The Toymaker

by Liam Pieper

  ‘I will not be much longer,’ Arkady said, bitterly.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s a war; there are sides, despite what you say. Both of us can’t survive. I’m not your equal; I’m your servant. You know what happens to me in the end.’

  Dieter frowned at the Russian’s challenge, then stood up, and went to his hiding place under the floorboards to retrieve something wrapped in cloth. He placed it on the table and unwrapped it, and Arkady let out an involuntary groan when he saw what it was.

  ‘When this is all over, we will make it right, Arkady. We will fix this world that other men have broken. But before that we have to survive, which means we have to get back to work.’ Dieter picked up the little Sarah doll from its wrapping on the table and handed it to Arkady, who took it and held it like he might a baby. ‘I need your help Arkady. I need you.’ He put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, felt him shudder.

  After that night, Dieter started to show more kindness towards the children. At first he started administering anaesthetic before amputating a limb, which he would have seen as an unthinkable waste a few months ago, then he started cancelling the operations when he knew that the outcome would have no scientific merit, and lying to Mengele about the result. And then spiriting medicine from the supply cupboard for those already ill. He did all this in secret from the other doctors, but in full view of Arkady, which made the Russian think perhaps it was all for his benefit. Regardless, it lessened the suffering of the children. In return for this, Arkady redoubled the effort he put into his lab work, concentrating hard even through the fog that was over him these days. They were, after all, a good team.

  EIGHT

  After making a couple of calls to push back the meeting he’d felt too shabby to attend on time, Adam dressed and went downstairs to where his driver was already waiting, leaning against the car smoking. As they crept through the streets of Jakarta, he downed a couple of bottles of vodka he’d snatched from the minibar. His hangover was starting to recede, and as the cleansing alcohol buzz settled over him so did some of the optimism from the night before.

  There was a long wait at the entrance to the factory yard while a security guard checked the car out, running a bomb detector over the boot and scoping under the vehicle with a mirror at the end of a long pole. The driver rolled down his window and had a brief exchange with the guard, who stuck his head in to look at Adam. Adam summoned the politest smile he could muster and turned it to the guard who stared impassively at him from behind mirrored aviators. Finally, the guard nodded, said a word, and the boom went up.

  A roller door opened to let the car drive straight onto the factory floor, where a manager, waiting to greet Adam, rushed forward to open the car door before his driver could. As the door opened, the chaos of the shop washed over him, the sound of thousands of articles of Javanese kitsch being lathed from wood and handpainted by the hundreds of workers crammed onto the factory floor. For a while the Mitty & Sarah Company had imported some shadow puppets made in this factory, largely so that Adam could convince Tess he had been sincere in his appreciation of her ideas, but they hadn’t sold well and he’d discontinued the line. He remembered, though, that the box boasted that every doll was handmade, and handmade they were, by the rows and rows of nimble-fingered women who assembled them.

  His ears flinched at the roar of the production floor, his skin flushed from the heat, and his nose prickled at the sawdust and the chemical varnish they used to treat the wood. Adam knew that scent; he’d smelled it in the Polish toy factories he had visited as a child. By the time the varnish had proven and the dolls had been shipped across the ocean, the scent would have faded until it provided the faintest nostalgic whiff. For now, though, the combined fumes of thousands of litres of the stuff collected in the airless factory, which was locked tight to discourage inspectors and photographers from NGOs from sticking their beaks in. Not far from where the car was parked, an old woman was dipping lathed puppet torsos into a rippling vat of the varnish. Her hands and arms to the elbow had taken on the sheen of very old, very expensive wood.

