He slides his cap back to scratch his head as if he’s about to launch into a complicated story, but doesn’t elaborate. He uses both hands to put his cap back at the prescribed angle. His broad forearms are deathly pale with the occasional long curling hair here and there, ginger like his beard.
“And Bob?”
Harry shrugs. “Bob’s Bob. He’ll have blown away a few bad guys by now. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
I don’t know why I brought up his brothers. Maybe because he told me about Bob and Jimmy himself when I started as a guard, about their special bond. And because that made their being posted to three different districts so peculiar. Were we subject to a special policy designed to protect families from multiple losses from a single incident? Or was it their own free choice? Thinking back on Harry’s stories now, I realize that they were all set in their childhood, on the farm; I can’t remember any others. Three young men in a hole up north. One beautiful, fickle girl would have been enough.
“No embassies for me,” Harry says. “We’re going to a villa. A white villa surrounded by gardens. You and me, Michel.”
It’s detectable, albeit with difficulty, the slight hesitation in his voice. The euphoria after the absence of the guard and the arrival of food seems to have ebbed a little. We are both being drawn back to the driver’s last words, spoken as if he was exhaling them while moving toward his seat. As if, rather than being formulated, they were being forced up out of his chest by his rising diaphragm. They have put down roots, deep in our subconscious, and are now pushing up quickly toward the light.
62
We’re doing a round when I break first and raise the subject of the resupply.
“That’s right,” Harry says. “The cardboard box was in the furthest corner…”
“Do you think he could have been keeping the rations hidden there? Out of sight of someone who happened to glance in through the windows?”
“Hidden? Then he would have thrown a blanket over it. The ration was right there in the back of the van. Why would he want to hide it?”
I shrug. “There weren’t any other boxes in the load compartment.”
“I noticed that.”
We shuffle on for a few meters until Harry gradually picks up the pace and we’re back at our normal tempo.
“We were the last address on his route,” he says. “That’s why the box and the water were right up the back.”
Were we the last address? It was the dead of night.
“If we were the last post on his route,” I say, “then it’s strange that there weren’t any empty trays in the back of the van. Trays he gets back when he makes a new delivery.”
“Maybe they put everything straight into storage at other posts?”
I see four or five beaming guards in a storeroom. One stands at the trays, the others at the shelves. The first says the name of the provisions out loud, then tosses them to the right man. In a few minutes everything is in its place.
“Then the load compartment would be filled with the trays they’ve just emptied, surely?”
“True.”
“He was eight days late,” I say after a silence. “That’s a long time.”
“There could be numerous causes for that, Michel. Causes we can only guess at.”
“We almost starved to death.”
“We might not have been the only ones. Maybe we got off lightly. Maybe other places have suffered casualties.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. The main thing is we’re not dead. Understand? You and me, we’re still alive.”
63
I’m washing our socks, kneading the wet, black lump against the sloping sidewall of the washbasin. Harry comes up behind me. When I neither stop nor turn around, he sits down on my bed.
“The driver said, ‘Be glad I still bring you anything.’ What he meant was: We should be glad he still brings us anything. We should appreciate it. He meant: I’ve been racing around all day. I’m exhausted. But I’ve still made it here with your provisions at this hour. And then you treat me like this. He must have been pissed off about me kicking him in the butt after such a long day. That’s what I think. That explains his reaction.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but I didn’t get the impression he was reacting out of anger. Plus, he didn’t look tired. He didn’t look like he’d been working all day.”
“Those guys are all front, Michel. Even when they’re tired. What were we like ourselves? Always ready with a smart answer. Never backing down.”
I wring the water out of the lump cautiously, trying not to rip the old material. I hang the socks up on the side of Harry’s bed. It will take hours for them to dry.
“His day’s almost over,” Harry says. “His second-to-last address is close to the depot and we’re more or less on the way back to base. So he thinks, I’ll unload the van first, then I won’t have to drive all the way back later. That’s why the van was already empty, except for our ration.”
64
It’s night. In these unchanging surroundings lit by emergency lighting, the days don’t differ from the nights. But still my wristwatch and biology have the capacity to color the hours, dividing the days into sections. It’s night and I walk past the garages alone.
I keep my eyes peeled, but let my mind wander. I feel like Harry and I have overlooked something. If only the driver had stressed the most important part of his sentence. That’s the problem. What, for instance, does it mean if he’d meant to say, “Be glad I still bring you anything?”
Should we be happy that he in particular has brought us these things? And what does that suggest? Does he mean that we already have another driver? That he’s not the only driver on this route, and we should be glad that he is still bringing us something, because he knows the other driver isn’t?
But maybe he wanted to say, “Be glad I still bring you anything.”
Has something caused a cutback in resupplying? Has there been a significant reduction in the number of drivers available and should we be glad he still comes? Is he virtually alone because no one else is willing to do the job? Because it’s too dangerous? Is there a strike going on or has a mutiny broken out?
Or was his rash outburst that we should be glad that he still brings us anything? And should we conclude that daily necessities are in short supply, that there is an even more pressing shortage than the shortage which has been in force for so long now? And is that why he came at night, to avoid attracting attention? With a ration that was considerably smaller than the previous one? Is that why he came with just one ration, so that if he was robbed, he would only lose the one, and was that why it took him so long to resupply everyone?
I lean back on the entrance gate, close to the crack, the whirlpool in my head making me dizzy.
I hear a cyclist.
I hear a cyclist, no doubt about it! Every cell in my body stirs. The cyclist is coming from far away and headed in this direction. I recognize the sound as if he or she cycles past here every day, although I’ve pressed my ear against the crack countless times since the exodus of the residents and never heard anyone or anything. And now this, in this city, a cyclist, unmistakable. With each turn of the pedals, the chain scrapes over the chain guard, making an almost ringing sound, and when he or she is at the level of the entrance gate, I hear the groaning springs of what sounds like an old-fashioned bike seat, maybe a large one, a lady’s seat. I press my face against the crack. Vaguely I make out the wall tapering up to the street with the shadow of the tree above it: nothing else. But still I am certain that he or she is not cycling on this side, but on the other side, against the normal direction of the traffic, or at least in the middle of the deserted street. I listen for perhaps a full minute, until the rattling dies away and only the hum of the lighting is left.