We leave the billiard room and keep watch in one of the halls. For about twenty silent minutes we stand in the dark with our Flocks in our hands. Then Harry comes closer and whispers slowly, “Maybe something’s happened. To the resident.”
I hear a cow moo. She’d already started while Harry was talking. I hear the last half of an angry outburst, although the sound hardly differs from the silence. Can I hear a cow here, behind eight centimeters of glass, behind walls that are thicker than the length of Arthur’s arms? Wouldn’t the cow have to be standing right in front of the building? There it is again: agitated, a quick succession of short, powerful, identical moos. More bellow than moo. I see the head and neck stretched out, eyes bulging, breath steaming out of her warm lungs. The sound in the night has a piercing loneliness. Is it because we’re up so high? Is there a direct line from the apartment to the field the animal is standing in, without anything in between? Has the sound been sucked in through a ventilation shaft and funneled into the apartment?
I’d like to ask Harry if he’s heard it, but I don’t want to erase the bellowing with my own voice. I feel that my silence draws his attention to the sound. A cow. A living animal not far from here, that hasn’t been eaten.
141
“Harry?” More than really whispering, I mouth his name. We were making our way up the hall when I heard something behind us and stopped: a vague murmur, suddenly drowned out by the rustling of Harry’s uniform, quite far away from me, short but remarkably loud, as if he’s done something like quickly rub his arm over his torso or raise a knee, just once. I turn in that direction and mouth his name again, panting it out a little louder. I feel in the pitch darkness with one long arm. He’s no longer there. “Harry?” More than five seconds pass. As if someone is holding me underwater and I’ve used up all of the air in my lungs. I can’t stay here. I grope my way back to where I think I last heard Harry. “Harry?” I press the button on my watch three times, pointing the light in different directions, because I’m standing in a doorway and a meter farther, the pale gleam of the dial shows another hall at right angles to the one I’m in. I wait, listen, stare. I think of Harry who could be standing still and waiting somewhere close at hand. I speak to him in my thoughts, beaming out my concentration like an antenna. I shuffle around the corner, to the right, searching for doorways, rooms. “Harry?” I squat; my mouth is dry, my tongue swollen. Why doesn’t he flick the flashlight on just once? Has something happened to him? Has he discovered something? I crawl on all fours back to the spot where I lost him twenty minutes ago. I curse myself. Perhaps we’ve lost each other because I didn’t stay put. Why didn’t I stay where I was? I try to summon up the sound of his uniform again, the movement that made it rustle. Has someone overpowered him? “Harry?”
142
The dawn comes as deliverance. When the black has changed to the deepest blue and the sky is unmistakably growing lighter, Harry disappears from my thoughts for a moment. I look up from the floor at the large window as if it’s a cinema screen. It’s a spectacle I haven’t seen for a long time and after a tense night it moves me to tears: the comforting proof that at least these certainties — the earth revolving on its axis, the existence of the sun — have remained unaffected.
143
I spend the whole day hiding behind a tall armchair. I have ripped open two cushions, with embroidered hunting dogs and flying ducks, and slowly saturated the pale balls of cotton wool with my dark-yellow pee. I haven’t been able to make out any other sounds. No bellowing, no rustling garments, no man climbing out of a wardrobe. Lying down, I’ve stared out over the floorboards.
Either Harry’s dead or Harry thinks I’m dead.
And where is the last resident? Is he the one who got Harry? Is Harry’s lifeless body now lying somewhere on oak floorboards just like these, stiffening in position?
The chance of Harry walking in, saying my name and then laughing as he asks what I’m doing hiding behind a chair, that chance only existed briefly at daybreak. Still, I try to banish all other thoughts. I wait for his footsteps, the tap of his trouser hem against the smooth shoe. I wait where I am.
144
Late in the afternoon my tummy rumbles. It must be audible in the adjoining room and the two halls that lead into this one, maybe even farther. I grab my ankles and curl my body up tight, tensing my abdominal muscles to drive out the growling.
Later cooling sweat sends shivers down my spine.
Toward dusk, the confined space behind the armchair is a prison and the urge to stand up grows too strong.
My perspective changes dramatically.
I fit the interior.
Otherwise nothing else happens. The air in the room stays still. I could just as well have spent the whole day standing like I am now, with my hands on the back of the armchair. I could have sat in the chair all day. Nobody would have noticed.
145
I can only see high-rise. It undoubtedly adds to the charm of the apartments, their looking out over the other tall buildings in the center of town. Especially now, at the start of the evening, the view is irresistible. The streets remain hidden, as if intentionally. Again there are electric lights, but again there is an absence of any movement that suggests the presence of humans. In the clear sky I can’t see any dissipating vapor trails from passenger jets. Only a purplish dot, far away, that soon disappears between invisible layers of air. The sky is empty and endless. The sunset casts a spell on me. For more than fifteen minutes, I don’t look over my shoulder; until the sun has gone down, I am immortal. Maybe Harry and I were profoundly mistaken and right now parents are popping out to the supermarket to buy some meat, a carton of milk, some butter. A beautiful blond in a black dress rearranges the wine glasses on Table 18, while the first customers enter the restaurant, waiting politely in the entrance hall for her to come over. In a vending machine in the train station concourse a chocolate bar with peanuts slides toward the edge of the abyss.
146
I creep around in the dark. The resident can’t possibly still be hiding in a wardrobe. Harry has gone looking for him, just like me. The resident comes first. If I find the resident, I’ll probably find Harry too. We just lost each other in the dark. I should have stayed where I was, but I didn’t. Harry had his Flock in his hand, his finger on the trigger. Even taken by complete surprise, even if a piano wire had been tossed over his head and pulled tight around his throat by a burly man, he would have still got off a shot. That didn’t happen either. Since he, just like me, doesn’t know what’s going on with the resident, he’s keeping a low profile. On the other side of the manor, he’s sweeping the dust and dirt away from the edges of the rooms, just as I’m doing in this wing. One thousand square meters. I turn onto my back, carefully pull my shirtsleeves away from my bleeding elbows and make a small calculation. It seems ridiculous to me: one thousand square meters, that’s forty meters by twenty-five! The apartments are definitely larger. Whoever claimed they were a thousand square meters? I can’t remember. Was it Arthur? Was he using “a thousand” as a figure of speech to show how big they are? As a symbol of the residents’ extraordinary wealth? Their insatiable extravagance?
147
I lay the Flock on my stomach, then open and close my hand to avoid cramp. I am lying motionless on the floor, my arms alongside my body as if I’m waiting for the doctor and have already lain down on the bed. Has Harry started adding it up now as well? Does the apartment seem larger to me because I’ve never been here before and have no overview? Familiarity makes everything smaller. What’s more, I’m looking at it all in moonlight from floor level. The walls are two stories high.