To climb up through the hatch we’ll need the table.
128
Harry shines the guard’s flashlight up the shaft. Its beam shows us the steel elevator cables and a black hole where they dissolve in the distance, creating an illusion of us holding long, fist-thick bars that stick up from the roof of the cabin. Harry shines the light back down at our feet to make sure we don’t stumble over anything. The shaft smells like a building site. It has never been subjected to any air but its own.
We assume the same positions as before. We’re halfway up to the ground floor, tugging on the doors at head height. I feel like I’m doing permanent damage to my back, muscles and joints. This time no mechanism comes to our aid, but the resistance does drop off noticeably after about ten centimeters. The light is dim, the polished stone floor gleams faintly. Finally there is no more resistance and the door stays open of its own accord; we gape with surprise for a moment and only then bend our knees to drop below the opening. My shirt is soaked, stretched over my skin like a chamois. Harry turns off the flashlight.
Minutes pass.
Together we peer over the edge. I feel a draft on my eyeballs. The slight gleam on the floor is the result of artificial lighting, tucked away somewhere to the right. We clamber up out of the shaft, making so much racket that I feel like they’re only holding their fire out of pity.
One behind the other, we creep along the wall, avoiding the open space like rodents. I don’t think Harry knows where we have to go. There were two possibilities. We’ve gone left. Into the darkness.
129
I hear Harry’s hand sliding over the stone skirting. If the entrance to the stairwell is on the right next to the elevator, we’ll only discover it after covering the entire perimeter of the ground floor on our knees and elbows, more or less the distance of our basement inspection round.
After what I imagine to be about thirty meters, we still haven’t found anything. After another five, I tap Harry on the calf. He stops immediately, lying there as if he’s dead.
I crawl up next to him and feel for his head and ear, which I move my mouth close to. I whisper that we should turn back, telling him that it looks like the door is located to the right of the elevators.
“Right,” Harry says into my ear in turn, “is toward the front of the building. The staff apartments are probably at the back. That sounds logical to me. Residents at the front, servants at the back. What do you think?”
Harry isn’t being cynical, he waits for my answer. And while I answer, I feel that I’m right. We can, after all, save ourselves an awful lot of misery by going back first to make sure. In my experience stairwells and elevator shafts are built close together.
I am now crawling in front and keeping up a good speed.
We creep past the yawning elevator doors. The indirect artificial light seems to increase a little in strength, shining along a wall. I see the bottom of an ornate frame, not much more than a shadow really, a jagged edge dissolving into darkness. As we get closer to the light, I am able to make out the veins in the light marble floor. The skirting stops. I feel a corner and, around it and set back a few meters, I see light under a door. Nothing on the sides, but at the bottom the gap is so big that I can see in past the door: the floor carries on and the reflection of another door is floating in the gleam.
I crawl into the niche. Harry follows me. Together we stand up. The handle is on Harry’s side. Slowly he pushes the door open. When he’s seen enough, he turns to me and whispers, “Toilets.”
The emergency lighting is on and nothing like the emergency lighting in the basement. It’s a series of recessed wall and ceiling lights that would be invisible when turned off. Toilets on the ground floor where nobody ever comes. On the dark washstand a pile of folded towels is waiting next to the washbasin; the wicker basket is empty. Our uniforms look good in the large, tinted mirror. Two doors with, behind each one, the same dark washstand, the washbasin, the towels and the empty wicker basket. Wooden coat hangers in a built-in cupboard. A real painting on the walclass="underline" flowers with thick daubs of paint, as thick as the flowers themselves. Under the painting, a tall, two-person sofa with old-rose upholstery, armrests and a white varnished back.
Harry stands still in a cubicle and looks into the toilet bowl for a long time with me watching his back. I am wondering what has caught his attention, what he has found there, when a powerful jet breaks the water surface. In the midst of the tumult, Harry stares straight ahead as if there’s something of interest on the wall in front of him.
130
We crawl farther to the right and find another two doors, both locked. Almost on the opposite side, more or less where the entrance is in the basement, we come upon a door with a bare corridor behind it, tiled in functional white. My elbows and knees are sore and, without agreeing anything between us, we stand up and shuffle through the corridor with our backs against the wall. Now and then Harry flicks on the flashlight. The corridor is narrow and has a low ceiling, more a tunnel really. Three corners later, behind a heavy door with a hydraulic closer, we find the stairs, no wider than an ordinary staircase in an ordinary house.
Harry sits down on the bottom step and shines the flashlight higher. It reveals little: after a narrow landing the stairs change direction. Strands of dust hang from the bottom of the next flight, swinging slowly and weightlessly like unknown sea creatures in the depths of the ocean, illuminated for the first time.
We let the images sink in until we are familiar with every detail. In Harry’s face, lit by the glow of the flashlight, I recognize my own horror at climbing the stairs and leaving the safety of the ground floor behind us. One well-chosen word, spoken in the right tone of voice, could change everything. I don’t know where to find them, but that word and tone of voice do exist. Harry’s sitting down betrayed their existence.
Maybe Harry will suddenly say the word, thirty or fifteen or five seconds from now, without suspecting my thoughts. The way he didn’t suspect I had been thinking about Arthur when he suddenly said his name. Nothing special.
Afterward Harry will stand up. Without making any fuss, we’ll simply turn back. Giving each other a comradely pat on the shoulder or symbolically shaking hands before walking side by side down the long corridor to the lobby, which we cross calmly. This time we’ll feast our eyes on it all. We’ll take the towels from the toilet, the coat hangers, the perfumed toilet paper. We’ll climb up one last time to fetch the wicker baskets and say goodbye, then pull the elevator doors back until they meet in the middle, let the hatch bang shut and slide the table and soap barrels out onto the basement floor.
131
We’ve climbed four times sixteen steps without any sign of the first floor.
We carry on cautiously, making sure not to let the soles of our shoes slide on the steps. As soon as Harry’s head reaches the level of the next landing, he stops and inspects it with the flashlight.
We keep climbing. There are neither doors nor windows on the landings. I’ve stopped counting. I am convinced that the stairs lead directly to the roof. Stairs for maintenance access. How else would they get to the machine room if the elevators broke down?