The Guard (23 page)

He is growing his own food!

Unlike Harry and me, he hasn't been living off supplies.

He brings me a glass of water which is undoubtedly purified rainwater. It tastes better than the best wine I have ever drunk. I feel it flowing deep into my belly. Glancing at the embroidered insignia on my chest, he asks, “Are you still here?”

I nod, foolishly. “We came to make sure you were alright.”

“I thought everyone left long ago.”

I would like to check the time on my watch. I know that later I will want to recall this moment as precisely as possible. I look into the last resident's grayish-blue eyes. I smell his cologne. He talks to me, he exists.

“Harry and I stayed. In the basement.”

“You must be the last ones then. As far as I know, everyone else is gone.”

The idea that we should take this man downstairs to lock him up in the storeroom and guard him is too insane for words, a delusion of the highest order.

“Harry kept count,” I say. “He was certain that thirty-nine residents had left. He knew you were still here. That's why we were looking for you.”

“Well, that wasn't necessary,” the resident smiles. “I never go anywhere. I've been here the whole time.” He gestures at his home. In that instant, as if the two things are related, there is the sound of someone flicking a wine glass with a fingernail, once only.
On a long white sideboard, three stylized monitors flick on. Graphs appear: a mountain range, a young mountain range with sharp peaks and deep valleys. Above the mountains, outside behind the glass, a cloud hangs in the sky. This is the highest point of the city. He lives up above everyone and everything, as if in a watchtower.

“Your colleague, Harry, is he coming too? I can offer you some soup. Would you like some soup?” the resident asks with half an eye on the screens. “Pea soup. I made it yesterday so it should be at its best.”

I shake my head. “I don't want to delay you.”

“The computer can wait. Fifteen minutes here or there won't matter.”

Pea soup. The words don't set off any reaction in my mouth. I think I no longer know what pea soup tastes like.

Another ting on the wine glass. A window opens above one of the graphs. On the other screens the mountain ranges make way for scatter plots and three-dimensional histograms. They are moving.

“Excuse me,” the resident says, turning on his heel.

I stay standing there uncomfortably at the doorway, taking cover under my cap, in my uniform, feeling a warm gratitude to my uniform, thankful for the pretext of official validity it lends my visit.

“There were days,” the resident says, “I forgot I even had a computer. I'm not exaggerating.” He peers tensely at the screens, pulls a hand out of his trouser pocket and rubs the curve of his skull as if applying a lotion. “Long ago, Michel. Long ago.” Then he pulls a chair on wheels over and sits down.

“I won't disturb you any longer,” I say. “I now know that everything's fine. Thank you for the glass of water.” I raise the glass, but he doesn't turn around. While I ponder what to do with it, I see him move a hand to the middle monitor, a relaxed, open hand, and tap something with the tip of his slightly bent index finger. Immediately there are beeps, one after the other in quick succession, like falling dominoes, a sweet cheerful digital cascade, which stops abruptly when the screen turns black. A brilliant pinprick of
light is imprisoned in the monitor: it flaps long, colorful tentacles to float and sway elegantly through the black, like a ghost delighting in its intangibility.

The resident turns his attention to the right-hand screen.

I put the glass down on the floor.

“Wait,” I hear as I'm disappearing into the lobby. His heels click on the concrete and for the third time he lays his hand on my shoulder. This time the hand asks for understanding, but that's not necessary.

“At least take my elevator then,” the resident says. “It will get you back down in a good forty seconds.”

He leads me to the door.

“If anything comes up, let me know. Okay?”

I step into the cabin and the resident reaches past my chest to the buttons. “You too, sir,” I say dutifully in his pointy ear.

My reply amuses him. “I'll do that, Michel.”

The last I see of the resident is a gold eye tooth that looks out of place in his mouth and almost turns his broad smile into a sneer.

185

The walls and ceiling are white, padded leather, all sound is absent. There is a very fleeting awareness of motion, the acceleration is probably staged to spare the residents the sensation, however brief, of falling into nothingness. I neither hear nor feel a thing. The panel has two buttons, 0 and −1, and a dark window no larger than a postage stamp. There is no indication of the passing floors. I could just as easily be hanging motionless in the shaft. Nonetheless I am heading for the basement at full speed. After having spent a long time high up in the building, it's as if I'm traveling to the center of the earth. The basement. The thought of seeing the familiar
basement again in just a few seconds! Big warm tears roll into my beard. An enormous sense of relief makes me as light as a feather, floating in the falling cabin. I hear Harry's voice. I feel his mustache against my ear. I feel the strength in the arm he's wrapped around my shoulder. He whispers that I'll be back soon. Do I understand what he's saying? Soon I'll finally be back where I belong. He asks what on earth I'd accomplish by joining the elite. What would I do in a fenced garden where the guards bump into each other and don't even know each other's names? What? He wants me to tell him that. What would that teach me? He says my challenge is here in the basement, in the emptiness, more than a thousand square meters of it. How big had I wanted my challenge to be? Maybe I was born to be a guard. It's a possibility I can't exclude. Yes, this is my last chance, Harry says, but that doesn't mean I haven't ended up in the right place after all. Some people find their place quickly, others at the very end. Mine is here at the entrance to this building and I mustn't forget it. I have 29 cartridges, Winchester, 9mm, and a Flock 28 in excellent condition. It was wrong of us to turn away from the entrance, Harry says, a gross error, but no matter what's happened in the city and the basement in the meantime, my precision and 29 cartridges will get me to the storeroom. Waiting for me there are 2,250 cartridges, corned beef and drinking water. That's all I need. I have to prepare myself for a big adventure; what's gone before will pale by comparison. Every second, a test. The door is about to slide open. Like the acceleration, the deceleration will be gradual. I won't feel it in my bowels. I have to be ready because forty seconds don't last much longer than this. Harry hugs me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. After a kiss on my forehead, he arranges my cap at the prescribed angle. I've been away, he says solemnly. But now I'm back again.

PETER
TERRIN
was born in 1968 and is the author of two volumes of short stories and four novels.
The Guard
, a winner of the European Literature Prize 2010 and shortlisted for the A.K.O. and Libris prizes, is his first to be translated into English.

DAVID
COLMER
is the prizewinning translator of novels by Gerbrand Bakker, Arthur Japin and Dimitri Verhulst.