Peter Terrin - The Guard

The emergency lighting is on and nothing like the emergency lighting in the basement. It’s a series of recessed wall and ceiling lights that would be invisible when turned off. Toilets on the ground floor where nobody ever comes. On the dark washstand a pile of folded towels is waiting next to the washbasin; the wicker basket is empty. Our uniforms look good in the large, tinted mirror. Two doors with, behind each one, the same dark washstand, the washbasin, the towels and the empty wicker basket. Wooden coat hangers in a built-in cupboard. A real painting on the wall: flowers with thick daubs of paint, as thick as the flowers themselves. Under the painting, a tall, two-person sofa with old-rose upholstery, armrests and a white varnished back.

Harry stands still in a cubicle and looks into the toilet bowl for a long time with me watching his back. I am wondering what has caught his attention, what he has found there, when a powerful jet breaks the water surface. In the midst of the tumult, Harry stares straight ahead as if there’s something of interest on the wall in front of him.

130

We crawl farther to the right and find another two doors, both locked. Almost on the opposite side, more or less where the entrance is in the basement, we come upon a door with a bare corridor behind it, tiled in functional white. My elbows and knees are sore and, without agreeing anything between us, we stand up and shuffle through the corridor with our backs against the wall. Now and then Harry flicks on the flashlight. The corridor is narrow and has a low ceiling, more a tunnel really. Three corners later, behind a heavy door with a hydraulic closer, we find the stairs, no wider than an ordinary staircase in an ordinary house.

Harry sits down on the bottom step and shines the flashlight higher. It reveals little: after a narrow landing the stairs change direction. Strands of dust hang from the bottom of the next flight, swinging slowly and weightlessly like unknown sea creatures in the depths of the ocean, illuminated for the first time.

We let the images sink in until we are familiar with every detail. In Harry’s face, lit by the glow of the flashlight, I recognize my own horror at climbing the stairs and leaving the safety of the ground floor behind us. One well-chosen word, spoken in the right tone of voice, could change everything. I don’t know where to find them, but that word and tone of voice do exist. Harry’s sitting down betrayed their existence.

Maybe Harry will suddenly say the word, thirty or fifteen or five seconds from now, without suspecting my thoughts. The way he didn’t suspect I had been thinking about Arthur when he suddenly said his name. Nothing special.

Afterward Harry will stand up. Without making any fuss, we’ll simply turn back. Giving each other a comradely pat on the shoulder or symbolically shaking hands before walking side by side down the long corridor to the lobby, which we cross calmly. This time we’ll feast our eyes on it all. We’ll take the towels from the toilet, the coat hangers, the perfumed toilet paper. We’ll climb up one last time to fetch the wicker baskets and say goodbye, then pull the elevator doors back until they meet in the middle, let the hatch bang shut and slide the table and soap barrels out onto the basement floor.

131

We’ve climbed four times sixteen steps without any sign of the first floor.

We carry on cautiously, making sure not to let the soles of our shoes slide on the steps. As soon as Harry’s head reaches the level of the next landing, he stops and inspects it with the flashlight.

We keep climbing. There are neither doors nor windows on the landings. I’ve stopped counting. I am convinced that the stairs lead directly to the roof. Stairs for maintenance access. How else would they get to the machine room if the elevators broke down?

A little farther up, the stairs come out on a small floor or spacious landing, the size of the garages in the basement. A lost space without any objects. No continuation of the stairs. We can’t possibly be near the roof yet.

Harry slides the light slowly over the walls.

The door doesn’t have a knob. On closer inspection we see the prints of dirty fingers where the knob would usually be. Hesitantly I press the spot with my index finger: the click of a magnetic lock. The fiberboard door swings a few centimeters toward us. Harry and I drop onto our left knees, out of the firing line, and aim, together with the flashlight, our Flocks at the crack.

Behind the fiberboard door, in a room not much larger than a shower cubicle, an ironing board is leaning against the wall, palm trees on its bleached and tattered cover.

A blue bucket is hanging from one of the legs.

It’s so unexpected that the whole strikes me as some kind of greeting or secret message, set up here for us long ago.

132

Daylight. It is dim, the light of a cloudy afternoon that has reached here after detouring through rooms and around corners and down meters of hallway. But there is no doubt that it is natural light which, as dim as it is, demotes the flashlight to the level of a toy, a battery-operated gadget for projecting circles. Daylight comes first. The moment Harry pushes the door on the opposite side of the tiny room away from its magnet, there is daylight on our black leather shoes, on the scratchy carpet, on the plaster decorations on the hallway walls, on our hands, on our gray faces, in our ears: daylight everywhere. Its wholesome effect kicks in immediately.

133

Like the plaster monkeys on the wall, we’re squatting. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The work of an amateur with no sense of proportion. We stick close to the ground.

The blue of our uniform looks different from downstairs, more frivolous.

In a small kitchen we sit on the floor with our backs to the cupboards and the barrels of our pistols up near our noses. At first sight, there’s nobody. The stench rising from the pedal bin effortlessly overpowers the metallic smell of the Flock. A sliding door can be pulled shut to separate the kitchen from the living room. Through the legs of the table and the chairs, I see a shabby lounge suite, caramel colored. The sofa bathes in the daylight pouring in through the window, which is uncurtained and covers almost the full length of the wall.

We stay sitting there for a long time. If someone has hidden themselves away, they must think we’ve gone again by now. But we don’t hear anyone. Harry turns his head, his beard scraping and rustling over his collar. He looks me deep in the eyes, then nods.

Halfway into the living room the vast firmament is a dazzling gray. Solemnly we walk over to the window, taking slow considered steps, awed and anxious about the view the city below us will provide. On the long windowsill, close to the middle, is a round fishbowl. The evaporated water has left a filthy green coating three-quarters of the way up the glass.

134

I hear Harry speaking. He’s saying something, not whispering. His words haven’t got through to me yet. There’s too much information to process in this hallucinatory chaos. The view is overwhelming and therefore meaningless: my eyes are no longer used to panoramas. It’s the outskirts of a city, I recognize that much, but essentially see it as one big patch below me on the earth’s crust, extending to the foot of this building. I close my eyes and give myself a mental pep talk, using my most soothing voice. I compose myself and open my eyes, trying not to see everything at once, concentrating my vision as if looking through a straw. Two, three buildings. I see their walls, their shape; they’re still standing. Buildings with windows and roofs. Roofs with cupolas, chimneys, tiles, strips of tar and zinc. I expand my field of vision, unable to confine it any longer, and again my eyes skip from one spot to the next. I can’t detect any destruction, just buildings with windows and roofs. Here and there, the first green of spring emerging in the gray stone mass. I look at the horizon, where there’s nothing special to see, where the countryside begins. The gray clouds covering the city contain rain, not soot or ash or dust. I look at a window closer by, as if I’ve only just remembered the people who must have inhabited this city, with the buildings as proof. I check all of the chimneys one after the other, searching for a wisp of smoke or steam. I search for movement. The pattern of the road network. I search for moving cars, intersections. We’re up high, but not high enough to see over the roofs and into the streets. The windows again. The back of a TV. A half-drawn curtain. The corner of a wardrobe. Toadstools with white dots on the glass of the window.