Memoirs Of An Invisible Man by H.F. Saint

on the cedar bench which ran around the inside of the sauna and folded up the other two to serve as a pillow. I unscrewed the light bulb inside the sauna and lay down in the darkness to let the heat soak through me.
    I must have lain there for ten or fifteen minutes, floating between consciousness and sleep. With the door closed the sound of the alarm bell was pleasantly muffled, and the commotion in the rest of the building seemed remote. I was therefore startled when the door I had locked clattered open and a man burst into the center of the lavatory. I raised myself on my bench inside the sauna and peered out at him through the window of the sauna door. He held what must have been a passkey in his hand and wore on his head a white helmet with some sort of insignia. It was presumably prescribed dress for running up and down corridors during fire drills — or perhaps he had it in case of aerial attack. He shouted officiously, “Anybody here? Anybody here!” The real unpleasantness of emergencies is often not the emergencies themselves but the occasion they provide for normally tolerable people to dress up in uniforms and bustle about issuing arbitrary commands. I remained silent. The man, from his position in the center of the room, peered intently around and found nothing out of order. Evidently he could not see me in the unlit sauna. He turned, walked partway across the room, and for some reason peered down into the bowl of the W.C. Fortunately, I never forget to flush. A good traditional upbringing always stands you in good stead. He continued across the room and pulled open another door, which seemed to open directly into Wachs’s office.
    “Anybody here? Anybody here!” Apparently not. He returned back through the lavatory, closing each door behind him.
    During this intrusion, it came to me for the first time just how unpleasantly embarrassing it would be if I were discovered now. It is normal enough when visiting someone’s home or place of business to use the W.C. — and to use the washbasin as well, in a limited way, to wash up — but people do not generally expect you to barricade yourself in the bathroom and take extended showers or naps in the sauna, should there be one. It would seem a bit arrogant, I supposed, no matter how diffident and vague my explanation. And by now I had probably broken some set of fire regulations which someone or other was sure to take very seriously. Worse than that, the fellow in the official helmet would want to force me, for my own safety, to vacate the building. I had a vision of myself standing naked on the lawn, clutching my clothing ridiculously in my hands, while overprivileged children lectured me on my political failings. It was a press conference of sorts: there might even be a photographer to capture the moment. On the other hand, the man with the helmet had come and gone. It now seemed pretty certain that I would get away with it, entirely unnoticed, and I felt particularly smug at the thought that, unlike everyone else, I would not have to stand foolishly in the rain.
    The only unpleasant thing was the incessant sound of the alarm bell and the pulsating whine above it.
    When I no longer heard any movement in the corridor, I climbed out of the sauna and turned on the shower again, starting it very cold and gradually adjusting the temperature upward. I hoped that by the time I was finished, all the revolutionary confusion would be concluded. Surely everyone else was out of the building by now. I wondered if I would be able to hear the simulated atomic blast. I turned off the shower and began drying myself.
    With no warning the lights went out and the alarm bell mercifully stopped. Evidently the revolutionary vanguard had managed after all to cut off power to the building. Undismayed, but inconvenienced by the darkness, I groped my way to the door into Wachs’s office and pulled it open. That admitted enough sunlight so that I could dress. With the alarm bell