I have heard it so clearly, my perception of it has been so acute that when I turn back to face the basement, the image of the cyclist is branded on my retina.
65
He feels the tension in his thighs. His muscles are as hard as steel, not just when he’s pushing down, but moving up now too. Tension that imperceptibly crosses the line to pain, at least where the bundles of muscle are attached to the knee joint, the spot that is taking the most stress because the bike is too small for someone his size and he never gets a chance to straighten his bent legs. The bike is the cause of his pain and this ride. They found it in an alley, a rusty lady’s bike, an alley here in the neighborhood, where they had no business being but still turned a profit, abandoned as if the thief had jumped off years ago and left it leaning against the wall, suddenly disinterested in his escape vehicle, dumping the evidence of his snatch and grab, a drug addict investigating his spoils next to the tilted bike, stashing money, credit cards, tablets and a cell phone in his coat and tossing the rest up onto a roof where no one will notice it and a suspicious stray cat will sniff it many months later before spraying it, day after day, so that years afterward the new inhabitant of the building will pick it up between two fingers with even greater aversion, this stinking, weather-beaten object, after having pulled on rubber gloves first and, to spread his weight, crawling out over the old tarred roof on all fours, studying it carefully and, without turning, calling back to his wife at the window that he thinks it’s not an animal after all but a handbag, he’s as good as certain, and then he holds it over the side of the roof and lets it drop into the alley next to an old lady’s bike. The alley on the edge of the neighborhood that is now restricted access, on whose borders they linger at night, bored out of their skulls. Until one of them slips on something disgusting in the dark, maybe a dead cat, and knocks over a bike as he falls.
A bike. None of them have ridden a bike in years, bikes are for kids and boring adults. But tonight this bike is a stroke of luck, a gift from the gods. After a bit of fooling around, he’s the one who suggests a suicide ride straight through the neighborhood that is the subject of the wildest rumors, with the real reason for it having been declared off limits lost in everyone’s memory. He should have kept his big mouth shut, he drew the short straw. The rattling chain drives him on, he swings his shoulders to push harder on the pedals. He has to go faster, faster. He feels naked to his bones. He’s an easy target. What’s he got himself into? Can the hair in his nostrils filter air? And what kind of microscopic germs will grip onto those hairs, his eyebrows, the inside of his ears? What will dissolve in the water on his eyes? Will the wind on the round surface drain it off toward his cheeks or push it back in the other direction? Entering his body through the tear ducts?
66
His muscles are on the point of snapping. All at once they will break free of his knees and whip back, curling up toward his abdomen. He’s too big for this bike, but he had no choice. The only taxis in sight were already taken. He ran down the pavement in a panic, crossed the street several times and frenetically searched the memory of his telephone for numbers. The shortest waiting time a taxi company could offer him was fifteen minutes. In reality that meant at least half an hour, assuming it was an experienced driver who knew the shortcuts in this permanently clogged city, where a car could get up to twenty kilometers an hour at most. He studied the drivers in the traffic jam through their side windows, trying to make out a friendly face behind the reflections of the neon-lit night, someone who might listen to his pleas. Then he saw a bicycle leaning on the fence of a small park, a remarkable sight. The days of casually chaining bikes to rails, posts or trees are long gone. The old lady’s bike was leaning against the wrought-iron fence at quite an angle, like someone who’s suddenly been taken sick. He couldn’t see a chain or lock. There was nobody in the vicinity paying any attention to the bike; people walked past it as if it was a beggar or a street kid. When he focused on it, it seemed to be located in a parallel world that had nothing to do with the bored drivers and indifferent pedestrians. A world in which they were predestined to come together. He ran across the street, grabbed the handlebars without stopping and jumped onto the wide seat. Within the first five meters he felt the bike’s abnormal resistance, something wrong with the crankshaft. It wasn’t that bad, but he had a long way to go. The fear of getting totally exhausted halfway and having to dump the bike against a fence somewhere was not unfounded. Except he had no choice. Halfway would at least be halfway. Mapping out the route in his mind’s eye, he saw the angular patch he’d have to cycle around. He only hesitated a few seconds. Sweating and panting, he turned down the first side street. He ignored the warnings, relatively bland symbols on a prohibited entry sign. Fifty meters farther along a bright light flashed intermittently over similar signs, to which a blue rectangle with flashing electric letters had been added. He read, Attention! Or, Warning! Or, Reminder! He jolted over street markings and speed bumps. He passed immense signs with the universal phrases in various languages, beacons in the night, unpleasant gusts of hot air on his overheated face. No barriers. A weathered plywood sentry box in the middle of the pavement betrayed how temporary people had first estimated this problem to be. No longer manned. According to article such and such one enters the zone at one’s own risk. Emergency services won’t come this far for anyone. Without thinking, he keeps pedaling, turning into a long dark street flanked by tower blocks, the street that cuts straight through the zone and will get him to his wife in a third of the time. She’s in the delivery room, scared, it’s all happened very quickly. He has to be quick too, faster. He too has to push his body to its limits. If he becomes one with his effort, clenched from head to foot, an immense fist, his body will be impenetrable. The virus has dozed off, weakened, it can’t keep up with him. He feels the wind in his hair, he sees the meters passing under his wheels. He won’t tell his wife. He’ll get there in time to witness the birth of his son.
67
Harry and I have had a miraculous escape. In some fortuitous way, this space has saved us from a painful death. Either that or we have the dumb luck of simply being immune. The organization was prepared to sacrifice us to save the building from mass looting, but the looters were terrified and never materialized. People outside of the protective ring don’t know we’re living in this basement. The remaining resident is sprawled on a carpet somewhere in his apartment, on a handmade Oriental carpet. Lying there untidily like a dropped handkerchief. The carpet has been completely ruined. The juices that have leaked out of his decomposing body have eaten away at the fibers. He is still dressed in black. Shoes, watch, glasses. We were mistaken about his staff: they, of course, left with the other domestics. He misjudged the situation. He stayed a day too long. He thought it would all blow over. He wanted to show how fearless he was. He wanted to stay with the precious heirlooms inhabited by the soul of his late lamented mother. He was penniless. He had nothing left, everything had been sold: land, thoroughbreds, shares, yacht. The apartment had been stripped. He had nowhere to go. He didn’t know where to hide. He took a gamble. He preferred the risk of the virus to the certainty of shame.