  Adam shook the manager’s hand, which, against his own soft, sweaty palm, was as rough and dry as a long-forgotten orange at the bottom of a fruit bowl. Calluses scraped against Adam’s fingers as he retrieved his digits from the man’s over-eager handshake. Those hands betrayed his origins on the factory floor, and a childhood spent labouring before that, as did his dark skin and ropy forearms. These things, which initially Adam found noble, and in a way reminded him of his own family story, started to seem grotesque as the visit wore on, and Adam decided he did not like the man. As the manager babbled about what a pleasure it was to see him and how excited he was that Adam was considering using his facility, and how far ahead of their quotas for the year they were, Adam saw the Indonesian for what he was: a jumped-up, slimy little bureaucrat who in the effort to rise above his fellow factory workers had sold them out. He was wearing a batik tunic that strained at his stomach where middle age was sending muscle to seed. The tunic still had creases in it, like it had just been removed from its packet. Adam suspected he kept the traditional dress in his office for when he needed to look both authoritative and exotic. The thought filled him with anger, not that the manager thought he would fall for such bald-faced manipulation, but that this slimy little toad-man would sell out his ancestry to make a quick buck.

  Adam, after a walk across the factory floor, decided he’d had enough, and asked to be taken up to the showroom, which was housed in an annexe that hung suspended over the factory floor, with three sides of mirrored windows. It provided a panoramic view of the floor, and from the outside it presented as a dark, mirrored box. The overseer explained that it would draw the eye of anyone working on the floor if they looked up from their work, that the possibility someone might be watching them kept them from slacking off. That kind of low-level paranoia was a valuable motivator, from a management perspective. Adam nodded appreciatively, and spent a second savouring the clean frigid air, watching the work below. None of the noise of production penetrated the thick glass; the only sound was a Chopin nocturne being piped into the office through speakers, and the nervous scraping of the overseer’s sandals on the carpet.

  Adam paused for a moment to let the view sink in, and turned to watch the rows upon rows of women in hijabs bent over their workstations in silent concentration. Even from up here he could see the exhaustion on their faces, the mounting grime of the production process caking their cheeks.

  Adam thought back to the gleaming Chinese factory that for the past decade had assembled and boxed all the Mitty & Sarah products for import into Australia. There, thousands of workers stood on automated construction lines, dressed in identical sterile overalls, gloves and surgical masks, all resolutely focused on performing one tiny task, tightening a screw, or polishing the plastic wrapping of a box as it whizzed past them on the conveyor belt. It had been beautiful to watch, as awe-inspiring in its own way as walking into one of the huge, empty churches he visited when he travelled through Europe as a child. The only sound from that factory floor was the mighty whirring of the extractor fans that sucked up the fumes and dust from the industrial process, and jettisoned it into the soupy Shenzhen air.

  This was different. It was chaotic, and dirty, and loud, the floor febrile with women dashing about to fetch parts, the air loud with barking overseers. That said, it was cheap, far cheaper, to have the toys carved and painted by hand here in a warehouse in Jakarta than in the industrial powerhouses of China. There was even a certain kind of beauty to it. If you watched the chaos long enough, you noticed the patterns start to emerge, the cacophony and mess sliding into shape and the job getting done. Here, like the traffic on the streets, life found a way.

  The overseer spoke, shaking Adam out of his reverie. ‘As you can see, we’ve had no problem expanding production to meet your requirements. We’ve had to hire new workers, almost double our staff, but we’ve implemented a day-
and a night-shift to make sure we meet your production targets.’ He continued, droning on about schedules and quotas and efficiency and customer satisfaction, and Adam tuned out, hypnotised by the scurrying women below, only snapping out of it when an assistant brought Adam a prototype for the new Sarah doll, which he took and held in his hands.

  Shubangi had sent the designs for the dolls a few days earlier, and Adam, watching over her shoulder as she mailed off a PDF of schematics and Pantone codes and wood-grain measurements, had been unsure that her idea would work, but here, right here in his hands, was proof that it had. The doll was exactly the same as the ones from the old factory, and the factory before that in Gippsland, and the dolls from his childhood. The wood was different, but better, logged on the sly from Sumatra, and the dress Sarah wore was a little cheaper, a little more crackly when he rubbed it with a thumb and forefinger, but otherwise it was exactly the same. Bringing it to his face he smelled the warm, nostalgic scent of varnish.

