That Isolda's legs were just as fresh and pink after two weeks as they had been a day after the operation was for him a matter of natural course. Anything else did not even enter his mind. It would seem to him as much of a nonsense as that Phidias's Nike was threatened with putrefaction just because she had no head. Anyway, they were still the legs of a living woman, separated from the rest by a simple accident, without ceasing to be her organic part, linked for ever with the live unity of her indivisible personality.
6
It is twelve midnight. Berg's night shift at the power station. He could in fact sit upstairs in his office but somewhere (there, deep inside), he fears loneliness, though he does not allow himself to be aware of the thought.
The bright light of the lamps and the rhythmic clank of the machines have a soothing, soporific effect.
Berg is walking down the aisle between two rows of racing machinery.
The swish of whirling sprockets, the crashing of levers.
The music of hot steel.
He stares at the whirling wheel and feels slightly dizzy.
After a while his attention is drawn to a giant piston which rises and falls with monotonous precision. It produces a strained, hollow wheeze. Berg thinks of sexual intercourse. He is watching the piston's tireless rising and falling with growing terror. The copulating machine. "Why don't they breed?" says Berg to himself and feels an ice-cold chill on his spine. "Wild, barren animals," he throws the remark over his shoulder and hurries away.
But he has not reached the end of the aisle. On the right and on the left the pistons rise and fall with frantic momentum. Berg feels a breeze of hard, uncompromising hatred coming from the machines. The eternal hatred of a worker towards his exploiter. He feels small and helpless, at the mercy of these iron creatures. He feels like screaming but manages to control himself. "They hate me," he thinks candidly, "but they are fixed and cannot hurt me."
To prove to himself that he is not afraid he stops in front of one of them and watches it for a while with disdain. The wheel's revolutions are here somewhat slower, languid. The beast is watching, lying in wait. Berg feels a sudden urge to touch a sprocket with his hand. He cannot take his eyes off the steel slider.
"I'll touch it quickly and move my hand away," he thinks with clear determination.
He wants to tear himself away and run but he cannot. And the wheel is turning slower and slower, growing more and more sluggish ... The giant arm of the sprocket grows longer and longer ... He feels its cold breath. In a moment it will touch his face. Jesus Christ!
Suddenly, Berg feels a sharp pain in the shoulder. Someone's bony fingers pull him away with incredible force and he hears a hard, rasping voice like a horn of Jericho:
"Careful, sir! You could fall into the machine."
He sees above him the greasy face of a worker, his big blue eyes watching him from under knitted eyebrows.
"You go upstairs, sir, have a nap. We can take care here ourselves," the voice says with authority against which Berg feels weak and docile like a child.
The strong, bony hand leads him, almost carries him, through the engine room, and lets him out onto the yard.
"Thank you," says Berg quietly and sees above him the sky's enormous, black face covered in pimples of stars.
7
A week after this incident Berg left the power station earlier than usual and headed for the opposite end of town.
The smell of hibiscus on a golden, autumnal day. The boundless calm of the air alarms and horrifies. Everything is in a slumber, still, not a twig stirs, only the leaves, one after the other, detach themselves with deathly silence and fall on the sand in wide, long serpentines.
Just before Berg left the station the older mechanic Ginter had fallen into one of the biggest machines. When he was pulled out he was a formless mass. For Berg, the thought is unpleasant and he tries to avoid it.
Since the memorable night a week ago when he became aware of that relentless, unyielding hatred the feeling of its presence has been growing day by day and he cannot shake it off. Whenever he has to walk through the engine room he does so very quickly, his eyes fixed on the floor. The smell of blunt, impotent hatred blowing from the room fills him with unspeakable, cold terror. He looks into the workers' faces trying to read from them a confirmation of the same feeling, but their faces are closed and stare at him with a hard, grim look. For some time now Berg has been haunted by the thought that the people working here for years have all gone insane. He catches himself observing their movements and on this basis tries to confirm his suspicion. On occasions when he is obliged to exchange a few words with a worker he feels confused and cuts his conversation short.
"Would that I had gone mad myself," thinks Berg and a plan immediately unfolds in his mind.
Yes, that will be best. He will leave here and find himself an office job. That will surely calm him down.
Suddenly he hears behind him a piercing whine. A passing car catches him with its wing and throws him to the pavement. He hears people cursing.
Completely unnerved, he has to lean against a tree to gather his thoughts. Fear hidden deep inside creeps out and looks straight into his eyes.
"I have to think it through, think it through," repeats Berg, but at the same time he feels that in fact everything has already been thought through for him. There is no way out. Just a moment ago he thought with ridiculous naivety that changing his job would be enough to shut himself off from the hatred of the machine. Now he can see that the machine lies in wait for him everywhere. He has to watch his every step.
Suddenly Berg feels trapped. All the machines he has ever seen roll out from around the corners of his subconscious and surround him with an iron ring. Like a fragile thread of light leading out of this labyrinth a cry rises inside him, the name - Isolda!
He looks around. He is somewhere in an unfamiliar part of town. Only now he feels how tired he is. Time to go home.
