Peter Terrin - The Guard

126

The service elevator, a little larger than the other two, is the only one with double doors that meet in the middle. Harry sends me to the staff storage cupboard for two barrels of liquid soap. When I come back, I see him working at the rubber. He’s used the paring knife to gouge out a notch. He digs at it and pulls pieces and long black strips out of the seal.

“Shall I get two more? There’s another two.” I nod at the fifteen-liter barrels.

Harry’s blank face bursts into a smile. He winks to show his appreciation. “Hurry.”

A little later we’re standing next to the double doors facing each other with our fingertips in the crack Harry has opened up. We both slide a foot past the halfway mark, crossing our legs. We puff up our cheeks. We form a strange but completely symmetrical figure, Harry and me, guards.

A long, hopeless period of strain and exertion follows. But once we’ve achieved an opening of about ten centimeters, the sliding doors suddenly capitulate and retract mechanically. Inside the elevator, the light flicks on, giving me the fright of my life. Momentarily blinded, I automatically let go. It’s as if we’ve tugged on a living creature and woken it, in God knows what kind of mood.

“Quick,” Harry says.

We slide the barrels into position. Thirty kilos on the left, thirty on the right. They do a good job of cushioning the blows of the sliding doors, which keep on wanting to close again. We stand there with our hands on our hips, like road workers looking at the new asphalt.

“Do you think the elevator still works?”

Harry nods, surprised by my question. “Of course, look.” He takes a couple of steps back and points at the small red light set into the top of the frame. “If the light’s gone back on here, it will be working on the other floors too. Try it, if you like. But not me. I’m not taking the elevator, Michel. I don’t know what’s waiting for us. Do you know what’s happened up there? Have you ever been there? I know I haven’t. If we use the elevator, we’ll have pretty little lights announcing our arrival. Don’t you think?”

I feel the heaviness in my exhausted shoulders. I have to think faster, I have to stay awake. There’s only one absolute certainty and that certainty is called a Flock 28 and it’s strapped to my hip. Everything else must at all times be appraised. Gauged. Sniffed out. Fortunately Harry is experienced. Together we can’t be outsmarted. I disappoint him, but he doesn’t hold it against me.

Harry steps tentatively into the elevator, saying that Arthur once told him about stairs that run down past the staff apartments to the ground floor.

I can hardly believe it. Not what he’s said about the stairs, but his unexpectedly mentioning Arthur’s name when I was thinking about him less than ten minutes ago. How strange it is after such a long time, even though it’s nothing special.

127

Harry doesn’t need to ask me for the chair. He only needs to glance up at the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator cabin. He moves over under the hatch to study it carefully, looking straight up with his head tipped so far back that his mouth hangs open.

“In and out,” he says, stepping up onto the chair. “We have to do it as fast as possible, not staying a minute longer than necessary. Upstairs is forbidden territory. But we’re both going, Michel, there’s no alternative. The alternative is very dicey. If something happened to one of us, preventing him from coming back, what would the other do then?”

I assume he means it as a rhetorical question, but either way, I try not to think about it. First things first, starting with the little things in my immediate vicinity that demand my attention.

Harry uses the paring knife to scratch away the dirt and paint. The hatch has almost certainly never been used. He keeps the base of his clenched fist close to it as if waiting for a signal. One firm blow makes the hatch pop up before falling back with a much louder clang. Above the cabin we hear the noise echo shrilly in the confined space, fading away and surging back, up and down the interminable shaft.

To climb up through the hatch we’ll need the table.

128

Harry shines the guard’s flashlight up the shaft. Its beam shows us the steel elevator cables and a black hole where they dissolve in the distance, creating an illusion of us holding long, fist-thick bars that stick up from the roof of the cabin. Harry shines the light back down at our feet to make sure we don’t stumble over anything. The shaft smells like a building site. It has never been subjected to any air but its own.

We assume the same positions as before. We’re halfway up to the ground floor, tugging on the doors at head height. I feel like I’m doing permanent damage to my back, muscles and joints. This time no mechanism comes to our aid, but the resistance does drop off noticeably after about ten centimeters. The light is dim, the polished stone floor gleams faintly. Finally there is no more resistance and the door stays open of its own accord; we gape with surprise for a moment and only then bend our knees to drop below the opening. My shirt is soaked, stretched over my skin like a chamois. Harry turns off the flashlight.

Minutes pass.

Together we peer over the edge. I feel a draft on my eyeballs. The slight gleam on the floor is the result of artificial lighting, tucked away somewhere to the right. We clamber up out of the shaft, making so much racket that I feel like they’re only holding their fire out of pity.

One behind the other, we creep along the wall, avoiding the open space like rodents. I don’t think Harry knows where we have to go. There were two possibilities. We’ve gone left. Into the darkness.

129

I hear Harry’s hand sliding over the stone skirting. If the entrance to the stairwell is on the right next to the elevator, we’ll only discover it after covering the entire perimeter of the ground floor on our knees and elbows, more or less the distance of our basement inspection round.

After what I imagine to be about thirty meters, we still haven’t found anything. After another five, I tap Harry on the calf. He stops immediately, lying there as if he’s dead.

I crawl up next to him and feel for his head and ear, which I move my mouth close to. I whisper that we should turn back, telling him that it looks like the door is located to the right of the elevators.

“Right,” Harry says into my ear in turn, “is toward the front of the building. The staff apartments are probably at the back. That sounds logical to me. Residents at the front, servants at the back. What do you think?”

Harry isn’t being cynical, he waits for my answer. And while I answer, I feel that I’m right. We can, after all, save ourselves an awful lot of misery by going back first to make sure. In my experience stairwells and elevator shafts are built close together.

I am now crawling in front and keeping up a good speed.

We creep past the yawning elevator doors. The indirect artificial light seems to increase a little in strength, shining along a wall. I see the bottom of an ornate frame, not much more than a shadow really, a jagged edge dissolving into darkness. As we get closer to the light, I am able to make out the veins in the light marble floor. The skirting stops. I feel a corner and, around it and set back a few meters, I see light under a door. Nothing on the sides, but at the bottom the gap is so big that I can see in past the door: the floor carries on and the reflection of another door is floating in the gleam.

I crawl into the niche. Harry follows me. Together we stand up. The handle is on Harry’s side. Slowly he pushes the door open. When he’s seen enough, he turns to me and whispers, “Toilets.”