  It had worked. The audacity of this switch, all through a few well-placed emails, astonished him with its – his – brilliance. The same quality product, just made by cheaper people. They would still be shipped to their Melbourne warehouse, already in their retail boxes with the traditional copy stating they were handmade and designed in Australia, as well as the truncated history of the company, starting with Adam’s handwritten spiel: ‘Let me tell you a story about my grandfather.’

  On the way back to his hotel from the factory he stared at the hawkers that wandered through the traffic selling batteries, phone chargers, magazines, deep-fried snacks. He admired their entrepreneurial spirit but pitied them for not wanting to be more than walking roadside stalls. To Adam the world was a place more full of wonder and opportunity than these people could imagine, and he had lost himself in thought about the astonishing potential that it offered a man like him when a beggar rapped on his window and startled him out of his happy thoughts. He was about to roll down the window and tell her to fuck off when he saw that she was carrying a baby under her arm, the child asleep, or maybe sick, its head flopping about alarmingly as she tapped on the window and made a pleading gesture with her free hand. Adam realised that the windows of the car were mirrored, and that the woman couldn’t see inside, and he relaxed. She was just taking her chances that there was someone of means inside the car who could help her.

  He pressed his nose to the window for a better look at her and realised that her hands were stained a dark brown from the wrists to the elbow, and for a moment he was sure she was the woman from the factory who had been dipping the dolls in varnish. He was startled, but only for a second, because what were the chances? She was just one of millions of beggars on the streets of Jakarta; there was bound to be a resemblance.

  Momentarily disconcerted by the encounter, he pulled out his paperwork to take his mind off it. He ran the sums again and realised that with the money they would save shifting production to Indonesia he would turn a slight profit, even after all that money that would be siphoned off for Tariq, and the oppressive fog which had hung over him since his encounter with the man started to lift. Anyone could be successful, Adam reasoned, but to be given a black eye and come out on top made you a hero. And becoming a hero in the tradition of his grandfather was all he’d ever wanted.

  __________

  They finished lunch: soup, salad, steak and a bottle of pinot noir, of which Arkady drank most. Afterwards, Tess, mellow after a glass and a half, helped Arkady into the passenger seat, then climbed behind the wheel and started for home. To fill the silence she told him how his room had been put back just the way it was, but with a couple of mobility bars stationed here and there should he need assistance getting up, and that a home nurse would come by daily to check on his wellbeing and anything he might need help with. When she stopped at the first set of lights and looked across, she saw Arkady’s look of polite boredom.

  ‘Tess,’ Arkady said touching the back of her hand lightly as she put the car into drive. ‘Take me to the office. I want to go over the books. Let’s run the numbers, like we used to.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t need to do that, everything is going fine. Adam has brought in outside accountants to manage things for a while, and . . .’

  ‘Oh good God!’ Arkady raised his eyebrows in mock alarm. ‘Hurry, then, there is no time to lose.’

  Tess laughed. ‘It’s fine, Arkady. Take the day off.’

  ‘Please, indulge an old man his vanity.’

  She glanced at him again, smiled yes, and Arkady switched on the radio, punching through the stations until he found a tinkling classical station. He settled and closed his eyes, and soon he was snoring. Outside the window the houses got larger and larger then dropped away suddenly, as residential zoning gave way to light industry, grim shopfronts with handpainted signs for takeaway shops, panelbeaters, timber yards, brothels that she flashed by on the highway. Why were there always so many brothels out in factory zones? Tess wondered. Was it just because the rent was cheap? Were tradies as virile and insatiable as pornography suggested? Or did people from all over the city drive out here so they could get their kicks without being spotted? It was a disquieting thought, particularly with all the late nights Adam put in at the office. Her mouth twisted around the idea, and she only noticed the off-ramp she needed seconds before she would have passed it, and swerved to get on, cutting off a semitrailer behind her which slammed on screaming air-brakes, followed by a loud, angry blast from the horn. The driver flipped her off, slowing to yell obscenities at her, which were silenced by the two panes of glass and rushing wind between their vehicles, but she made the turn.