A tram approaches. The sight makes Berg shudder. He wants to scream. He looks at the face of a passenger on his right. It is calm, good-natured and contented, like a mask. Suddenly, under the pressure of Berg's eyes the mask cracks into a horrible gaping smile and for a second Berg sees the red open mouth of madness just a few inches away from his own face.
8
The atmosphere at work becomes more tense by the day. Since Ginter's tragic death the unnoticeable whisperings of the workers have changed into a low rumble. They talk of striking.
More and more often Berg bumps into small groups of workers, who disperse on seeing him. A small, square proclamation of the strike has been hanging on the gates for two days and no one takes it off.
That night Berg cries for a long time with his face buried in Isolda's legs. The time has come. Fate prods him on, handing him the role of saviour.
9
The engine room is dark and gapes with emptiness. Berg, after he has shut the door behind him, stands leaning against the wall, remembering less and less why he has come here. Never since he came here for the first time as a young engineer has he seen this room unlit and silent. He is confounded. At first he wants to turn the lights on but then he remembers that there is no power in the whole town because the power station is on strike. The thought restores his clarity of mind. He tries to think calmly. He takes a torch from his pocket and switches it on. A sharp shaft of light cuts through the darkness. The black void seems now even blacker. The contours of huge wheels loom in it like black wings of giants.
Berg feels that if he stays here a moment longer he will run away. He takes a few steps forward. Now his movements are completely mechanical. It seems to be further away than he thought. He thinks he has already passed it. He raises the torch. Only now he sees that he is standing right in front of the control panel. In the bright glare of light the clock-meters glow like a pair of eyes.
Berg takes from his pocket a file and a hammer.
The clock-eyes stare at him steadily and coldly. His hand gripping the hamme
r is calm and confident. Now what he needs is a cool head.
The clock-eyes become strange and magnetic. Berg remembers a fakir he saw in a circus, who charmed a snake with his eyes. Now he knows what that snake must have felt - it came to bite but could not move, trammelled by the strange stare. This lasts a while. Then, in a last effort of will Berg suddenly raises the hammer and, with a power he did not know he was capable of, strikes at the panel.
The crash of smashed marble shatters the silence.
Tranquillity - warm, light, deep like a lake .. .
Suddenly something incomprehensible happens - for a moment he is blinded by a flood of light. The motionless black wheels begin to turn. Berg feels a hard blow on the head and falls, hitting the floor with his face.
I0
On the fourth page of the only newspaper still published and sold out within an hour, between the news bulletins, there is an announcement in small print:
" . . . caught red-handed attempting sabotage, just as he was trying to destroy the machinery of the city's power station, Engineer Witold Berg will be put before the workers' tribunal ..."
II
The huge factory floor is drowned by a sea of human heads. In the middle stands a tribune erected from a few boxes. A thin, freckled student with quivering white eyelashes reads the indictment in a colourless voice. The black-haired, big-nosed, slick-licked book-keeper slowly and gravely turns the pages of a notebook. From time to time the freckled student raises his voice, which sounds strangely tearful, and then the crowd's murmur sweeps the room like a gust of wind.
The hearing drags on hopelessly. In fact, everybody already knows the sentence; all that remains to do is to carry out the prescribed formalities.
Finally the student sits down, wipes his nose in a handkerchief while the book-keeper, speaking in a thin metallic voice, gestures vaguely to the right:
"Bring in the accused."
A wave of hollow murmur rolls through the room. Then the door on the right opens, a little too loudly, and escorted by four workers armed with Mausers, Berg enters. The crowd parts, making way for them to the tribune. The murmurs grow, slowly changing into a hubbub of hostile voices.
A bell.
The hearing continues.
The arms of the clock move at snail's pace with stubborn helplessness.
Suddenly the hum intensifies and the sea of heads turns as if pushed towards the tribune. On the tribune stands Berg.
He is very pale, his eyes restless, a strand of hair has fallen onto his forehead. He is dressed neatly, in a jacket. He speaks in a quiet sonorous voice, often stopping in search of a word:
"The day of vengeance has come. The proletariat, conscious of its objectives is ready to fight. In order that the struggle be effective we have first to make clear who is the deadly enemy. It is enough to destroy this enemy and the evil will be abated. This enemy is doubtless the bourgeoisie but it is not the prime enemy. When the money is taken away from the bourgeoisie the proletarian masses will swell by several million heads. The problems of the proletariat will not be solved this way. The enemy is something else, something closer, something with which the worker is in daily contact, at work, something which imperceptibly saps his strength, his health and sometimes takes his life. This enemy is the machine. Not for nothing is the bourgeoisie so proud of the machine, its greatest achievement, which provides it with thousands of comforts. But if they think that they have found in it merely a new weapon to fight the elements and a new way of exploiting the proletariat they are wrong. The machine has multiplied as a pest, it has gnawed its way into every corner of life and from a tool it has transformed itself into a master. The bourgeoisie is now completely conquered by the machine and cannot live without it.
