“Is an opportunity,” I say, continuing for him, “to distinguish ourselves from our fellow guards.”
“No, Michel. Yes, of course, but the point is,” Harry says, abruptly shifting his attention to the emergency lighting on the ceiling, “we can no longer wait for that opportunity to present itself.” He moves directly under a light and looks up. “It’s up to us to think of a way to prove ourselves and draw attention to ourselves. We have to speed up our promotion ourselves.”
He fetches the chair and puts it under the light fitting. He asks me for the stool and positions it on the seat of the chair. Carefully he ascends the unstable construction.
Using both hands, he investigates the cover over the emergency light. Going by the movement of his right wrist, he seems to be using his thumbnail, which is definitely long enough, to unscrew a screw. Three screws later he passes the lukewarm cover down to me. The smell wafting up out of it is old and stale, the flies have dried to dust. He removes his jacket and takes the precaution of using the sleeve to grip the tube. He is patient. He turns, pushes and levers. Until finally the light goes off.
83
We work toward our room, extinguishing fourteen of the sixteen lights. Harry suggests leaving the covers on the floor; we never walk through the middle of the basement anyway. We arrange the covers perpendicular to the route from the entrance to the elevators, spreading them out at the same time to increase the chance of an intruder kicking one.
Seen from the bunkroom door, the light from the remaining two tubes falls to the floor like a curtain, making everything behind it invisible so that we, on the chair and the stool, feel like we are on display in a shop window. In theory and with a lot of luck, an intruder could approach unnoticed to within twenty meters.
After a few minutes, Harry says we have to do this properly. We either do it properly or not at all. No half measures. We both know the floor plan by heart. He says that in time, when we’re used to it, we will be able to see more in complete darkness than now, and definitely much more than someone coming into the basement from the light outside. They’d be as blind as a bat. He swears in surprise, too excited to stay sitting. “That’s it,” he says. “That’s it, Michel. We’ll show the organization that we don’t need any night goggles, not you and me, we can keep guard in complete darkness without them.” He starts laughing. He can’t believe it. Why didn’t we think of this ages ago? He laughs so hard he bares his yellowed teeth, then thumps me on the shoulder and wishes me a Happy New Year a second time.
84
When I’m relaxing on the stool, the darkness is a casing that fits me perfectly, my personal cocoon. When I’m doing a round, the darkness is almost tangible, an object with a beginning and an end, something you can bump into. The first days are awkward, but we get through them thanks to the habits we have maintained for such a long time. My having counted my footsteps on patrol is especially convenient. All day long Harry and I direct short sentences at each other. The way of answering, the sound and volume allow us to precisely determine the other’s location and state of mind. Two submarines in the depths of the ocean, using sonar to gauge the other’s presence.
They are exciting days. Time passes more slowly, but the days are fuller and seem more purposeful. We experience more in the dark. Liberated from the dominance of sight, the other senses achieve their full potential. We can’t escape them, they demand our attention and bring out sides of the basement we have scarcely noticed before. By disappearing, the basement has become more emphatically present.
We no longer click on the lights in the bunkroom, toilet and storeroom either. They blind us. The time it takes to readjust to the darkness in the rest of the basement could one day prove fatal. The light in our lives is limited to the lights in our watches; that’s enough to keep the calendar up to date. We’re careful with them and never look straight at the lit dial. In case of danger, we have agreed to flash three times.
The bright rod of daylight protruding at an angle through the crack next to the entrance gate remains hidden behind Garage 1. Although it doesn’t disturb our darkness, I tear a strip off my sheet and twist the material to make a plug for the opening.
