Peter Terrin - The Guard

145

I can only see high-rise. It undoubtedly adds to the charm of the apartments, their looking out over the other tall buildings in the center of town. Especially now, at the start of the evening, the view is irresistible. The streets remain hidden, as if intentionally. Again there are electric lights, but again there is an absence of any movement that suggests the presence of humans. In the clear sky I can’t see any dissipating vapor trails from passenger jets. Only a purplish dot, far away, that soon disappears between invisible layers of air. The sky is empty and endless. The sunset casts a spell on me. For more than fifteen minutes, I don’t look over my shoulder; until the sun has gone down, I am immortal. Maybe Harry and I were profoundly mistaken and right now parents are popping out to the supermarket to buy some meat, a carton of milk, some butter. A beautiful blond in a black dress rearranges the wine glasses on Table 18, while the first customers enter the restaurant, waiting politely in the entrance hall for her to come over. In a vending machine in the train station concourse a chocolate bar with peanuts slides toward the edge of the abyss.

146

I creep around in the dark. The resident can’t possibly still be hiding in a wardrobe. Harry has gone looking for him, just like me. The resident comes first. If I find the resident, I’ll probably find Harry too. We just lost each other in the dark. I should have stayed where I was, but I didn’t. Harry had his Flock in his hand, his finger on the trigger. Even taken by complete surprise, even if a piano wire had been tossed over his head and pulled tight around his throat by a burly man, he would have still got off a shot. That didn’t happen either. Since he, just like me, doesn’t know what’s going on with the resident, he’s keeping a low profile. On the other side of the manor, he’s sweeping the dust and dirt away from the edges of the rooms, just as I’m doing in this wing. One thousand square meters. I turn onto my back, carefully pull my shirtsleeves away from my bleeding elbows and make a small calculation. It seems ridiculous to me: one thousand square meters, that’s forty meters by twenty-five! The apartments are definitely larger. Whoever claimed they were a thousand square meters? I can’t remember. Was it Arthur? Was he using “a thousand” as a figure of speech to show how big they are? As a symbol of the residents’ extraordinary wealth? Their insatiable extravagance?

147

I lay the Flock on my stomach, then open and close my hand to avoid cramp. I am lying motionless on the floor, my arms alongside my body as if I’m waiting for the doctor and have already lain down on the bed. Has Harry started adding it up now as well? Does the apartment seem larger to me because I’ve never been here before and have no overview? Familiarity makes everything smaller. What’s more, I’m looking at it all in moonlight from floor level. The walls are two stories high.

On display in the middle of the room is a large design object with steel cables and several chromed tubes. A piece of fitness equipment. I can’t think of any other purpose. Two serious men look down on the device disapprovingly from their dark portraits on the wainscoting.

I mustn’t fall asleep. Despite everything, I feel as if I could fall asleep effortlessly, with a brief, blissful awareness of it happening, me disappearing into myself. I scratch my beard, stick a finger in one ear and jiggle it as quickly as I can. The pleasure spreads over my skull, opening my mouth and refreshing me. After the noise has left my head and I can hear the silence again, I press in the safety catch and strip the Flock: slide, barrel with chamber, recoil spring guide. I keep my eyes on the dark-swathed ceiling. Twice I overcome the resistance of the trigger: two clear clicks of the hammer and firing pin. For a few seconds, the parts are spread out on my stomach. Nobody notices it. Nobody seizes the opportunity. Then I click and slide everything back into place and it is as if the pistol, which I haven’t really cleaned, is brand new again and extremely reliable.

148

Perhaps I’m leaving a trail. When it gets light, my trail will be as visible as the slime of a snail that has been dragging itself around all night. Although I am certain it’s the same apartment, I don’t encounter anything that fits in with last night’s journey with Harry. The swing doors are unfindable, but the kitchen isn’t necessarily close to the swing doors; nothing here can be taken for granted. Everything looks the same, but I don’t recognize anything. I might as well be equipped with a faulty compass and surrounded by a swarm of mosquitoes in the barren landscape of the far North. I wouldn’t feel any more lost than here between the tapestries, candelabras and carved chests, faint with hunger.

149

A step. I feel another one higher up. I light the way with my watch. I’m far from any windows, in the heart of the apartment, somewhere in a small room. Narrow, wooden steps like the kind that lead up to a mezzanine or an attic. It’s close to morning, maybe the other rooms are already getting lighter. I haven’t heard a thing all night. The resident isn’t on this floor. He’s either dead or alive. If he’s alive, he must have fled out of fear, upward perhaps, to a higher floor. He expected the danger to come from below, merciless, like water rising in a flood. I creep up. The staircase is short, two or three meters, that’s all. I expect an intermediate level, a workroom, studio or loft, but my hand doesn’t feel the oak floorboards I’m used to. I feel the chill of stone. I enter a room that amplifies every noise I make. It reminds me of the landings Harry and I crossed earlier. Some distance farther along a new staircase begins, made of stone like the stairs between floors. Have I found my way back into the stairwell near the swing doors? Or is there more than one set of stairs? Are the apartments not only larger than a thousand square meters, but with layouts and dimensions that vary completely from one to the next?

150

Slinking is ridiculous and pointless. Except for the white marble columns, a double row of three, the imposing hall is virtually bare: every corner is exposed. I am alone. I stand up. I stand on two feet like a man. Is this a mosque? I see a vision of gray prayer rooms hidden behind faded warehouse gates, with cables and pipes visible on the walls, with low, false ceilings. But this makes me think of Mohammedan temples on the banks of the Euphrates. Every square centimeter is covered with tiles, together representing garlands of flowers, olive branches and symmetrical vines, blue, yellow, reddish brown, green, in numbers and patterns that make my head spin. I can hardly bear it. So much profusion is overwhelming. I concentrate on the low benches against the walls: they’re continuous, they pass under the keyhole-shaped windows and trace the perimeter of the hall like overgrown skirting boards. On the very far side there is a small interior balcony. But no carpets, not even a doormat. In the middle, the floor is a kaleidoscopic compass rose, a mosaic of the most colorful kinds of stone beneath a gold-leaf-covered chandelier as big as a treetop.

There, in the center, I also see myself. I see my uniform, stained and sagging. My cheap black shoes, my ruffian’s face. I feel like a desecrator. I’m still wearing my cap on my head.

151

I sweep the aluminum plate with the dim light of my watch. Two threes. I’m on the thirty-third floor. I repeat the sentence in my head, as if putting a seal on a certificate. With my back against the wall, I slide down onto the floor.

The stairs connecting the floors to each other are meant for domestic staff only. They share a single employer, after all. The residents have purchased the service, but that doesn’t make them their bosses. That’s why the staff can disappear into trompe l’oeils like Regency period servants and slip down secret corridors on their way to another floor, climbing wooden attic stairs to get there if necessary.