“We jump on the truck and we don’t look back. You hear me? I had to work it out for myself too. There was nobody here.”
“Nobody?”
“No,” Harry says. “Nobody. I was the first. Two months later another guard joined me. The way it was actually meant to be from the start.”
The question about the fate of my predecessor is on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know if the silence that follows means he’s waiting for my question or, inversely, that he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“There’s three of them,” he says. “They’re better trained than we were. The training keeps getting better. We don’t owe them a thing, Michel, we’ve more than earned our promotion. We’ve served our time, so we shake hands politely, wish them luck and jump on the truck. Headed for a new life. You and me, in a fabulous garden somewhere. Trees, flowers, birds. Waking up to the chirping of sparrows, just like on the farm. But without the stench of pigs and cows, without the racket, without the drudgery. With any luck we’ll be able to pick peaches, oranges and soft sweet pears straight from the trees. What are the owners going to do with all that fruit? Just eat it, they say. The juice runs down our chins. We’re sitting out of the wind on a bench, having a little rest, turning our faces to the sun. Fresh air. Everything is green and blue. Enough to drive you crazy.”
74
“I think we’ll be requisitioned.”
Harry takes another large bite of the piece of bread he’s holding. He keeps staring ahead into the dark corners of the basement, knowing he has my attention.
“By a resident,” he says, nodding his head to swallow. “It goes against organization practice. The organization prefers an impersonal guard-client relationship. That’s proved more favorable for both parties. In the long term, definitely. But these residents are extremely wealthy. If clients like them have a preference, if they make an explicit request, what’s the organization going to do? You think they’re going to give them a lecture on company policy?”
He rests the spout of the plastic bottle on his lower lip and lets the last bit of water glug into his half-open mouth. In a flash he’s screwed the bottle up into a ball. Returning from the crusher, he paces to and fro for a while in front of the empty chair with his hands in his pockets.
“And what of it?” he says. “So what if the organization kicks up a fuss? So what if they politely but firmly inform the client that they alone decide who guards what, with all the accompanying explanations? A client like one of the residents in a building like this will just slide a few extra notes over the table, won’t he? Simple.”
75
Harry says he hopes Mrs. Rosenthal won’t requisition us. For five days now the requisition scenario has had us in its grip. Harry is in bed and still drowsy. It’s 5:30 in the morning and he has only just woken, which makes his announcement about Mrs. Rosenthal come across as the end of a nasty dream. The bunkroom door is ajar and I ask him through the crack if she was the elderly woman on the thirty-second floor. He says the Jewish bag lived on twelve and must have been around forty-five. A real face-ache, she’d never give you so much as a smile. He says I must know her son, a skinny little guy with an undersized hat and a patchy beard. A permanent grin on his stupid mug. Begging for a beating, according to Harry. He daydreamed about it often enough: whacking him over the head as if he was a naughty boy, just slapping him smack on the cheeks. After which the Jew would undoubtedly grin even more, now that he had tempted him into physical violence, which would almost certainly lead to Harry’s dismissal. After which Harry would then punch him full in the face, smashing that big schnoz of his. He’d like to see him grin with blood all over his mouth. It would make things a lot more bearable. A little later Harry says he wouldn’t be surprised if Junior begged Mommy to requisition him specifically, as his plaything, in the sick hope of one day being worked over by him in reality. He probably can’t keep his hands off his pee-pee just thinking about it. Yes, Harry says, that gets the little twerp hot alright, Sabbath or no Sabbath.
While getting dressed, he asks if Jews are allowed to keep dogs. He thinks it’s the kind of thing I’d know. He says he’s never seen a Jew with a dog. I think about his question. The combination of Jew and dog is hard to picture for me too, but I’m not sure why. I’m not even able to come up with a reason why the Jewish religion would prohibit the keeping of dogs. Harry says, either way, we should hope for a post where they don’t have dogs. No matter how good you keep your eyes peeled on patrol, sooner or later you step on a turd and get to spend quarter of an hour scratching the orange shit out from the tread of your shoe. As depressing as it gets. If it’s up to Harry, preferably no dogs. Anyway, despite their masters’ claims to the contrary, dogs always stink.
76
The residents’ names come and go. Day after day they visit us in the basement offering us panoramic views of fabulous gardens in which we can move freely, in which we can breathe and live freely, providing security under the very best of conditions. We’ve got plenty of choice.
Some names emanate an intoxicating perfume as if someone, hidden behind a pillar, presses an atomizer the moment the name is spoken. I’ve stopped going over to sniff the residents’ elevator; it was foolish to expect the door seal to smell of anything except, vaguely, rubber.
77
I try to explain that both Mr. Toussaint and Mr. Colet had white cars, but Harry won’t listen. He thinks I’m trying to put him in his place. I clarify my position by saying that I’m not correcting him when he says that Mr. Colet drove a white car. He’s right. Mr. Colet did have a white car, something American. But in the particular incident with the frangipane, although it’s trivial, he actually means Mr. Toussaint, not Mr. Colet. Because Mr. Toussaint also drove a big white car and that’s probably why Harry has switched the two men. After all, Mr. Colet had nothing to do with Claudia. Harry says that Mr. Colet definitely liked them plump, or women with a fat backside at least. But that is beside the point because Mr. Colet didn’t know Claudia from Adam. He just happened to also drive a white car. That’s why Harry confuses Mr. Colet and Mr. Toussaint. And it is, by the way, Mr. Toussaint, not Mr. Colet, who is a distant relative of Mrs. Olano, with whom Claudia was in service. Harry looks at me and says he can’t believe it. He turns away and sulks in silence for a long time. I say that it’s not important anyway. It’s a detail, it doesn’t matter. Then Harry says that I was asleep at the time. If I was asleep, how can I know whether it was Mr. Colet or Mr. Toussaint? I tell him that I still know Claudia. Claudia told me about it herself.
78
Harry swears that it was Mr. Colet and wants that to be the last word on the subject; he quickens his pace, taking a slight lead. I leave it for now.
The discussion makes me think back on Mrs. Rosenthal’s son. Until recently I remembered the Jewish youth as a devout figure with an affable smile for all who crossed his path, regardless of creed, status or position. An odd creature, true, an adolescent with the air of an old man, something I put down to exceptional intelligence. But the way Harry described him was just as accurate. He could also have been a pernicious brat who got his kicks by grinning in people’s faces to wind them up, especially those who served him and were, therefore, in a sense powerless.
It’s happened several times in the past few days. Mr. Schiffer’s personal assistant for instance. I don’t believe he suffered from a skin condition. I think he was an alcoholic and that Mr. Schiffer turned a blind eye as long as he didn’t shame their confidence or let it compromise his work. He was after all, I assume, an extremely correct, civilized and capable man. But his face was red from the booze.