68
I spend a full hour standing at the crack to listen to the city. I try to put the cyclist out of my mind so I can resume my inspection round. On the way to the bunkroom, I can’t control myself; I cross the basement and march back to the entrance gate.
That night I only do half rounds.
In the nights that follow I put the stool next to the gate. Now and then I walk a short distance so that I can peek around the corner of Garage 1 at the elevators and our room. Most of the time I stand at the crack, swapping ears regularly; the draft is cold. I get a headache from concentrating so hard in an attempt to sift the slightest of sounds out of the silence. I hear what I think is the extra tension on my eardrums, or the murmur of my overheated brain. I am aware of the danger of hallucination. The silence is like a desert.
69
By breaking the silence the cyclist has confirmed it. He’s locked it down. The sound of his passing was the turning of the key. There is no one left in the city except an idiot on an old bike and two guards in a basement. Harry was wrong. There is no last resident left in the building; after all this time we would have picked up some sign of life. Everyone’s gone, everyone has fled. The city wasn’t evacuated, its inhabitants just ran for it. Harry, me and the crazy cyclist have been left behind. No one informed us. Just as some people predicted, a new kind of war has arrived — conveniently referred to as the New War. A war whose very existence is subject to question, no one knowing whether it’s already raging or yet to start. Something from a futuristic novel. The weapons and the wounds they cause, the objectives and which parties have set them are anybody’s guess. And that is the chief characteristic of this world war. That’s what makes everyone flee: the enemy is unknown.
We’ve slipped off the organization’s radar. After a nuclear strike on the south coast they would have come to pick us up. After a bioterrorist attack they would have done everything in their power to lift the quarantine in this crucial part of the city as quickly as possible. Harry and I have been left behind. There is no longer anyone here for us to protect and no concrete threat to the building. Our ongoing posting here is an administrative oversight made by a commander who has cracked under the pressure. That’s why we no longer hear anything from the organization — not because we’re carrying on in silence and doing such an excellent job. That’s why the guard doesn’t show up. They’ve forgotten us.
The driver has secretly stockpiled tins in the warehouse. He’s delivered them to us in cardboard boxes, not the usual hard plastic trays. He has tried to amuse us with jokes. Gradually it’s been getting too risky for him and he decided to postpone resupplying us for a week, eight days, he decided to come at night. He was not particularly pleased with the way Harry goaded him, but he showed that he understood the reaction, he didn’t get angry. And as for us, we can be glad he still brings anything.
70
After a long silence, Harry says that for starters he is quite capable of counting to forty. He speaks calmly. He says that if I had ever seen the last resident, I would understand why he’s not the kind of person one casually overlooks. Particularly because he seldom shows himself. As there is no other exit, he would have needed to come past here during the exodus and Harry would have noticed him. He says, slightly louder, that the organization does not forget its guards. He keeps silent for a moment to give me an opportunity to recognize the absurdity of the inverse. He says that the delay in resupplying was either planned by the organization or a direct consequence of outside events. In both cases, a harsh trial for us. But we’re not here for our enjoyment and I should know that. Lying in a hammock under a palm tree never got anyone into the elite.
71
I’m impressed by his ability to stay calm and his faith in the organization, which has revived in the few days since we’ve been resupplied and is once again irreproachable. He’s also renewed his habit of dropping to the floor without warning every now and then to do fifteen push-ups. He again radiates the composure of a man who is living for a simple, unambiguous goal he has set himself or at least accepted. No longer questioning the existence it brings with it. His dedication seems rooted in wisdom.
72
I’ve only been at the post two or three weeks when Harry announces early one morning that the profession of guard is always undervalued. His claim comes out of nowhere. The building is bathed in calm; even the domestics, as I imagine them, are still sleeping peacefully in their narrow beds. His words dissipate in the air of the basement. I’ve imagined the whole thing. Then he asks, “But how much more credit do you get for building a house or driving a train?” I don’t answer him. I know he’s not expecting me to. He says that people demand something superhuman from guards: do nothing, wait and stay alert. An almost impossible task. Repelling an attack is taken for granted. If nothing happens we seem superfluous, almost inconvenient. Idiots with side arms, that’s what people take us for, interchangeable pawns. They — pointing up at the residents — don’t have a clue. They think they’re leading important lives, but they’re just bubbles in the air and without us, they’d burst at the slightest resistance. This — pointing at the concrete between his feet — is the real world. “You and me,” Harry says, “we’re in it up to our knees.”
73
“Hundred times the size,” Harry says. “At least. More, I think. Anyway, it will be one of the most beautiful gardens you and I have ever walked around in. That’s what I mean. Just magnificent. And you know what it is? The owners, they just look at it. At most they sit in a chair out on the terrace and look at their garden. As if you just look at your stunning wife and never kiss her or pinch her on the butt, let alone do it with her. That’s what it’s like in those circles. A garden is something to look at.”
Harry digs the dirt out from under his fingernails with his thumbnail. A garden is something to look at. It doesn’t sound like he’s made that up on the spot.
“It’s a question of days.”
“Days?”
“It won’t take much longer. A few days. Maybe a week.”
We’re standing left and right of the bunkroom door. We are both fully dressed. I’ve washed everything except our suits and caps, carefully soaking the ties, then letting them drip dry from the side of Harry’s bed. I’ve tied knots in both of them, because when Harry puts his on from scratch he ends up with a rock-hard lump halfway up his throat. The last sheet is hung to dry over the chair and the stool, which we have set up in front of the residents’ elevator on our left.
“But we’ve just been resupplied.”
“They could bring our replacements in between times too. There are three of them. That’s a lot of people for a full van. Instead they could be part of a special deployment, together with other new guards, in a truck that covers the whole city.”
“Wouldn’t that be a little risky?”
“Why?”
“For the organization, I mean. A truck full of new guards. You could see that as precious cargo.”
“They’ll scout out the route first, Michel. The truck will be armored and accompanied by elite troops.”
“Do you think we’ll get to leave right away?”
“What would we stay here for? There’s three of them.”
“To clarify certain things. You know. The way things go here in the building.”