Within an hour or so, the Guard returns, or a day, says some little phrase to the effect that the entrant’s papers aren’t in order, which is nonsense, of course, but no one’s to panic, this is just part of the ceremony, carefully scripted if to be played lingually loose, each time different. The entrant then protests, politely, yet firmly; the Guard then intimates through shrugs, nods, shakes, wrung hands, finger fiddling accompanied by guttural vocables that something might be done, after all, you’re a friend, about this little mess only if what, a grunt guarded by swallows, if only the appropriate measures and yadda. At this, the entrant is to raise an eyebrow, one eyebrow and only one eyebrow, make sure it’s the right one, though, a left, and that you don’t raise it too eagerly, not too earnestly (they’re being prepped as much to inform them as to ready them scared). The Guard then appears to lose interest, suggesting to the entrant an alternate gate, a referral, only a suggestion that the entrant must, of course, though with less frustration than friendly adamancy, refuse. Then the Guard’s partner, and no one knows why, the guard of the guard, maybe, he’s to suddenly give a loud laugh from inside the guardhouse (don’t ask, I didn’t write the script — it’d been found in two parts atop a mountain slugged Lost) — leaves the hut to approach the entrant and then demand from him or her either a smoke or a light, a sip or a swig…insisting on posing for a picture with the entrant to be taken by his partner, the first Guard, him holding their camera to his eyeless egged socket, snapping them with their arms around each other while the second Guard picks at the entrant’s pockets. Once accomplished, the second Guard, who later will become the first Guard, the negotiator for the next Group, returns to the hut, and the first Guard, who becomes the untelevised good cop as second guard for the next Group, say, pretends to inspect the camera for security purposes, in the process allowing his songbird to fly away with it, its strap in the bird’s beak, toward the sun. Momentarily forgetting his lines, where he was, in the script, in this role, he then again suggests that the entrant might want to try another gate, there’s another gate only right around the corner, a perfectly good gate, just as accommodating, really; as the entrant, who’s by now — or so he or she always thinks, flattering — internalized what they’re supposed to say, how and where and when, getting the feel for this, the idea, yet again insists that no, that yes this is the right gate, the Tourist Gate, right. I’m sure of it. Has to be. Anyway, their Guard says, they’re not allowed in through any of the other gates. Just as well. It’s telling to observe, too, though none do, that throughout their entire encounter no one exits through this Tourist Gate, that no one passes through in the direction opposite their intention. And so it’s only now that the entrant, exhausted, and exhausted, too, of his or her options, searches around in their pockets for their offering only to find nothing’s there, nothing to proffer, not money nor any valuables smuggled, without item; he or she feigns denial then, anger, grief, and blah blah these reasoned excuses, it’s in receivership, escrow, I’ve been robbed, there’s a thief in our midst, as the Guard laughs to his guard, winks a lid over his socket, shakes his head, avoids the hopefully imploring eyes of the entrant by shutting his own one functioning. In time, a week, a moon, the songbird returns to his shoulder, without camera, twittering caw. And an exchange like this — it can last for hours, and often does, an entire day, days…in truth, who can tell as all the clocks are within, and are on their own time; this is how the authorities of Polandland control incoming flow (amid everything else).
