Peter Terrin - The Guard

Harry’s right though when he whispers that we can’t just burst in on him. If we don’t say anything and try to take him by surprise, it could turn out very badly. We have to avoid getting into a scuffle. We have to identify ourselves and hope that the resident keeps a cool head.

139

The wainscoting in the high-ceilinged hall behind the swing doors makes us feel like we have entered a country manor. There are no lights on anywhere. After so many hours of watchfulness, it’s a real effort to raise our voices. Harry takes the lead, announcing our presence, giving the name of the organization. As long as he’s shouting, I’m deaf to anything else and someone could come up behind me and shoot Harry straight through my head. I call out now and then too. We’re two frightened children trying to chase away the woodland spirits by making lots of noise. Everything in the apartment looks big and heavy. Bigger than usual, no doubt of that, but so oversized that even the enormous living room doesn’t bring them back to normal proportions. Perhaps because of the shadows. A serrated bar to hang a kettle off extends out of the brick fireplace. It’s hard to believe we’re in a city, twenty-nine floors up and not in the English countryside. We walk from a living room to a salon, through a book-filled library to another study. In the sleeping quarters we lower the volume of our calls. The bedrooms have thick carpets and romantic wallpaper, four-poster beds with heavy, turned woodwork. All six of them are empty. No signs of life anywhere. Harry whispers that he’s hiding from us. He warns the resident that we’ll have to search for him and explains that we’ve come to get him because it’s all become much too dangerous for him to stay here alone. I add that we can’t possibly leave without him. I notice that my tone of voice is lower, less commanding. We stand there motionless, giving our words time to sink in.

140

Far from the sleeping quarters, in a billiard room with four doors, we stop for a moment. The balls are arranged neatly on the table. On the way here, Harry and I called out loudly once more, insisting that the resident show himself, to no avail.

“I know he’s in the apartment,” Harry whispers confidently. He means, I’m quite capable of counting to forty, but that wasn’t even necessary, because only thirty-nine residents left the building. He suggests we lie low for a while with the flashlight off. The man’s trembling in a wardrobe somewhere. If we keep quiet long enough, he’ll get curious and come out of his hole and then we’ll find him soon enough.

I don’t ask why there aren’t any lights on anywhere. Has the resident been living without electricity? Did he hear us coming? Did he see us, our caps, our uniforms? Did he catch a glimpse of our emaciated, bearded faces as we waved the flashlight around and take us for two murderers from the back streets of the city?

We leave the billiard room and keep watch in one of the halls. For about twenty silent minutes we stand in the dark with our Flocks in our hands. Then Harry comes closer and whispers slowly, “Maybe something’s happened. To the resident.”

I hear a cow moo. She’d already started while Harry was talking. I hear the last half of an angry outburst, although the sound hardly differs from the silence. Can I hear a cow here, behind eight centimeters of glass, behind walls that are thicker than the length of Arthur’s arms? Wouldn’t the cow have to be standing right in front of the building? There it is again: agitated, a quick succession of short, powerful, identical moos. More bellow than moo. I see the head and neck stretched out, eyes bulging, breath steaming out of her warm lungs. The sound in the night has a piercing loneliness. Is it because we’re up so high? Is there a direct line from the apartment to the field the animal is standing in, without anything in between? Has the sound been sucked in through a ventilation shaft and funneled into the apartment?

I’d like to ask Harry if he’s heard it, but I don’t want to erase the bellowing with my own voice. I feel that my silence draws his attention to the sound. A cow. A living animal not far from here, that hasn’t been eaten.

141

“Harry?” More than really whispering, I mouth his name. We were making our way up the hall when I heard something behind us and stopped: a vague murmur, suddenly drowned out by the rustling of Harry’s uniform, quite far away from me, short but remarkably loud, as if he’s done something like quickly rub his arm over his torso or raise a knee, just once. I turn in that direction and mouth his name again, panting it out a little louder. I feel in the pitch darkness with one long arm. He’s no longer there. “Harry?” More than five seconds pass. As if someone is holding me underwater and I’ve used up all of the air in my lungs. I can’t stay here. I grope my way back to where I think I last heard Harry. “Harry?” I press the button on my watch three times, pointing the light in different directions, because I’m standing in a doorway and a meter farther, the pale gleam of the dial shows another hall at right angles to the one I’m in. I wait, listen, stare. I think of Harry who could be standing still and waiting somewhere close at hand. I speak to him in my thoughts, beaming out my concentration like an antenna. I shuffle around the corner, to the right, searching for doorways, rooms. “Harry?” I squat; my mouth is dry, my tongue swollen. Why doesn’t he flick the flashlight on just once? Has something happened to him? Has he discovered something? I crawl on all fours back to the spot where I lost him twenty minutes ago. I curse myself. Perhaps we’ve lost each other because I didn’t stay put. Why didn’t I stay where I was? I try to summon up the sound of his uniform again, the movement that made it rustle. Has someone overpowered him? “Harry?”

142

The dawn comes as deliverance. When the black has changed to the deepest blue and the sky is unmistakably growing lighter, Harry disappears from my thoughts for a moment. I look up from the floor at the large window as if it’s a cinema screen. It’s a spectacle I haven’t seen for a long time and after a tense night it moves me to tears: the comforting proof that at least these certainties — the earth revolving on its axis, the existence of the sun — have remained unaffected.

143

I spend the whole day hiding behind a tall armchair. I have ripped open two cushions, with embroidered hunting dogs and flying ducks, and slowly saturated the pale balls of cotton wool with my dark-yellow pee. I haven’t been able to make out any other sounds. No bellowing, no rustling garments, no man climbing out of a wardrobe. Lying down, I’ve stared out over the floorboards.

Either Harry’s dead or Harry thinks I’m dead.

And where is the last resident? Is he the one who got Harry? Is Harry’s lifeless body now lying somewhere on oak floorboards just like these, stiffening in position?

The chance of Harry walking in, saying my name and then laughing as he asks what I’m doing hiding behind a chair, that chance only existed briefly at daybreak. Still, I try to banish all other thoughts. I wait for his footsteps, the tap of his trouser hem against the smooth shoe. I wait where I am.

144

Late in the afternoon my tummy rumbles. It must be audible in the adjoining room and the two halls that lead into this one, maybe even farther. I grab my ankles and curl my body up tight, tensing my abdominal muscles to drive out the growling.

Later cooling sweat sends shivers down my spine.

Toward dusk, the confined space behind the armchair is a prison and the urge to stand up grows too strong.

My perspective changes dramatically.

I fit the interior.

Otherwise nothing else happens. The air in the room stays still. I could just as well have spent the whole day standing like I am now, with my hands on the back of the armchair. I could have sat in the chair all day. Nobody would have noticed.