my brain. I grab the Flock, smothering the scream and blinking away tears. I hear cautious footsteps, still a hundred meters away, coming closer. Where else could they go? In the blinking, an explosion of spots and patches on the inside of my eyelids; in the basement, a flashlight being waved around, unable to reveal me at this distance, even if it’s pointed in my direction. Which it hardly ever is: it shines on the garages and their numbers, always indicated by large digits on the left, and on the emergency lighting covers, seals spread out over a dark beach. Walnut. Unmistakable. Harry is awake and has crept out of the bunkroom, taking up position on the chair without the slightest sound. The smell is strong; he’s in his vest. I don’t dare to turn my head out of fear the movement will betray us. I stay in my cocoon. For now, I hold the hand with the Flock low. We have to wait. Will Harry give me a sign? Our nerves will be put to the test. The closer we allow the intruder to approach, the greater our chance of eliminating him with a single shot each. But the chance of one of us being hit increases as well. It’s clear that he is in unknown territory; he hasn’t grasped the layout of the basement yet. Or is he looking for a particular garage in which something of great value is stored? In that case we can simply enclose him and shoot him dead. The flashlight is now sweeping the floor, moving back and forth in wider and wider arcs as if he’s sowing light. I can’t make out even a glimpse of the intruder himself. He has reached the middle of the basement. I judge it the moment to aim my Flock, gradually, with the intruder still at a distance, adjusting my position. Right away my extended arms begin to tremble under their own weight, but not from fatigue: I will be able to maintain this pose for a long time, as long as it takes. Betting on him being right-handed, I aim to the right of the light and a little higher, at the breast. He is walking straight into our trap, we don’t have to do a thing. Then he stops and shines the flashlight down in front of his feet, holding it still. The arc of light extends to within a couple of meters of the toes of our shoes. He has obviously noticed something. My index finger has almost squeezed the trigger. “Hello? Are you there?” A deep bass, suggesting a big man. Harry remains silent and so do I. One more step toward us and he’s dead. But the man stays where he is. “Are you there?” Above the light I’ve seen a flash of white: teeth. I aim the Flock a fraction higher. “It’s me,” he says. “The guard.”

87

“Who sent you?”

The guard keeps the flashlight aimed at his feet, presumably overwhelmed by Harry’s bellow, which echoes off the walls, harassing him from all sides.

“Who’s your employer?”

“The organization,” we hear, deep and calm.

“We’ve got our guns on you. Put the flashlight on the floor, light down. Then take three steps back.”

I see the beam of light contract and concentrate as a blinding disk, which is swallowed by the concrete.

“Where are your colleagues?”

“My colleagues?”

“The other two guards. Your comrades.”

“I don’t know. I’m alone.”

“You’re alone?”

“Yes.”

“Without any colleagues?”

After a moment’s consideration, “You’re my colleagues.”

Harry falls silent. He doesn’t stand up. I hear a deep dragging sound as he sucks breath into his lungs. The disillusionment has hit him hard. I decide to take the lead, ordering the guard farther back. I count his steps. At five I tell him to stop. As I walk toward the flashlight, Harry moves off to one side to cover me and make sure he doesn’t shoot me in the back by accident.

Shining the light on the guard, I immediately see the familiar uniform, the crease in the pants, the emblem: he’s one of us. Remarkably, the uniform seems to be standing up by itself, enclosing a figure that’s gigantic but absent. Then I see the whites of eyes under his cap, flicking on and off like two small beacons. I have to use my imagination in combination with the matte gleam of his pitch-black skin to make out his head against the darkness of the basement.

Under his arm he is holding a large cardboard box, whose bottom is bulging from the weight of its contents. He’s carrying it effortlessly, casually, as if it’s a beach ball that would blow away if he let go of it.

88

The flashlight is standing the other way around on the ground and casting a glow on the ceiling, so that it feels like we’re sheltering from the darkness under a tarpaulin of light. I don’t know what I’m eating. I recognize the taste: it’s fruit, in syrup, I must have eaten it before. I can’t put a name to it and at the moment I couldn’t care less. My left hand squeezes the enormous tin, at least five times the size of a corned beef tin and all mine. I concentrate on eating, greedily gulping down pieces of soft slippery fruit, chewing just long enough to avoid choking. Peach. I’m dizzy with excitement and haste. Harry’s eating frankfurters, stuffing them into his cheeks and washing them down with the liquid they came in. We’re eating as if the cardboard box isn’t filled to the top with tins. Extraordinary colors and shapes we haven’t seen for years, but they leave the guard cold. He doesn’t say a word, watching us indifferently. He’s sitting on his backside on the ground on the other side of the box and the flashlight. Kneeling and full of mistrust, we keep our eyes on him as if he could take the food away from us again at any moment.

89

Harry grabs the flashlight and shines it in the guard’s face from close by. The whites of his eyes are yellowish, but not unhealthy. The irises are so dark they’re absent. The pupils, provocatively large as a result, seem to go against the laws of nature by dilating in the bright light.

In answer to Harry’s question as to what’s going on outside, the guard shrugs. He claims to have spent an hour or two sitting in the back of a vehicle before they dropped him off. He couldn’t see anything and he didn’t hear anything either. He asks sheepishly if we can tell him what our location is. No, he doesn’t know, he was picked up without any explanation and brought here. At his previous post he was prohibited from communicating with his colleague, who manned the next box a little farther down the road. He doesn’t know why: he was used to it, he was taught not to ask questions. It was a remote storage depot. He’s not able, or allowed, to tell us anymore. No, he has no idea, but whatever it was, the capacity must have been enormous. Besides his colleague, the guard never saw anyone in the complex. There could have been fifty guards stationed there, it might have been just the two of them. He speaks calmly, his words babble along; that’s just the way things go.