Peter Terrin - The Guard

I stare at the red light in the frame for so long that the −1 becomes meaningless and it takes me a while to realize that it’s suddenly gone off. I keep looking at exactly the same spot. When I blink, I see it appear again as a vague glow. The after-image is displaced by a new light. It’s the same red, at most a little brighter, and now shaped like a zero.

For a short period I am convinced that I am controlling the light with my brain, through my gaze. I think of 1, I think of 2, and, look , the numbers light up before my eyes. It’s only at 4 that I hear something, a weak, subterranean rumbling, and only at 5, a handful of seconds after the disappearance of −1, that it hits me like a bucket of ice water: the service elevator is moving.

Breathlessly I follow the numbers, trying to avert them. 20 is a turning point. The moment I see that I haven’t succeeded in stopping it at 20, I realize in the darkness preceding 21 that the elevator is headed for this floor, 33, and me.

152

I’m sitting in front of the elevator with both hands clamped around the grip of the Flock. My relaxed arms are resting on my raised knees. I’d hit the bull’s-eye at fifty meters.

I concentrate on the sliding doors, no longer looking at the red numbers.

A sucking sound as it brakes, starting high and getting lower.

The familiar signal.

After a moment’s hesitation, the doors slide swiftly open.

I see the table in a sea of light.

It is as if the elevator is presenting me with the table.

The hatch through which Harry and I climbed up onto the roof of the cabin is still open.

The door stays open longer than usual.

I start to get a nasty feeling that something is expected of me. The elevator has come to visit me of its own accord to present me with the table. It’s my turn.

Again I check the corners of the cabin. The table can’t hide anyone, therefore there is no one in the elevator. Just the table.

Then I catch sight of the control panel. Because I’m sitting on the ground, I notice a slightly larger button at the bottom, separate from the long row like the dot of an exclamation mark. There is a picture of a red telephone on it. Next to it, thin vertical stripes indicate a built-in speaker.

What would happen if I pressed that button? Would I get someone on the line: a call center, a young woman asking how she can help me?

But when I inquire about the situation outside, she skillfully avoids answering. She repeats her question, asking how she can help me, if there’s a problem with the elevator. She quotes the address. She looks at the dot in the area shaded red on the map on her wall. She has been selected for her high tolerance. They’ve taught her techniques; it’s impossible to throw her off balance. I can curse, rant and rave, the woman’s voice coming out of the speaker will sound just as cheerful and she will give away just as little. They have impressed upon her that someone can be listening in. Sometimes. She doesn’t know when. She has to placate the client; that’s her number one priority. She has to give the client the impression that help will be arriving shortly. That is the only service she is able to provide: lying. She has bunched her hair together in a ponytail on the top of her head. The ends curl in. In the toilet she dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue, controlled and systematically, until the tears stop coming. She introduces herself as Julie, but her name is Isabelle.

I get up and walk slowly to the light-filled cabin. Just to hear Isabelle’s voice! I am willing to play the game. I won’t make her lies any more difficult and I’ll ask her if she can send someone soon to fix the elevator.

Close to the cabin I hear a double click and all at once the two doors slide toward the middle. I pull my arm back and stiffen. For a couple of seconds I have a clear view of the planks that make up the tabletop, with a lengthwise strip of unstained gray wood, a rough silhouette of a body.

The elevator stays where it is.

Has Harry sent the elevator because he’s back in the basement with the last resident safe in the storeroom? But how would he know I’m on 33? It must have been me, groping around in the dark. I must have pushed the button to call the elevator myself. In the basement the doors resumed their struggle with the barrels of liquid soap and finally won.

I make myself scarce. My position is known.

153

I open my eyes. The sunlight is as sharp as broken glass, slashing my brains. Within seconds, pain has filled my head. I have slept. I’m lying on my back on a parquet floor and feel very precisely the points where my skeleton has been resting on the wood for hours. If I want to get up I’ll have to move, but what should I try to move first?

I raise my arm uncertainly, as if I’m pushing my limits with an overly ambitious weight. The cumbersome thing waves over my chest and stops ten centimeters in front of my face. I read 11:17 on my watch. With a thud, the arm falls on my hip and rolls to the floor. Sleeping has exhausted me.

The radiator near my shoulder has thick, decorative elements. Descending from the high ceiling are several angular chalices, orange glass in black frames, finished with fringed trim; they hang down as low as the standard lamps are high. In a single, exhausting movement, I hoist myself up onto all fours. I let my head hang for a moment, until the dizziness from my low blood pressure passes. Then I move to a squat, laying the Flock aside, picking up my cap and arranging it on my head at the prescribed angle. Dark blocks of wood are set into the parquet, forming dotted lines across the breadth of the room.

I lean heavily on a low, narrow table against the back of a long sofa. I see my hand lying next to a dish, an even dark blue with a gold rim, containing brooches, rings, bracelets and pearl necklaces, as if they were candy or pieces of fruit to pop in your mouth casually in the course of the day.

154

I see the newspaper from a distance. It’s lying next to an antique crystal bowl on a gleaming cherry sideboard. It is folded neatly, but yellowed and wrinkled, as if it has been removed sopping wet from a letterbox and never read. That last bit is highly likely: the dateline is the day before the great exodus.

Like a dog snatching a piece of sausage, I grab the newspaper and throw myself on the floor. My heart is pounding, my hands trembling. I expect a headline that will explain everything in one glance, five or six words that will reveal all the things Harry and I could only guess at in the basement. On the upper left, in a typeface from the top of the case, I immediately strike gold: “Army ignores bills.” While running my eyes over the lead, “Defense launches internal investigation,” I try to reconcile this news with the events that followed it, but that proves difficult. I read the sentence in the middle of the article that has been printed in slightly larger, red letters to attract the readers’ attention. “The water in the barracks was almost cut off because of the unpaid 10,000 euro bill.” I read the words again, perplexed. Then the start of the article, which repeats everything I’ve read so far. Negligence in a few barracks, after which the ministry of defense launched an internal investigation.

Unpaid bills? Could unpaid bills have been the germ of a conflict that, for reasons unknown to me, led to the city emptying shortly afterward?

At the bottom of the page is another article about the army: the three large cities in the south of the province have called in the army to assist with garbage collection until an agreement has been reached with the unions. On page three, again: “Army helicopter hits power line.” The emergency landing turns out to have been successful, the crew unharmed: seven soldiers thank and praise the pilot.