“You and me,” Harry says a little later. “No one can match us.” He grins over his shoulder, waiting for me to smile back. “But this job first. Come on, we have to hurry.”
Again I wrap the guard’s torn vest around my hands. I tell Harry that we have to count, moving in time to make it less of a load.
“I’ve got a better idea.” Harry removes the big, soiled shirt he has been wearing like a bib with the sleeves tied around his neck. He passes one of the guard’s hands to me and grips the other wrist tightly. We set our feet firmly on the ground and throw our weight into the struggle. Stretching the arms changes the pressures in his organs and bubbles of gas escape from the lower body, one after the other, as if our quick backward steps are pulling a string of marbles out of his intestines.
We cover a good fifty meters without stopping. At the entrance to the narrow space between Garages 34 and 35 we let go. The back of the guard’s head cracks down on the concrete.
“Somehow we’ll have to get him up onto my shoulders,” Harry says. “Otherwise we’ll never get him over the edge.”
I’m glad of the darkness near the crushers, glad that, during the struggle that ensues, the growling and the raging, the stench and the filth, I don’t have to see what I’m touching, what I’m pressing my cheek against, which body part I’m supporting with the top of my head. Or how Harry’s coping with the crotch around his neck.
I hear it rustle as it falls, shorter than a moment. In the absence of a visual denouement, the abrupt release from the heavy weight makes me feel like I’m floating a couple of centimeters above the ground. The impact is a cacophony: empty tins shoot off in all directions, rolling for meters in the steel container. When the very last sound has died out — clearly a round tin which, after defining ever-decreasing circles, produced a crescendo by spinning around its center of gravity — I hear Harry flick a switch on the control panel. There is no electricity to start the motor, we know that, but Harry still messes around with the buttons and, as I’m thinking, it’s impossible, it can’t be, after all this time the crusher can’t have even a remnant of hydraulic pressure left, generated by one of the servants for God’s sake, and as Arthur appears in my mind’s eye, Arthur from the Poborskis on 39, Arthur in his dark-blue dustcoat, there is a click and the wall slides slowly over the floor, reaching the first tin, the second, sweeping the rattling tins into a pile, pushing the guard along too, and, as I’m thinking, now the slide is going to stop, now it’s run out, now it’s too heavy, I hear the internal rumbling increase and, just before the crusher dies on us, a sound like a trash bag popping in the depths of the container.
Three
125
We’re walking to the elevators. It is inconceivable that we’re doing this. Residents, visitors, staff: Harry and I walk toward them. The only entrance to the building, a solution that has been forced upon us. Forty luxurious floors, virtually forgotten, rise above us in full glory. We’ve never seen so much as a glimpse of them! It is inconceivable that we’re doing this. With the intention of leaving the basement, Harry and me! And yet we’re walking to the elevators. Our exit. The basement, where we live, will become a basement again, an empty car park. With each step, I’m dreaming. My pulse pounds in my temples; I can feel it shaking my head. The excitement. As if the resident has been hiding in one of the elevators since the exodus. Harry and I have finally discovered him, soon we’ll meet him. I see the distance growing smaller and know that it is inconceivable. I try to remember what Harry has said about the man, the man we have to save. I get no farther than a shaven head and black clothes. A few meters before the elevators we stop and stare silently at the smooth gray doors, impassive in their steel frames. Everything has been an exercise, preparation. Now it’s time for it to really start.
126
The service elevator, a little larger than the other two, is the only one with double doors that meet in the middle. Harry sends me to the staff storage cupboard for two barrels of liquid soap. When I come back, I see him working at the rubber. He’s used the paring knife to gouge out a notch. He digs at it and pulls pieces and long black strips out of the seal.
“Shall I get two more? There’s another two.” I nod at the fifteen-liter barrels.
Harry’s blank face bursts into a smile. He winks to show his appreciation. “Hurry.”
A little later we’re standing next to the double doors facing each other with our fingertips in the crack Harry has opened up. We both slide a foot past the halfway mark, crossing our legs. We puff up our cheeks. We form a strange but completely symmetrical figure, Harry and me, guards.
A long, hopeless period of strain and exertion follows. But once we’ve achieved an opening of about ten centimeters, the sliding doors suddenly capitulate and retract mechanically. Inside the elevator, the light flicks on, giving me the fright of my life. Momentarily blinded, I automatically let go. It’s as if we’ve tugged on a living creature and woken it, in God knows what kind of mood.
“Quick,” Harry says.
We slide the barrels into position. Thirty kilos on the left, thirty on the right. They do a good job of cushioning the blows of the sliding doors, which keep on wanting to close again. We stand there with our hands on our hips, like road workers looking at the new asphalt.
“Do you think the elevator still works?”
Harry nods, surprised by my question. “Of course, look.” He takes a couple of steps back and points at the small red light set into the top of the frame. “If the light’s gone back on here, it will be working on the other floors too. Try it, if you like. But not me. I’m not taking the elevator, Michel. I don’t know what’s waiting for us. Do you know what’s happened up there? Have you ever been there? I know I haven’t. If we use the elevator, we’ll have pretty little lights announcing our arrival. Don’t you think?”
I feel the heaviness in my exhausted shoulders. I have to think faster, I have to stay awake. There’s only one absolute certainty and that certainty is called a Flock 28 and it’s strapped to my hip. Everything else must at all times be appraised. Gauged. Sniffed out. Fortunately Harry is experienced. Together we can’t be outsmarted. I disappoint him, but he doesn’t hold it against me.
Harry steps tentatively into the elevator, saying that Arthur once told him about stairs that run down past the staff apartments to the ground floor.
I can hardly believe it. Not what he’s said about the stairs, but his unexpectedly mentioning Arthur’s name when I was thinking about him less than ten minutes ago. How strange it is after such a long time, even though it’s nothing special.
127
Harry doesn’t need to ask me for the chair. He only needs to glance up at the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator cabin. He moves over under the hatch to study it carefully, looking straight up with his head tipped so far back that his mouth hangs open.
“In and out,” he says, stepping up onto the chair. “We have to do it as fast as possible, not staying a minute longer than necessary. Upstairs is forbidden territory. But we’re both going, Michel, there’s no alternative. The alternative is very dicey. If something happened to one of us, preventing him from coming back, what would the other do then?”
I assume he means it as a rhetorical question, but either way, I try not to think about it. First things first, starting with the little things in my immediate vicinity that demand my attention.
Harry uses the paring knife to scratch away the dirt and paint. The hatch has almost certainly never been used. He keeps the base of his clenched fist close to it as if waiting for a signal. One firm blow makes the hatch pop up before falling back with a much louder clang. Above the cabin we hear the noise echo shrilly in the confined space, fading away and surging back, up and down the interminable shaft.