“A sight for sore eyes,” he says. “My good old buddies.”
“Shut up,” Harry says. “Papers. And fast.”
The driver shows both passes.
“And who are ‘we’?” Harry asks.
The youth casts a cool glance over one shoulder, then looks back at Harry, who still has his pistol trained on him from behind the van. “God knows who you are, but you look pretty hungry.”
Harry comes very close to losing his temper. “You said, ‘Here we are, then.’ Who are ‘we’?”
The driver grinned. “Me and my friend.” He raps on the side of the van.
For us, that rap is a punch in the face.
The guard.
Harry turns as white as a sheet.
I feel like my legs are about to buckle and force my knees back to lock them in place.
The driver raps on the van a second time and says, “We’ve had some wild adventures together.”
The silence that follows is broken by the youth’s nervous laugh. “Before you attack and eat me alive, I’ve got rations in the back. Do you hear me?” He waves both hands. “Can you understand me?”
“Who did you have those adventures with?”
“My friend here, made in Korea. Have I come at the wrong time?”
“You mean the van?” Harry asks.
The driver looks over his shoulder silently. I aim at the spot where his eyebrows meet.
“Answer!”
“Of course I mean the van.”
Harry signals for me to join him at the rear of the van. As usual we take cover close to the ground. While the driver gets ready to open the doors, I see out of the corner of my eye that the barrel of Harry’s pistol is shaking like a leaf. Get it over with, runs through my head. I’m exhausted, empty. I’m a shell. The idea of not shooting, of giving my assailant time to take aim so that one bullet will suffice, is almost overpowering. An irresistible prospect.
The doors swing open on oiled hinges, the driver clicks them into position — left, right — then takes a step back.
I’m alive.
And hungry again, more than ever.
57
From where I’m standing the load compartment looks empty. I study Harry’s expression. He stands up and visually inspects the load.
“Everything in order, boss?” the driver asks.
As Harry nods, I stand up too. Before the youth bends into the back of the van, I catch a glimpse of the load. Not hard plastic trays in a range of colors, just one cardboard box accompanied by bottled water, stowed in a corner. The driver has to crawl into the load compartment to reach the ration.
The box is a good bit smaller than the previous one and exudes the smell of stale lavender. It once contained fabric softener, eight two-liter bottles.
Harry is almost beside himself with impatience but his hands stay glued to the Flock 28 while the driver, with growing reluctance, kneels to pull the bottled water back out of the depths. “Hurry up,” Harry snaps, coupling his order with a poke with his foot just when the youth is at his most defenseless. “Take it easy,” he says, remarkably unmoved. “I’m almost done.”
Afterward, leaning on his door, his right leg already in the cab, he looks us both in the eye by way of farewell. To me he seems much more mature all of a sudden. While dropping onto his seat, before slamming the door shut, we clearly hear him say the words, “Be glad I still bring you anything.”
58
We’re sitting next to the cardboard box, in front of Mrs. Privalova’s open garage, at a reassuring distance from the entrance gate, and neither of us is inclined to stand up and put an end to this party. For one and a half hours we’ve been sitting here as if in the company of an old mutual friend, who is telling us about long journeys, summoning up images of small harbors enclosed by steep mountainsides, sunbaked fishermen on strangely shaped boats who toss the morning’s glittering catch onto the dock while the cool breeze rattles the rigging. There is a blissful peace on our faces. We have earned this, even though we wisely stopped after a quarter of an hour’s gorging. Our initial regret about the lack of anything sweet, which evaporated at the sight of the tins Harry arranged around the box, now starts to nag again. Sugar would be a welcome change after the rich taste of fish in oil, but of course we don’t complain. I saw my own overwhelming desire reflected in Harry’s eyes as he tore open the first tin and shook the chunk of fish out onto his hand as if it was coming out of a baking tray and the sensuous golden-yellow oil ran down between his fingers. Fortunately our stomachs have shrunk and the deranged flurry passed quickly, before we did even more damage to our limited month’s supply. We know what we have to do; we just don’t feel like it. Everything has to go straight into the storeroom, under lock and key, we have to put an urgent end to our debauchery or face another period of devastating hunger. Harry leans back on his elbows, a pose people adopt on the beach, gazing out to sea. He says he could fall asleep just like that. If he closed his eyes for three seconds he’d be gone. I remind him that by rights I get to sleep first. He sniggers and agrees and says that, given that it’s now early in the morning, I have the right to go to sleep first in approximately sixteen hours; we’d do better to come up with something else. He’s in a playful mood and suggests that whoever makes it to the bunks first gets to sleep first. His words curl around between us before stopping and hanging motionless in the air over the cardboard box. Then, as if our fragile bodies have already made a full recovery from days and days of starvation, we scramble up and run to the door of the bunkroom, clawing at each other’s arms and screaming with laughter.
59
An hour later, I’m baking bread. Harry is snoring as if he’s faking it, his eyes resting deep in their dark sockets. Bread will alleviate our most pressing needs, delivering the desired volume to our stomachs. It would be better if we didn’t open anymore tins in the coming twenty-four hours. We have to battle the temptation with fire and sword. And after that, we need to reinstate our former iron discipline and keep ourselves going on a minimum of fuel. After the tyranny of blind hunger, I consider myself capable of living off the smell of baking bread alone.
60
I think of Claudia.
She’s dozens of meters above our heads in the Olano family kitchen, which is equipped with everything a chef desires and where this bread maker, before the arrival of a newer model, once stood. Every lunch Claudia is the center of a circle of braising, steaming and simmering, sautéing, hissing and spattering. The smells she brings to life cling to her, hanging onto her skirts like children, refusing to let go. After lunch the cheerful crew descend to our basement. A cloud that completely engulfs us, veiling the sharp-edged world.
61
We are sitting in our vests on either side of the door, which is ajar. The armholes hang loose under our arms. No matter how much liquid soap I use, the cotton stays gray without hot water. I’ve polished our shoes. The new shine keeps catching my eye. Our blue shirts are hanging upside-down to dry on the side of Harry’s bed.
“Do you know what your brothers are guarding?”
“Apparently Jimmy’s elite. An embassy. I heard something about it just before I got stationed here.”