162
She walks ahead of me, it’s not far; it’s already morning. A sarcophagus, that’s what the block of granite most recalls. It’s set into a deck of tropical hardwood in the middle of a room. A tub has been carved from the block, as rectangular as the stone itself. No taps anywhere. After Claudia presses the matte silver button, the water wells up quickly, then abruptly falls still, except for some quiet murmuring. She closes the glass door, which has no lock; the glass is only transparent at the top and bottom. She tells me I have to take off my uniform and removes my cap. My Flock moves from one hand to the other, back and forth, until I’m standing on the deck undressed. My stench is more pungent. Claudia looks me over from head to toe. After a while of not saying or doing anything, she touches my abdomen. She comes closer and joins me in looking down at her hand on my white belly, which is almost completely motionless. I feel her other hand on my backside. She whispers that it’s a test. She means Harry. He wants to see how far I’ll go. Whether I’ll freeze up with fear or be resolute and carry on. If I can find the resident by myself and bring him back to the basement. She says that Harry took off deliberately. As a test.
163
My clothes are lying in a heap at my feet. I see the dirt between my toes and under my long nails. I have to pick up my clothes. My jacket needs hanging up, my pants need folding. Claudia soothes me. She’ll do it in a minute. Now I just have to lie back in the bath. It will refresh me. I’ll feel reborn, a new man. She’s fetched clothes out of Mr. Olano’s wardrobe, we’re the same size. Spotless clothes made of the finest fabrics. Smelling of dried flowers, they lie here next to a pile of towels waiting for me. But slowly my aversion to submerging myself in the dark water in the cold room grows insurmountable. Claudia says I have to relax. Look at the way I’m squeezing my pistol. Look at my eyes, there, in the mirror. Her hand descends over the curve of my buttocks, slipping between my legs, carefully enclosing what it meets on its way.
164
She says Harry didn’t come back. Normally he would have returned to where we lost each other, just as I returned. He would have waited there for a sign of life. But he didn’t. He didn’t send any signals either, not with his watch and not with the flashlight, even though he couldn’t have been very far away. Claudia is sitting on the edge of the bath, leaning straight-armed on the granite, her heavy breasts raised miraculously by her high shoulders. She is, for a woman of her size, small and tight. She keeps looking down. She whispers that she wants to see it. On her tummy. When she sees it, she’ll come too.
165
The bath drains without a sound. To me, it seems as if the mass of water is a solid object slowly sliding into the base of the sarcophagus. Maybe the pipes contain enough water for another bath; it doesn’t matter. I pull my uniform back on. My stinking doesn’t matter, it is my own stench. I don’t want to be reborn. My name is Michel, I’m a guard. Mr. Olano’s clothes don’t suit me. Claudia does up my tie, she speaks hesitantly. She says that of course Harry doesn’t want to go to the elite with someone he can’t count on, someone who can’t take care of himself. A partner he has to constantly watch over. You can’t do that in the elite. He wants to be sure of things, which is understandable. Because the elite does its guarding much closer to the client. There is no room for mistakes or losing time or inattentiveness. A single incident can seriously compromise people’s trust in the organization. And, as I know, everything depends on that trust. Without that trust, the organization has no authority, no power. Everything that has been built up by thousands of dedicated guards, over the whole world, could be undone by a single blunder. Claudia asks me if I understand. She brushes off the shoulders of my jacket, takes a step back and looks at me.
166
I don’t really believe that, do I? She repeats her question. She’s lying stretched out on the sofa under the handbags, her right leg raised indolently, she’s touching herself. Her breasts have sunk into her armpits; nipples as dark as chocolate, as big as the palm of a hand. She is only wearing her shoes. Sometimes she gives little taps. One hand encloses, the other taps. Do I hear her? The twenty-ninth floor, she doesn’t think so. No, she doesn’t believe a word of it. Harry deliberately gave the wrong floor so that he could shake me off in the confusion and leave me in uncertainty. He thought it out far in advance, even before the decision to move the resident to the basement. He knows full well which floor the resident lives on. He had me barking up the wrong tree. He wants to know if I listened to him properly, if I learned anything in those hundreds and hundreds of days, if I’m primed, ready when necessary, and that’s usually when it’s completely unexpected. Claudia squints up at my member just above her forehead. She presses the top of her head back in the cushions, raises her chin in the air and opens her mouth a little. The deep folds in her neck open up as smooth white lines. Little by little the taps turn to blows.
167
I ask her to stay in the kitchen. She’s distracting me. I’d rather not hear her. She doesn’t even need to raise her voice: she talks as if I’m sitting at the table with her in the kitchen and that’s enough. I roll my forehead over the cold window like a stamp and look down on the fossilized city. She tells me I have every reason to be disillusioned. After all, what did I do to deserve this? Haven’t I always done as he asked? Haven’t I always shown my loyalty? How exactly does Harry expect me to fall short? Not once, Claudia says, has there been a serious incident. He and I were always one step ahead of trouble. What’s more, I’ve spent hours and hours on guard duty alone, while Harry was asleep, when he, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t there and the building was an undiminished forty luxury stories high with defenseless rich people asleep on every one. She says he could have foreseen me asking myself these questions. He should have foreseen that I would look beyond first impressions and, sooner or later, guess his motives. Doesn’t he realize that this maneuver undermines everything we’ve achieved together? A test! What’s he scared of?
168
I’m lying on the floor, rolled up in a ball, protecting myself. I have been reduced to eyes, nose and ears. I have become my face, a small animal living in the center of a dark muggy cave. Through a crack I see shiny leather shoes pointing in my direction. I move my head, my eyes rise up Mr. Olano’s evening dress and skip over his bow tie to his face, spotlighted by the bright sun. The gleam on his rigorously parted black hair. He blinks as he tries to look into the cave. He pulls his left and right cuffs out from under the sleeves of his dinner jacket and steps toward me, kneeling, moving his mouth to the crack, breathing. I smell peat, whisky, single-malt. Quietly he says that the competition is murderous. He says that positions hardly ever come up. Who wouldn’t want to guard a roomy villa in body armor with modern firearms? Patrolling magnificent gardens? Estates that are guarded so well and in such numbers that the chance of an attack is zero. A job for life. The twenty-ninth floor? No, he says. The last resident doesn’t live on 29 and Harry knew that all along. No, he wasn’t mistaken. Harry will escort the resident to the basement and he’ll do it alone. His achievement, his promotion.