In the late afternoon of July 6th started what would be the strongest storm of the whole summer, and it went on all night.
Immense, dark cloud could already be seen coming from the west in the first hours of the afternoon, foreshadowing the chaos they would eventually bring. The first drops started falling – loud, heavy and cold – after the last delivery of the day, at 5:30 P.M.. From the window of his bedroom Giovanni watched the two Guards, Wrinkle and Carnival, run to the jeep and leave in a rush to reach the Center before a lightning bolt could strike them. That image made him smile, thinking it wasn’t too unlikely after all.
Then, finally, the clouds’ bad mood – which to that point simply manifested with a dull growl – exploded in a hail of bursts, roars, lightning, and most of all water, a loud grey curtain isolating the Tank from the rest of the world.
Giovanni killed the time separating him from dinner trying to read something while lying on the bed. At the pace he was finishing his reads, he would soon have to ask for more. Whether they could satisfy his request or not was a different matter. He had started a collection of short stories by Calvino, then he would probably move on to Tolkien. He wondered if his predecessor had the passion for literature he had and how many of the books did he read. The volumes didn’t look used, at least not as much as the ones in libraries. He couldn’t say, so he could just hope that his predecessor didn’t have the horrible habit of turning the pages after licking his fingertip.
After half an hour or so he realized the storm’s racket didn’t let him concentrate properly. His eyes went from one line to the other, but the information he sent to his brain were crossed by thousands of other thoughts, filters destroying their meaning.
The thunders, the pounding water, the feeble, yet unsettling wind whistling through the cracks in the window’s frame… Giovanni’s ears were filled with sounds and noises. And his mind – damn it! – wandered back to the laments of that night. He closed the book and placed it on his chest, keeping a finger inside it as if he truly believed he would eventually get back to it.
He tried focusing on the money he would receive at the end of his adventure. HE thought about the cruise, the faraway island, the sun heating the silvery sand. Closing his eyes he tried to imagine th landscape as he always did, but… it was raining there, too. There was a cold, disturbing wind. No use in staying.
He opened his eyes and decided to watch some TV.
On the documentary channel there was a show about nuclear fission, while on the cinema channel an old american sci-fi movie had just started, from the fifties of the previous century. He chose the latter, and since he was quite hungry, decided to turn a late snack into an early supper.
The afternoon became evening, but he couldn’t see the difference. He ate cheese-filled eggplants, absently watching the vicissitudes of a group of scientists fighting a clumsy but relentless tentacle monster. Once the alien was defeated, between flames and contortions, a french comedy started, giving him a good reason to change the channel.
The news, good. An elderly journalist was explaining the exchange rates of the main foreign currencies, while various headlines passed in the lower part of the screen. Giovanni read them automatically, cutting off the woman. A soldier had saved a child who had fallen on the tracks. A school had won a literary price for the group project Freedom and Future. New appointments among the higher ups of the NMO. And then there was – curiously – something about politics-related disorders: A revolt has been stopped in B***, 23 revolutionaries on trial. Well, they weren’t under his jurisdiction. They would be delivered to some other Keeper. Because that’s how they would end. Unloaded. He had never watched an NMO trial, mainly because, for what he knew, they were conducted behind closed doors; but the suspected that the Arrest, Trial, Conviction, Confinement, Unloading, Elimination chain was rarely interrupted.
He wondered how many people, beyond the Camp’s enclosure, were scheming in the shadows, plotting to overthrow the Order. They were probably demo-republican groups, who had disbanded with the coming of the NMO. In time, it was predictable they would try to reorganize and launch an attack. History is a book starting over at each chapter. Nothing new underneath the sun.
When the news ended, Giovanni changed the channel again and found a documentary on the production of japanese katanas. recognizing the first signs of digestion-induced sleepiness, he turn the volume down a bit and sat more comfortably on his chair, his hands on his lap.
Beyond the thick walls of his apartment, the storm went on. He could hear a crackling noise, interrupted now and then by seemingly faraway explosions, while in reality they were shaking the sky right above him.
A man wearing a garishly colored kimono was showing to the spectators the incision of the blade of a katana. Giovanni couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he didn’t really care anyway. He close his eyes.
Just a few seconds, he told himself.
His island was far. Like Japan. The thunders reminded him of the fireworks he so liked when he was a kid. He kept his father by one hand and his mother by the other, his nose up, filling his eyes with those loud blooms which then plummeted down, as it was said the firmament would do one day…
The sound of a sword cutting bamboo. Oriental music in the air. The sound of a gong, barely audible, under the rain, in the heart of the storm… how much could a katana cost? Almost as much as flying to a deserted island, maybe? Wasn’t it absurd?
His head leaning on his chest, Giovanni loosened the reins. And his head galloped away in the night.
The sudden awakening was a blow to his heart.
The chair trembled due to his muscles contracting and his neck stood up painfully. The furious thunder that had ripped him from an already forgotten dream was still in the sky, rolling from one cloud to the other.
He instinctively brought one hand to his heart and pushed, almost as if he could placate it and keep it inside his chest.
From the dirty dish in from of him came the sugary smell of the sauce he had put on the eggplants, making him feel slightly nauseous. He spent an entire minute mentally rebuilding the context he was in and only after doing so he noticed something was wrong.
The TV was off, and so was the white ceiling light. The kitchen floated in a cold, ghostly light. He rubbed his eyes, blaming a momentary fogging of his sight. But he only needed to turn towards the point whence that new, cold light came to realize that the battery-powered emergency light had turned on. The power had gone out in the whole flat.
An alarm sounded in his brain. Did he need to follow any particular procedure? He remember something on the manual about what to do in case of a power outage.
In the meanwhile, rain kept scratching the Tank’s walls. He went out of the kitchen and into the Control, vaguely disoriented from the new perspective and field of depth brought by that soporific whiteness. And he found confirmation to his suspicion: the Well, now, was only a dark rectangle on which the emergency lamp on the door frame reflected.
Nothing had changed for the convicts, of course. But he had responsibilities. His duty was to personally verify that there were no anomalies (and on their possible nature the manual was more than exhaustive) and to do so he had to check through the Porthole. Just so that he could write it on the Register.
He was about to do towards the reinforced door when a sudden idea made him go back. There was something he needed to take before leaving the apartment.
Once he had locked the door and got into the Ring, Giovanni stood still for about a minute, at a loss. The neon lamps were off and the emergency ones were on in their stead; but they were a lot less intense and numerous. As a result, the corridor was drowned in shadowy gulf barely lit by sporadic whitish, sickly halos. Droning, pounding noises and rumblings were everywhere… and also his heartbeat, which Giovanni thought he had managed to calm down, but was now going wild again.