  Shaken, she slowed to a crawl as she drove on, and glanced across to find Arkady staring at her wild-eyed.

  ‘Sorry.’ She frowned, then laughed in relief. ‘What an arsehole.’

  Arkady blinked and looked around. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Nearly at the factory, Arkady. We just hit some traffic.’

  ‘Oh.’ Arkady exhaled heavily. ‘Good.’

  They drove the car straight onto the warehouse floor and parked in the spot reserved for visiting VIPs, sheltered from the beeping hustle of forklifts and picker-packers by a dividing wall, and close to the stairs that would take them up to the showroom. Adam had had them installed so that potential retail partners scoping out their products would be treated to a quick, sweeping glance of the industry underpinning the business, the rows and rows of pallets stacked to the roof that stretched further than the eye could see in the gloom of the warehouse, then a moment later arrive in the cool future-chic of the offices.

  On his way up the stairs Arkady – he was definitely moving more slowly, Tess was sure of it – paused to catch his breath, looked out at the warehouse and nodded approvingly at what he saw, then trooped up to the top. They made their way to her office, where she left him to fix a couple of coffees. When she got back, he was seated, his head buried in paperwork, pen in hand, a small smile on his face. She stood in the door with the steaming mugs of coffee, her heart fit to burst. The old man was fine, just fine. It would all be okay. She placed the coffee next to him and he smiled, then went back to his books, muttering under his breath in German.

  Often, in the past, when they were working in companionable silence, she would catch him muttering in German, absent-mindedly, the way another man might hum a pop song. One day she’d asked him about it, and he’d looked up at her in surprise, the white visible all the way around the blue of his eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When you talk to yourself. You do it in German.’

  ‘Do I? Well . . .’ Arkady seemed taken aback. ‘Force of habit, I suppose. I studied medicine at the German university in Prague. I guess doing homework takes me back there.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t leave it there. Such an ugly language!’

  ‘You think so? I think it is quite lovely, at times. There are words for things that only the Germans ever thought to put a name to.
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br />   ‘Like schadenfreude?’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Arkady, putting down his pen and folding his long, elegant fingers in front of his face to hide a smile. ‘But also, for example, kummerspeck, literally ‘grief bacon’, the weight you put on when you are unhappy.’

  ‘I know the word,’ Tess said.

  ‘I believe you.’ A hint of a teasing tone crept into Arkady’s voice and he ducked to avoid the pencil Tess lobbed at him. She scowled at him, pretended at outrage, but she liked these odd, playful asides they sometimes had. Even when Arkady’s tone could be brusque, talking to him was the only time she felt like a grown-up. ‘Scheisskopf,’ she hissed at him, and he waved it away.

  ‘An inelegant word. You can do better. Try harder. What is your favourite word? Mine is saudade. Portuguese. The desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.’

  ‘Won,’ she challenged. ‘Reluctance to let go of a beautiful illusion. In Korean.’

  ‘Luftmensch. Yiddish for a dreamer, a visionary. “Air person”. Like your husband, Adam.’

  ‘Sastranitsa is a better word for my husband. Russian for “you shit too much”.’

  ‘But not my favourite Russian word. That’s chelovek-karova, “man-cow”. This means the fat, stupid prisoner you befriend and take with you when you escape from a gulag, for the express purpose of butchering him for meat as you cross the Siberian wasteland. I love this word. The fact that it exists tells you everything you need to know about the Russian soul.’

  ‘Okay. That’s – not a nice thing to do.’

  ‘The Germans have their own versions. Torschlusspanik, or “gate-closing fear”. Once upon a time, when barbarians would raid, the wealthy would close the gate to the city walls, leaving the peasants outside to be slaughtered. The angst that this might happen to you was torschlusspanik, but these days it means something like – the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.’