“Are you taking the piss?”
“That’s how he told me about it, in one big gush. There’s more. The next day the guard goes back. After having brooded about the incident all night, he throws caution to the wind and goes over to his friend’s sentry box a second time. And again, wordlessly, the friend shows him the door. The guard says that although he appreciates his colleague’s desire to stick to the rules, he still finds his behavior extremely unfriendly. As a token of his good character he could lend him the figurine on the shelf. After all, he has figurines to spare, whereas he doesn’t have a single one. He’ll take good care of it and bring it back at the end of his service. He says that since their last meeting he’s had to think about that pussycat constantly, he found it so beautiful. But his colleague snatches the figurine from the shelf and threatens to throw it down on the ground and smash it to smithereens if the guard doesn’t get the hell out of there…”
Harry doesn’t react.
“That’s his story,” I say.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“How’s it end?”
“I don’t know. He clammed up. He didn’t say another word. I guess he just slinked off.”
98
I get Harry to smell too; reluctantly he puts his nose in the crack. The wind is blowing straight at the gate again and carrying silence, the silence of the country, I think. Maybe the countryside starts just a couple of kilometers away. The smell of rotting leaves is almost gone. Instead I think I can detect manure. At least, it’s the smell I associate with manure. A steaming mixture of hay and dung, shoveled out of a shed and spread on a field. Has agriculture recovered? Will the crops grow normally? Will the harvest be any good, will it be edible? Or is the farmer ignoring my questions and doing what he’s done his whole life: farming. Hoisting himself up onto the seat of his old tractor and chugging over his fields with his last few liters of fuel. Preparing the soil for sowing regardless of any prohibitions or restrictions that have been put in place, despite the warnings of a poison he can neither see nor smell. Acting instinctively by following his nature, true to the calendar and the seasons. Wearing the threadbare blue overalls that are more familiar to him than his own wife. Carrying on the way a cow produces milk, a chicken lays eggs and a pig just grows. Is that possible, two kilometers from here? A bent-over farmer, chickens scratching in the dirt, a nervous mutt? Cows shoulder to shoulder in a muggy shed? Sparrows chirping in the farmyard. Harry turns away from the gate. As if he can read my thoughts, he purses his lips and shakes his head. He can’t smell any manure. Plus, he says, it would be unusual anyway. The tree is bare, not a leaf in sight, not even any buds. It’s too early for plowing and farming. Unless they’re piling the dung from the sheds on the fields in preparation. But him, he can’t smell a thing.
99
We’ve just started moving again, in step, when Harry suddenly stops. Half a step ahead of him I prick up my ears, hand on my Flock. The buzzing of the middle tube keeps getting deeper, the end is near. I am trying to concentrate on sounds from the sally port between the street and the entrance gate when Harry says that the guard deliberately left his story unfinished. Because he wants us to keep thinking about it. That’s exactly what he wants. He very consciously left it open, without a conclusion. Whereas the outcome of the story and what we think about it are actually irrelevant and meant to distract us from the heart of the matter. That’s obvious! It’s not about that stupid porcelain figurine. Am I crazy? A pussycat to put on his shelf? What a load of bull. Come on. What kind of guard has porcelain figurines in his sentry box? He wants me to tell him that. He asks me if I’ve ever heard anything so ridiculous, porcelain figurines in a sentry box? When I shake my head, he hisses emphatically, See! He tells me the guard is a sly one. And to think that someone like me, who’s been to university — now pointing a finger at my chest — didn’t see through his trick at once! The guard deliberately wove an absurd detail into his story — porcelain figurines — to make Harry and me think, This is so extraordinary, it can’t be made up. Damn sneaky.
When I ask why it’s so important for the guard to have us believe his story, Harry says, Confession. Because that was what it was after all, a confession. It was a confession of a breach of regulations he’s fabricated to the best of his abilities. What can that mean?
Harry is going to tell me what it means and as he whispers the words into existence, I realize that his understanding has only just preceded them. Didn’t the guard ask me to be honest? Hadn’t he understood my disapproval, which I didn’t even need to express? Hadn’t he been immensely sorry for a violation that was essentially rather trivial? For Harry it’s as plain as the nose on my face: the guard’s half-baked confession was designed to lure me into his net. He wanted to arouse my sympathies, pretending to open up his heart to me to draw me out, trying to tempt me into confessing violations that were possibly worse than his, committed here in this very basement. That was his goal. That was what he was after. Come on, Harry says. First absolutely nothing, two days with his lips sealed and then suddenly a whole spiel? Do I think that’s normal? He wants me to tell him that. He thought all along that the explanation was bizarre: why wouldn’t two guards be allowed to speak to each other? Why doesn’t he know where he was stationed or what he was guarding? And then out of the blue, up and at it, off he goes, sixty meters to visit his friend for a chat? Get out of here.
100
I stand on tiptoe and press down on the gray mass with my full weight, arms straight. Puddles of gray suds appear around my fists, only to be absorbed again by the sheets the moment I stop pushing. Harry is keeping watch at the entrance gate, the guard is at the bunkroom door, which is wide open; his figure fills the doorway. He looks over his shoulder and asks if it’s okay, if he shouldn’t help. He likes getting his hands wet, he doesn’t mind it at all. He wants to thank me. For letting him sleep in my bed and being willing to share my sheets with him. That is, he says, a friendly gesture. The least he can do is wash the sheets himself. I’m wary. At the same time I do my best to sound casual when I say that I prefer to do it myself, that I’m used to it. It’s no picnic in a small washbasin, there’s a knack to it. Before you know it, I hear myself joking, the whole room’s flooded. Yes, the guard replies earnestly, he understands. The whole room flooded. He turns back to the basement proper and crosses his arms, his arched shoulders pulling his blue jacket tight.
He is a remarkable figure. As remarkable as the porcelain figurines in his supposed friend’s sentry box. Maybe that’s a tried and tested tactic the organization uses for its special agents, the guards who, besides guarding something, inspect other guards while they’re at it. Maybe the organization always deploys striking characters for that purpose, characters who are so striking it doesn’t occur to the guards under surveillance to suspect them of anything, least of all a secret and highly delicate evaluation. It’s just too implausible.