The Guard & The Sweeper: A Love Story
Behold The Security Guard, a symbol of some authority, green tea swirling in the depths of his favourite thermos, the breeze from an old metal fan mussing the few strands of hair that remain on his bald pate. There is a deck of cards on his desk, and a game of gin rummy, or the local equivalent, is never far from his thoughts. Mealtimes find him buried deep in a bowl of steamed rice, eating lustily like only those who have felt privation can.
His uniform, several sizes too big for his meatless frame, is nonetheless fashionable, in a post-Stalinist pre-John Galliano way. The gold epaulettes hanging by a thread from his sloping shoulders carry no rank, but make him appear like a crusty veteran (or victim) of some earlier domestic campaign. He appears fearless and fearful at the same time.
Now he presides (nearly powerlessly) over the squawking contestants in an ongoing battle for prime parking territory at the foot of the little lane.
The Security Guard shares his little hut with the Lane Sweeper, a chubby female associate who wields a straw broom like a prop in a Harry Potter flick. They don't speak to each other-at least not when anyone else is around. Maybe words are no longer necessary. Maybe she is also a veteran of the earlier tumult, a former teen zealot who excelled at humiliation? They're both wounded but pretend nothing happened-the wonders of collective denial.
The scratching of the Sweeper's broom is the neighbourhood's unfailing alarm clock, waking residents at 6am whether they want to be awoken at that hour or not. (Still, there is something to be said for these straw brooms: they are good for clearing leafs and litter and don't kick up much dust.) Lane Sweeper's arms are strong, her sweeping technique unassailable, and she could surely beat Security Guard in a wrestle.
The hut where they are based at the foot of the little lane is a barebones affair, fitted out with a hazardous-looking space heater that glows orange in winter, making Security Guard and Lane Sweeper appear like human breadsticks being baked behind frosted glass.
Once every quarter, a foreign resident is invited into the hut's interior where he is asked to pay a maintenance fee for the upkeep of the lane. On these payment dates, there is much conviviality, absent at other times. Security Guard, whose vocabulary normally doesn't extend beyond a pinched "No!" enlarges his highly specialised vocabulary to include "Yes!" when payment is perfected. And Lane Sweeper, not known for displays of emotion, grows a broad smile as the foreign resident bows out of the hut, saying “Thank you” in her local dialect.
Throughout the city, there are thousands of Security Guards and Lane Sweepers, and one wonders if there shouldn't be some annual awards dinner to acknowledge their good service. As holdovers from a different age, a pre-residential high-rise time when everyone read off the same page (or was supposed to) and every lane brimmed with community spirit and informers, the Guard and the Sweeper stand as relics. Recovering souls, damaged but not broken by the past, they are good with life's simple pleasures - food, clothing, shelter etc., as the rest of us claw for more and more. To each according to his needs, wrote the bearded socialist, and from each according to his abilities. He didn't count on the power of connections.
