The Guard Read Online Free PDF Page A

meaning of the sound. Harry comes back smiling. He rubs his stomach and opens his mouth to say, “They can’t take that away from us now.”
    18
    I think of Arthur.
    Arthur extends his arm: a well-filled blue dustcoat sleeve with a clenched fist at the end. His other hand points to its length and gestures that the walls are at least twice as thick. He was in service with the Duprez family for years, three streets away. He saw the building rise. Now he works for the Poborskis. He suspects that the bottom layers have even thicker walls, but on the thirty-ninth floor he knows exactly. He’s quiet for a moment looking at the yardstick he’s holding out for us. He says that the apartment has window seats like they used to have in fortresses and castles.
    He grabs the two trash bags by their knotted tops. Piss off, I think, piss off! But Arthur just stands there, knees bent, stinking garbage in each hand, as if he feels like he’s forgotten something and is dredging through his memory. Why does he come to chat with us first before putting the bags in the crusher? Doesn’t he notice the stench anymore? Has he always been at the bottom of the household ladder, where stench comes in many varieties, and has he gradually come to cherish those varieties as the peculiarities of his simple life?
    Does he have a bad back?
    I hope the bags don’t leak, not a drop. That concentrate of rot and decay could stink for days, nestling into our room, where it’s safe because of the lack of circulation. It will creep into ourbedding and uniforms and when we start to think it’s gone, it will be because the stench has taken possession of us in our sleep.
    Finally Arthur says that the building won’t collapse in a hurry. No, he’s certain of that. Not with walls like these . . . He lifts the bags up from the floor. There are no traces left on the concrete. It’s Arthur who told us that the building doesn’t have any garbage chutes: they’re too dangerous, they’d be throwing the door open to biochemical terror. According to Arthur, garbage chutes are a thing of the past. In older buildings they’re sealing them up. He lugs the bags to the crusher, disappearing around the corner. We hear them flop down one after the other. After a short pause the motor turns on, building up the hydraulic pressure. When the maximum has been achieved, the motor turns off and the press starts moving. Deep in the container, almost simultaneously, we hear the bags pop like two balloons.
    Arthur tells us that they lie full-length on the window seats and stare out. He undoes his dustcoat to arrange the panels neatly one over the other, then pulls the belt tight. They look out over the city like Roman emperors, with delicacies from all over the world in arm’s reach. He’s seen it with his own eyes, at least once. The window seat in the second living area is without a doubt Mr. and Mrs. Poborski’s favorite spot. He says they made their fortune from insulating covers to use on ski slopes and glaciers in the summer. Without the Poborskis, Arthur claims, there would be no ski resorts left anywhere.
    19
    I wipe my plate clean with a piece of bread, clearly winning Claudia’s approval. I praise her deer-calf stew. Particularly tasty. She smiles. Mr. Olano enjoyed it too. He instructed the butler to callClaudia to the dining room so that he could compliment her personally. She says he’s charming; she loves his big, warm hands. How does she know those hands are warm? Do the Olanos shake hands with their staff? It sounds unlikely to me.
    Mr. Olano is no stranger to the staff’s living quarters. The five-star service was included in the exorbitant purchase price of his luxury apartment and he interprets that service in the broadest sense. Without knocking, he opens her bedroom door. It is very quiet, but vague noises from the bowels of the building still reach these rooms. The night light in the hall reflects in Claudia’s eyes, she’s lying on her side. Mr.