The Clear Drawer

The windowless basement machine room of a bank in Zurich on a weekday morning, cool light from fluorescent tubes, a broad disk storage cabinet one and a half metres wide and almost as tall, two light grey upper doors with dark grey strips of small green, red and white buttons, below four cream-white drawers in two rows, each with a half-round clear window and a small blue handle, one drawer pulled open, every button blank and every surface plain and unmarked, a hand in a white coat sleeve lowering a stack of silver platters under a clear round cover onto the spindle, a round steel vault door open in the far wall.