“I’m not sure. I’m the reception assistant,” Vanja replied hesitantly.
“If you don’t know what your security level is, it’s not high enough.” The administrator graced her with a tight-lipped smile and resumed drumming on the desk. “Don’t you have work to do?”
On the third floor, in the department of civil affairs, there was an air of subdued but frantic activity. When Vanja came in to report Ulla’s disappearance, she was handed a stack of blank forms. The bloated clerk kept fiddling with his beard and glowered at Vanja across his desk when she couldn’t say how long Ulla had been missing, even though they lived in the same household. He shook his head and flipped through a binder, looking for yet another form.
“I’ll have to make a separate report of this,” he said, and took out a pencil. “Neglect of housemate. Names of the other occupants?”
“Neglect of housemate?” Vanja put her pencil down. “I don’t understand.”
“Here, in Amatka,” the clerk intoned, “whoever has a housemate with special needs, be it physical or mental, must ascertain daily that said housemate is in good health and having their needs met.” He looked at Vanja, his upper lip curling into a sneer. “Maybe you don’t do that in Essre, but here we take solidarity very seriously. It is your responsibility to acquaint yourself with the rules.”
“My apologies,” Vanja said. “There were circumstances. One of our other housemates died.”
“Were you close?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you have the presence of mind to visit poor Ulla?”
Vanja squirmed. “I forgot. I was taking care of Nina. A housemate. She was close to him.”
“Close to whom?”
“To Ivar. The man who died.”
“That’s all very well.” The clerk started filling out his own form. “There will be an investigation.”
When Vanja had completed her forms, the clerk skimmed through them, nodded, and sent her to the office next door. Next door, they took the forms for registration and forwarding to the police department. Vanja was told to return to work and go about her business as usual. They made her file a copy of her own report.
The rest of the day dragged. The buzzing noise, which until now had mostly felt like a vibration, came within her range of hearing as a deep bass note resonating in the background. If anyone else heard it, they didn’t mention it.
Every time someone walked past the reception, Vanja half expected them to stop and tell her that Evgen was dead, that Evgen had reported her, that they’d found Ulla’s body, that they’d found the papers in Ulla’s room, that Nina and Vanja were to be arrested on account of the papers. But each time, it turned out to be something else, and she breathed a bit more easily. The visitors looked harassed and tense. Anders’s virtually cheerful mood from yesterday had mutated into a kind of grim hysteria. He accompanied administrators to the archive and watched them come out again carrying sturdy boxes Vanja had never seen before, which must have come from the secure archive. She refrained from asking. It felt safer to go unnoticed.
In the afternoon, the same clerk who had taken Vanja’s report came downstairs and handed a form over to Anders. “They’ve arrested that librarian now,” he said.
Anders brightened. “Have they, now!”
The clerk nodded and ran his fingers through his beard. “Yep.”
Vanja tried to look suitably interested. “What will happen to him?”
The clerk peered at Vanja and then at Anders. “He’ll be interrogated. I suppose the next step is finding out whether he was acting alone or not.” He went back to combing his beard.
On the plaza around the commune office people walked with drawn-up shoulders and frequent glances toward the horizon. A couple of them just stood there, staring. Vanja followed their eyes. They were all looking eastward, in the direction of the lake. Beyond the low houses of the colony, a narrow silhouette rose toward the sky. It was curved at the end. It seemed to grow taller by the minute. Somewhere in the plaza, someone let out a shrill noise that went on and on. The rest of the colony had discovered the pipes.
FOURDAY
The children were sent away on Fourday morning. They were packed into the passenger car, the freight cars, the locomotive, the youngest children in the arms of the older. A huddle of parents who couldn’t let their children go without saying good-bye waited on the platform. They couldn’t touch them, just watch. Many of them tried to smile and look proud. Some called out, wishing the children an exciting trip, telling them to behave. Nina stood at the edge of the group. She was hugging herself, clutching Vanja’s hand hard enough to make it painful. Tora and Ida were nowhere to be seen; they had been among the first to get on the train. The last of the children were climbing up the stairs now, each with a small satchel slung across his or her shoulder.
A man left the group and rushed over to a blond boy who stood in line to board the passenger car. He picked the boy up and held him close. Over the boy’s shoulder, Vanja could see his father’s face contorting in pain, his teeth bared. She had to look away.
In the shocked silence that descended on the platform, the only sound was the man’s hacking sobs. Eventually, a platform worker took him by the shoulder—not unkindly—and pried the boy out of his arms. The father stood with his hands outstretched while the boy was lifted onto the train. The last door closed with a crash that reverberated down the platform. Nina winced, as though she had been struck. She turned around and walked back into the colony, her strides so long Vanja had to follow at a trot.
Through couriers and overseers, the committee saw to it that everyone remembered that sending the children away was just a safety precaution. After all, this had been done before, on occasion, just in case. Every time, the children had been allowed to return within a week.
Vanja was asked to telephone Essre to inform them about the children’s imminent arrival. The person on the other end sounded bewildered.
“You’re breaking up,” he said. “What’s that?”
“We’re sending the children,” Vanja repeated.
“I can’t hear you properly,” said the operator. “If there are more of you, please take turns speaking.”
“It’s just me,” Vanja said.
“I’m hanging up now,” the operator said. “I’ll try calling you up.”
The telephone went dead. Vanja waited for the call for fifteen minutes before trying herself. There was only the hiss of an empty line.
Paint and brushes were distributed at midday, to supplement verbal marking with text. Anders sent Vanja out to mark corridor walls, doors, and stairs. The departments were all buzzing with quietly frantic activity: hurried steps across office floors, agitated voices behind closed doors. Occasionally someone would open a door to peer suspiciously down the corridor where Vanja was marking a wall or a staircase. She tried to make out the conversations but was only able to catch random words here and there, none of which made her any the wiser. The black paint had an overpowering smell and wouldn’t quite stick to the walls; it took two layers to make the letters solid. When Vanja finally ran out of paint, her shoulder hurt and her right hand was cramping. She just made it back in time for the three o’clock marking in the reception.
The line to the leisure center wound all the way into the street. Everyone was on time and waited in line in silence. Nina looked pale and somehow shorter than usual. She clutched Vanja’s hand tightly.