"But the worker has always hated the machine. From the beginning it has been his curse and destitution. Tens of thousands of the unemployed, thousands of deaths and maimed bodies, widows and orphans without bread - that is what the machine means to the worker. Now when the day of open and victorious struggle has come, the proletariat's task lies here: to free mankind from the machine. The machine needs to be destroyed, destroyed now if we do not want the machine to destroy us."
At this moment Berg is beautiful. His face is burning red and his hair crowns his brow like a wreath.
Modest applause and a long unresolved silence. Berg leaves the tribune.
The freckled student rises from the table. He is frightened. He blinks his little eyes. He speaks in a rushed, angered voice.
It seems to him that the engineer simply wanted to make mock of the tribunal, but the applause he has just heard (here an undecided turn to the side), forces upon him the duty to answer. Destruction of machines which are the cultural heritage of the whole of mankind, and therefore also of the proletariat, would be nothing short of a return to barbarism. The machine serves equally the masters and the workers. What will the proletariat do without machines? Aren't trams, water pumps which everybody uses, aren't they machines too?
Berg cannot listen to the end. He walks through the crowd out onto the street. People step back to make way. It is raining, a thin, autumnal drizzle, soft as tears. Berg feels a growing lump in his throat. His whole speech and the appeal seem to him merely a ridiculous parody. Why bother? These people are the same as the others, only less "intelligent". It's too late anyway.
12
A few days later, when the general strike was proclaimed, Berg went out in the morning. The day was clear and sunny. The squares lay in silence. There were no trams.
Berg came out onto the widest street and walked up the hill. The streets pulsated, as if drunk. All the gates gaped with anxiety. The silence became heavy. Everything seemed to be lying in wait for something which was about to happen. Berg quickened his pace. The eerie silence began to grow heavy on him. He wanted to go home.
On a street corner someone grabbed his shoulder. Clear blue eyes and a peaked cap seen somewhere before. The mechanic from the power station.
"I heard you at the tribunal," he speaks in a clear, ringing voice. "I didn't understand everything but you said that the time is coming when the machines will rule over us and not us over them. And now look - our one move and everything stops. And silence like before the creation of the world. What do you say to that?"
He was all fragrance, he was beaming with joy and power like the sun - We! We!
Berg looked at his face and felt an overwhelming desire to tear that joy out of him and see those round eyes fill with animal fear.
They walked towards the triumphal arch. Berg spoke.
"By now it doesn't matter really. You have failed to understand the machine, you who stand so close to it. And yet it was so simple. The machine's soul is motion, perpetuum mobile. Whereas our element has always been that of limitation. We have inoculated ourselves with a deadly vaccine which is slowly taking over our whole organism.
"We are nearing the end with mathematical precision. Soon, everything around us will be taken over by machines. We shall live among them. We are making our every move dependent on a machine. We are surrendering our weapons. We give ourselves into the hands of a hostile element, alien to our nature. The iron ring of nervous exertion, thanks to which we still can maintain our hegemony, will break any moment now. The only choice left to us then will be war or madness. Nobody can see that now, nobody can understand. We are blinded by our own power. There is no way out. We have brought ourselves to bay. And anyway we have it now in our blood. You cannot live without the machine. Your ancestors could still survive. You won't. It's too late for any defence. All we can do is wait. The poison is in us. We have poisoned ourselves with our power, the bane of civilisation."
"Goodbye," he said suddenly straight into the mechanic's ear, shaking his hand vigorously. "I'm going the other way ..."
13
One late evening, when the sergeant on duty at the number io police station was just getting ready for his night's rest, a man appeared behind his desk. White as a sheet, eyes burn
ing, he introduced himself as Witold Berg, an engineer working at the city's power station, and reported the theft of some legs. He demanded categorically that a police task force be assigned to him immediately, stressing that there was no time to lose.
At the time there were only two officers present at the station and the sergeant explained to him politely that he would have to wait a while as there was insufficient manpower at his disposal, and he would have to request more men by phone. The stranger then stated he could not wait a minute longer and that since this station could not help him he would go to another one.
The sergeant tried to detain the man by all kinds of argument. Then the second officer, who had now returned from making a phone-call, said that the men requested should be arriving within three minutes.
Meanwhile, a statement had to be taken down.
However, nothing more could be got from the man than that while he was out that evening someone had stolen a pair of legs from his flat.
"And here they are," said the friendly sergeant. "No need to worry, was there?"
Six square-built men came in and flanked the door.
"The men are at your disposal," said the officer. "Just lead the way, sir."
Berg shook the sergeant's hand, which was extended to him with eagerness, and led the way. But scarcely had he crossed the threshold when he felt twelve strong hands on his body which brought him to the floor. He was trying to free himself, he kicked, bit, rolled with them on the ground, he almost managed to escape them a couple of times, till he fell down, knocked out by a blow and was strapped. He had a sensation of floating downwards and for a moment the moist, autumnal air swept over his body. Finally he realised he was being pushed into a small, tight box. Then the lid of the box slammed shut. Berg lost consciousness.
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