A NEW DAY

By the time Matthias noticed that the windows had risen above his head, the office had already been underground for several weeks.

There had been explanations. The pavement was being repaired. The neighbouring building required reinforcement. Someone from the city had come with a measuring instrument and assured them that the displacement fell within the permitted range. Matthias had signed the form because the man was standing on a cable.

Now sand entered through the ventilation grilles.

Each morning they swept it away before switching on the lights. Fine sand was particularly dangerous to the equipment. It worked into the focusing rings and made the lenses turn with a faint, expensive reluctance. The sound engineer kept his headphones in a bread bag.

At first they hired someone to remove it. Later, when the invoices became difficult to classify, they did it themselves.

On the wall beside the stairs, a brass plate said FILM UND CO. The stairs ended against a ceiling of compacted sand. They continued polishing the plate. Visitors, should there be any, would need to know that they had arrived.

The telephone still worked.

This was the fact Matthias found most difficult to explain.

Every afternoon a client called to ask how the film was progressing. The voice was pleasant and patient. It wanted something lighter. More air around the subject. A feeling of possibility.

Matthias wrote these phrases in a notebook, taking care to brush the page before closing it.

Their current production showed a woman opening a window.

Behind the window was a photograph of the sky. They had tried using a lamp, but its heat loosened the sand overhead. In the resulting take, the woman looked upward before she looked outside. The client had found this distracting.

“Why does she seem afraid?”

“We’ll correct it,” Matthias said.

The woman arrived punctually each morning from the wardrobe room. He could no longer remember whether she had been cast or had simply been there when they began. She knew her movement perfectly: hand to the fastening, a brief resistance, then the opening.

Between takes she sat with her shoes in her lap and emptied them.

One evening, after the others had gone to sleep, Matthias examined the footage alone.

He stopped at the frame immediately before the window opened.

The woman’s hand rested on the fastening. Her face was still turned toward the room. Behind her, beyond the edge of the set, he could see his own office: the desk, the telephone, the notebook lying open.

He enlarged the image.

There was someone beneath the desk.

Matthias bent down. Nothing was there except sand and a plug that had been disconnected so long that its holes were packed solid.

On the screen, the figure beneath the desk was also bending down.

He advanced one frame.

The figure raised its face.

Before he could distinguish it, the telephone rang.

“We’ve been discussing the ending,” the client said. “Do we actually need her to open the window?”

Matthias watched the little figure waiting beneath his desk.

“What would she do instead?”

“Perhaps she could simply feel at home.”

From the wardrobe room came the soft, regular sound of someone shaking sand out of a shoe.

Matthias reached for his notebook. The page was gritty. He brushed it with the side of his hand, then wrote down the change.