We circle the bottled water, acting as if it’s about the water, as if we’re inspecting the new provisions. In full harmony with this pretense, we don’t let our disappointment show.
Suddenly Harry’s face lights up. He asks whether I noticed. I’m staggered. Have I missed something? I’m about to inspect the water again, when Harry says, “The guard didn’t come.”
13
I nudge the float in the cistern. The water level rises and a few seconds later the whistling stops. I click the cover back on and take a piss.
Hardly an hour after eating straight strawberry jam, my urine smells like liqueur. In the water, which has settled again, I detect a slow movement as if there really is a viscous fluid floating in it. I stand there breathing deeply for a moment, telling myself that I am drawing the volatile sugars into my lungs and introducing them into my bloodstream a second time.
The water gushes into the toilet bowl. Like always, I nudge the button back up with my finger. It’s no great inconvenience, you can do it in a single movement. It stops the float from getting stuck, which causes the water to keep running and makes the whistling sound.
“It’s very easy,” I tell Harry after returning to the door to our room. He’s slouched on the chair, legs relaxed and spread slightly. There is an unavoidable sense that, after this nerve-wracking day, nothing else can befall us.
I explain it to him, the way the button springs back when the toilet starts to flush. But not entirely, probably because of the friction of the float against the inside wall of the cylinder. “A slight upward push of your finger,” I conclude, “easily helps the button to override that friction.”
Harry struggles to put astonishment and approval in his expression. He taps his forehead a couple of times. “I’ll make sure of it, Michel.”
“Thank you, Harry.”
14
A long column of gleaming black limousines passes the building; I start counting as a reflex. They’re driving cautiously, not in any hurry. A funeral procession. Or is it a parade? The weather is exceptionally radiant. Standing as I am at the basement entrance, below street level and looking up through the open gate at the street, I can only see the car windows. The pure, fresh air tingles in my lungs. I’m too greedy and succumb to a fit of coughing. I don’t hear myself coughing; I experience the contractions in my gut and the rasping in my throat, the pressure in my skull. I don’t see any other buildings or people on the street. I don’t hear any other cars. I don’t hear anything at all. If I concentrate hard, I perceive the silence that has been twisted into my ears like cotton wool.
Standing on the edge of outside and inside, I feel the prohibition, the commanding presence of the mental borderline. In the same instant I realize that I am able to interpret my dream even while dreaming it, which explains my lack of fear. It seems I can even intervene in my dream at will. For instance, long before the end of the procession I know that there are thirty-nine cars, forty minus one. Whether I am the cause of this or am simply anticipating the total because I understand my dream, it doesn’t really matter. Fully conscious now of the nature of the event, I see no good reason for remaining in the gateway.
The moment I take a step, extending a foot beyond the limits of the building, I feel a heaviness in my toes, my foot, my leg. As if I am entering another atmosphere with different air pressure, different natural laws and a different specific gravity for the human body. But that doesn’t cut off any of my possibilities because everything in this atmosphere is subject to the same forces. We are on an equal footing.
I adjust to the conditions quickly. If I take my time, I can even run. The cars are proceeding as slowly as ever, more slowly in fact, because I am now nearing the rear bumper of the last vehicle. The weather really is radiant and I can see virtually nothing through the side window. There is no doubt about it; someone is sitting on the back seat. I know from my reflection that I am screaming. I think I am screaming with joy.
15
We eat around midday, when virtually all guards take their dinner break, but also because, with corned beef on hand, we find it impossible to wait until evening.
The air of the storage room is tinged by the new provisions. Despite the strong metallic smell that coats the inside of my mouth and reminds me of when I was a boy and accepted a dare to put my tongue on the two poles of a battery, the association with salted meat is overpowering and stimulates my appetite.
Under Harry’s watchful eye, I use the key to roll back the thin metal lid, then cut the corned beef and arrange it sparingly on the bread. There is a festive gleam to the meat.
We eat calmly. We eat politely. Although Harry casts the odd exploratory glance into the darkness around the sides of the basement now and then, we are, for the duration of this meal, first and foremost people who are eating. Just as the whole city, as I imagine it, is populated in this moment by people who, in one way or another, are focusing their attention on their midday meal.
16
I think back on Claudia.
Claudia is in the service of the Olano family. Head of the kitchen. It’s around 2:00 p.m. when the signal sounds and Harry and I turn our heads toward the elevator.
The service elevator signal is easy to recognize. All of the elevators give a signal upon reaching the desired floor. For starters, the service elevator is louder; that seems directly related to its intensive use. What’s more, the signals of the residents’ and visitors’ elevators are subtler, styled as it were to the taste and presumed intellect of the users. Modest, too. Compared to the rather matter-of-fact sound of the service elevator.
Claudia has a gigantic body, curvaceous and relatively firm. She walks toward us holding a plate covered with an upside-down soup bowl. Some people might claim she waddles, but that’s an optical illusion. What they see is the inertia of the mass her hips push up with each step. According to Claudia her parents named her after a film star from the distant past, when they still showed films in cinemas. She says we have to share the meal equally. We eat a kind of poultry we don’t know and can’t picture at all; it is unbelievably flavorsome. Ever since Chanel, the Olanos’ lapdog, choked to death on a sugar cube, Claudia has arranged the leftovers on a staff plate. She wouldn’t give the hot dinners the organization delivers to us daily to the pigs. Her parents have a farm in the north of her home country with a smokehouse for the hams.
We let Claudia sit on the chair. She asks our opinion. That hint of tarragon, it’s not too strong, is it? Her eyes are the center of any place in which Claudia is located. She has eyes that show pent-up jubilation and speak of a desire no one can quench, which shouldn’t be unleashed for that very reason. Claudia is beautiful to look at, even when she’s depressed. She says that Mrs. Olano has had a hard life and sometimes that impedes her contact with the staff. I eat poultry prepared by Claudia. Harry has already finished his share. I chew slowly and at length, out of politeness. At times Claudia watches my mouth as I chew, as if that mouth will reveal what I really think about the food. I look at her eyes, which are looking at my mouth.
We don’t ask about her parents: whether they’re still alive, for instance, or if she ever hears from them. Harry says that her father must be as proud as punch. A daughter — that’s every father’s dream. In service with the Olanos, in this building. A father could do worse. I ask Harry if he has kids. He shakes his head. He doesn’t want kids, not in this world. By that he means the world in which he’s a guard. He says that real guards shouldn’t have daughters. You can’t put yourself through something like that.