The Guard Read Online Free Page A

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 evenwhile 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