Harry and I can fulfil our duties alone, we don’t need anyone’s help, that’s what we need to show the guard. He knows exactly what’s going on outside, what we’re up against and the dangers we can expect. Harry says he’s deliberately keeping us in the dark so that the lack of information and resulting tension will test our mental resilience to the limit. But we’re not soft. We won’t weep and beg and bombard him with questions. It doesn’t bother us, it just hones our concentration. Like always, we work independently. We’re attuned to each other and don’t need anyone else. Harry is right. We stay calm and just do our job. That’s all we need to do, he says. As soon as we start to act strangely, the guard will know we’ve unmasked him and our evaluation will be compromised. We have to make sure we don’t give ourselves away. That’s why I’m being wary. I play along blithely, but keep a certain distance. From this point, Harry says, we’ve as good as made it. The darkness when he arrived must have made quite an impression on the guard. He’s seen the primitive conditions we’ve survived; now he’s experiencing them first hand. As long as the situation with the resident doesn’t get out of hand, we’ve got it all wrapped up. In no time Harry and I will be out in the fresh air in the uniform of the elite.
101
The guard runs his gaze over the well-ordered shelves. It’s the first time I’ve taken him into the storeroom with me. I detect a measure of surprise in the dark gleam of his eyes, bordering on childish joy at the precision with which the boxes are arranged. Are other guards less meticulous? Or is it recognition of a case of best practice?
“Don’t touch!”
Startled, he pulls his hand back as if he’s burned his fingertips on a red-hot box.
“I mean the cardboard’s got fairly soft. They could rip.”
“Rip?” His voice is flat.
“Yes, rip. I carry out an inspection every day, so I know how to pick them up. Someone who’s not used to it would tear one of those boxes right away.”
I realize that I’ve used the word “inspection.”
The guard moves closer to the shelves and stares at the Winchester cowboy, before reading the details on the label out loud. It’s as if he’s making another of his mental notes despite having exactly the same cartridges in the pistol on his hip.
“Shall I show you?”
He nods vaguely, but looks at the top row with interest. I slide out a box, demonstrating how I squeeze the cartridges together at the bottom, between thumb and index finger, so that the cardboard doesn’t have to carry any of the weight. The pressure has to be just right. A touch too little and the cartridges could suddenly fall through the bottom, a touch too much and there’s a chance of them pushing past each other, hopelessly breaking out of their rectangle and irreparably crumpling the weakened box.
The guard understands and immediately masters the technique. He is elated by his success. “Now we can both do it,” he says.
He lays a hand on my shoulder, a bear’s paw, briefly tightening around the top of my arm.
I feel a strange smile on my face.
“But, of course, you’d rather I left them alone,” the guard says, carefully sliding the box back into the row. “I understand. You being used to it.”
I can’t come up with anything better than a slight shrug; a mild protest seems the least risky at this stage. I reach up past his face to get the first box down from the top shelf, open it and count the cartridges.
102
Harry says he heard us. He heard me and the guard talking to each other. It sounds like a casual remark that requires neither confirmation nor explanation, but several minutes later, far from the bunkroom door, he adds that he slept terribly. I ask him if those two things are related, which is something I can hardly imagine: the guard and I were always careful to keep our voices down near the room. Harry must have been wide awake to even tell our voices apart from so far into the basement. He doesn’t answer. He asks what the guard said. I need to think about it for a couple of steps; the five endless hours have blurred together. I can’t remember very much, an exchange of generalities about the profession. Harry wants to know if he made any more confessions. Nothing about porcelain figurines or suchlike? he asks contemptuously. He turns his head and gives me a meaningful look. No, I say, nothing like that. After a few minutes’ silence, Harry says again that he clearly heard us talking. I don’t understand what he’s getting at. It’s as if I’ve claimed the contrary. I tell him I’m sorry if our voices kept him awake, but would nonetheless be surprised if they had. He takes a while to react and that makes his reaction, if possible, even more astonishing. He asks if the guard is funny. Funny? Yes, funny. He heard me laughing. Maybe, Harry says, the guard has a side he only shows me. A funny side, because he clearly heard me laughing. The words rasp out of his throat, bitter on his tongue, as if we have shamelessly kept him awake. No, I say. If I laughed, it wasn’t because of any jokes. The guard is no humorist.
103
Harry is sitting on the chair, left of the bunkroom door. The guard is on the stool to the right. I stand behind him and slowly tip his head back until his skull is resting against my stomach or, more accurately, my chest; he’s a good bit bigger than Harry. The paring knife is blunt. There are notches on the blade that tug painfully on the hairs. But the stiff knobs on his cheek have short, compact stems that are much easier to cut than our separate beard hairs. I only need to move the blade slightly to feel numerous hairs in the bundle give way. The hair is also coarser than ours so that the knife seems to grip better.
It still takes me a good hour to pick the harvest on the guard’s face. All that time Harry stares sternly into the middle of the basement. Now and then a sigh escapes his distended nostrils. The frizzy hair on the guard’s head is too intimidating. It’s like there’s a cap over the top of it holding it together. I wouldn’t know where to start.
The guard goes into the bunkroom to wash his face and — after giving himself an extended appraisal in the mirror — returns with a beaming smile. He pulls his tie tighter, rubs his cheeks and thanks me. He says I’ve done a good job. He’s as happy as if he’s received an unexpected, beautiful gift. He says he looks good. And a lot younger too, I add. Harry jumps up, the legs of the chair scraping back over the floor. He hesitates for a moment, as if surprised by his own action, then resolutely reaches for his Flock. In no time the guard and I are pointing our cocked pistols at the entrance too. The guard stays at his post; Harry and I creep closer along opposite sides of the open space, meter by meter. Nothing unusual at the gate. We keep watch without speaking or moving. Outside it’s deathly silent. The building could be on the moon. After half an hour Harry shakes his head. We look at each other in the darkness, still listening. Then Harry shakes his head again and holsters his pistol. False alarm.
104
Harry pulls me into the bunkroom by the arm, whispering that I have to come have a look, quick. The guard has just got up. He has dressed and withdrawn to the toilet and that can take quite a while. The narrow sleeping area is saturated with his smell and warmer than the rest of the basement. At the washbasin Harry steps to one side so I can come up next to him. Shoulder to shoulder we stand before the mirror, but Harry directs his gaze lower. He tells me to have a good look. Hanging over the edge of the gray washbasin are two identical flannels and a piece of pillowcase. Harry asks if I’m blind or what. I look closely. My flannel on the left, Harry’s flannel on the right, the guard’s washrag in the middle. Harry claims it’s not the first time. I stare and wrack my brains until suddenly Harry grabs my hand, pushes it down on his flannel for a couple of seconds and then on the guard’s washrag. One is cold and wet, the other dry. He says, somewhat superfluously, that he washed himself five hours ago and always wrings out the flannel. The guard just washed and his rag is as dry as a bone. Still holding my hand, Harry asks if he needs to draw me a picture. We look at each other in the mirror. His eyes are sunken but wide open. He asks if I understand what’s going on here.