85
Winged horses, white, a whole flock of them, a white cloud, landing one after the other, falling out of the sky like clumsy starlings and stumbling over their forelegs. Their long heads whip down on their long necks and dash against the ground. I feel my face twist. A short circuit in their brains, a genetic imperfection; horses should stay on the ground. I blink once, ten times, it makes no difference. I remain concentrated. I am awake and on guard duty. I am inside the body that squats, sits, stands or walks; what difference does it make in the dark? Eighteen times seven. A hundred and forty minus fourteen. One hundred and twenty-six. I am picking pears. My hand appears and grabs. I feel the snap as the tree releases the stem. We are under strict supervision. I push my long nails through the rough peel and into the flesh. Voluptuously, I suck my fingers. One image supplants the other. I can’t stop them. They slip by or change abruptly. My leg. I pull my leg up, suction, the rubber boot is stuck in the mud. The bandage on my foot is brown, the bleeding staunched, but the pain… In the shade of a tree I am wearing a bowler hat, an insignificant little man asks where my boot has got to. I point at the magnolia, alone in the grassy field. The velvet buds have already burst open. Coconuts, the roar of the surf and a child, a girl, hardly four, struggling through the sand. She pushes her tummy out in front of her, and looks up with one glaring blue eye, poking me in the thigh with a finger. She says something, but it’s lost. I drop to my knees, she hugs me as if it’s a farewell, a reunion, sorrow or joy; it doesn’t matter. Her voice tickles in my ear. “Is it already morning?” Her question cleaves a hairy coconut, the white, the juice, as fresh as pure love. I want to preserve her in formaldehyde, I’ll keep her in a jar, arranging her pink virgin lips in a smile. I fill in a label and stick it on near the bottom. Coming ready or not.
86
I am calmer than ever. I didn’t jump when I heard the colossal mechanism start up. Nobody appears in the nighttime light streaming in through the half-open entrance gate. It is not nighttime light, it is more a shadow, free of artificial lighting or moonlight, a slightly different version of darkness over there, past Garage 1, on the far side of the basement; I can point it out. The gate can’t be any higher than a meter above ground level. I am sitting motionless outside the bunkroom door. Yes, I am almost sure of that. I’m calm. It’s a nightmare threatening to take shape before my eyes, but I’ve always been prepared for the worst. I know what’s coming and what I have to do. I am a guard. I won’t need to think. My self-assurance surprises me and I wonder how long it will last. I have to keep thinking, especially when I feel it’s no longer necessary. A scream germinates in the back of my mind. This is no optical and aural illusion because the gate starts up again: the shadow disappears, the shock of the heavy gate on the concrete. I feel it all the way over here — in my feet, up through the legs of the stool and in my bottom — I’m as sensitive as an insect’s antennae. Then a flash, a pinprick deep in my brain. I grab the Flock, smothering the scream and blinking away tears. I hear cautious footsteps, still a hundred meters away, coming closer. Where else could they go? In the blinking, an explosion of spots and patches on the inside of my eyelids; in the basement, a flashlight being waved around, unable to reveal me at this distance, even if it’s pointed in my direction. Which it hardly ever is: it shines on the garages and their numbers, always indicated by large digits on the left, and on the emergency lighting covers, seals spread out over a dark beach. Walnut. Unmistakable. Harry is awake and has crept out of the bunkroom, taking up position on the chair without the slightest sound. The smell is strong; he’s in his vest. I don’t dare to turn my head out of fear the movement will betray us. I stay in my cocoon. For now, I hold the hand with the Flock low. We have to wait. Will Harry give me a sign? Our nerves will be put to the test. The closer we allow the intruder to approach, the greater our chance of eliminating him with a single shot each. But the chance of one of us being hit increases as well. It’s clear that he is in unknown territory; he hasn’t grasped the layout of the basement yet. Or is he looking for a particular garage in which something of great value is stored? In that case we can simply enclose him and shoot him dead. The flashlight is now sweeping the floor, moving back and forth in wider and wider arcs as if he’s sowing light. I can’t make out even a glimpse of the intruder himself. He has reached the middle of the basement. I judge it the moment to aim my Flock, gradually, with the intruder still at a distance, adjusting my position. Right away my extended arms begin to tremble under their own weight, but not from fatigue: I will be able to maintain this pose for a long time, as long as it takes. Betting on him being right-handed, I aim to the right of the light and a little higher, at the breast. He is walking straight into our trap, we don’t have to do a thing. Then he stops and shines the flashlight down in front of his feet, holding it still. The arc of light extends to within a couple of meters of the toes of our shoes. He has obviously noticed something. My index finger has almost squeezed the trigger. “Hello? Are you there?” A deep bass, suggesting a big man. Harry remains silent and so do I. One more step toward us and he’s dead. But the man stays where he is. “Are you there?” Above the light I’ve seen a flash of white: teeth. I aim the Flock a fraction higher. “It’s me,” he says. “The guard.”