The Reader on the 6.27

by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

  ‘Get a move on, Vignolles, damn it! There are already three lorries waiting outside.’ Felix Kowalski didn’t speak; he barked, yelled, bellowed, cursed and roared, but he had never been able to talk in a normal voice. He couldn’t help it. He never began his day without directing a volley of abuse at the first person to come within earshot, as if the rancour that had built up inside him overnight had to escape from his mouth before it choked him. That first person was often Guylain. Brunner, who was stupid but not blind or deaf, had quickly twigged the boss’s game and generally stayed out of sight behind the Zerstor’s control cabinet. Fatso’s tirades didn’t bother Guylain one way or the other. They rarely lasted more than a minute. You just had to let them wash over you and wait until the tsunami was over. Pull your head in and wait until Kowalski had finished belching abuse in a cloud of sour sweat. Of course, Guylain sometimes felt like rebelling, or crying foul. Pointing out to that bile-spewing, potbellied brute that the big hand of the clock above the cloakroom door, the only one you could rely on according to Kowalski, was more than ten minutes away from the hour, that he in no way deserved these groundless invectives given that the time for him to come on duty stated on his contract was 7.00 on the dot and not 6.50! But he chose to hold his tongue. It was the best solution: keep your mouth shut and head for the cloakrooms, without even waiting for the torrent of verbal diarrhoea that came from goodness knows where to cease.

  Guylain opened his metal locker. The inscription in flocked white lettering on the back of his boiler suit glowed fluorescent in the dark. TERN. When he talked about it, Brunner always referred to it as the TERN treatment and recycling company. He felt that sounded classier. The logo was a magnificent arctic tern, a creature that spent most of its time in search of summer, on the wing for nearly eight months of the year in its permanent quest for the sun, never taking the time to break its journey. Brunner, who knew as much about ornithology as he did about theology, insisted this bird shape was a swallow. Guylain had never wanted to argue with him about that either. He zipped his fifty-eight kilos into the boiler suit, closed his locker door and took a deep breath. The Thing was waiting to be fed.

  5

  Guylain was loath to lift the lid of the Zerstor 500’s control cabinet. Inexplicably, he felt the unpleasant sensation of the sheet metal vibrating beneath his fingers as he often did, as if the Thing were well and truly alive, juddering with impatience at the thought of beginning a new day. At those times, he went into autopilot. Confining himself to his role as chief operator for which he was paid the generous sum of 1,840 euros each month, including his bonus for having lunch on the premises. He read out every item on the checklist while Brunner went from one checkpoint to the next, twirling around as Guylain named each part. Before releasing the trapdoor that shut off the bottom of the funnel, Guylain glanced over at the gaping mouth, just to check that no intrepid animal had stupidly taken it into its head to venture inside. Rats had become a real problem. The smell drove them wild. The funnel attracted them the way the fragrant lobes of a Venus flytrap lure flies. And it was not unusual to find one that was greedier than the others stuck at the bottom of the hole. When he came across one, Guylain would go and fetch the scoop from the cloakrooms and fish the creature out from the tight spot it had got itself into. And without further ado, it would scamper off towards the back of the plant and vanish from sight. Guylain was not particularly fond of rodents. He was motivated essentially by the wish to deprive the Zerstor of a hunk of meat. It loved meat, he was certain of it, loved those screeching, wriggling little bodies that it crunched like a mere snack when it managed to nab one. And he was convinced that, given the chance, it would gobble up his hands without any qualms. Since Giuseppe’s accident, it had been clear to Guylain that rat meat was not always enough to satisfy the Thing.

  After priming the pump and flicking the switches to the ON position, he pressed his thumb on the green button which Brunner dreamed of pushing one day. Guylain counted to five and then released the pressure. You always had to count to five, no more, no less. Less, and the machine wouldn’t start; more and you flooded the whole thing. You had to earn your place in hell. High up on his sea captain’s bridge, Kowalski did not miss Guylain’s slightest movement. The button winked for about ten seconds then shone brightly. At first, nothing happened. The floor barely shuddered when the Thing gave an initial splutter of protest. Its awakening was always laborious. It burped, gasped, sounded reluctant to get going, but once it had gulped down the first mouthful of fuel, the Thing went into action. A dull rumble rose from the ground, followed by a first tremor that assailed Guylain’s legs and then ran through his entire body. Soon the thrusts of the powerful diesel motor made the shed shake from floor to ceiling. The earmuffs clamped on Guylain’s head barely filtered out the infernal clamour that was unleashed. Down in the belly of the Zerstor, the hammers started up, banging together, metal against metal, in a din that sounded like Armageddon. The blades below chopped frenetically, gleaming in the dark depths. There was a loud whoosh as the water gushed from the nozzles, followed almost immediately by a column of steam that rose up and caressed the roof. The pit exhaled the foul stench of mouldy paper. The Thing was hungry.

  Guylain motioned to the first lorry to present its rear at the unloading bay. Raring to go, the powerful thirty-eight tonner manoeuvred into position and emptied its tipper. The avalanche of books cascaded onto the concrete floor, sending up a cloud of grey dust. Sitting at the controls of the bulldozer, Brunner, who was seething with impatience, swung into action. Behind the grimy windscreen, his eyes shone with excitement. The huge blade swept the mountain of books into the void. The stainless steel chute vanished under the tide of books.

  The first mouthfuls were always tricky. The Zerstor was a temperamental ogress. She sometimes became congested, victim of her own greed. Then she would stall, in the midst of chomping, her mouth full to bursting. Then it took nearly an hour to empty the funnel and open up the cylinders to remove the surfeit of books already imprisoned by the hammers and clear all the parts one by one before priming the pump again. An hour Guylain spent contorting himself in the stinking belly, sweating all the moisture his body contained and submitting to the abuse of a Kowalski more enraged than ever. This morning, the Thing had got off on the right piston. It snapped up and gobbled its first ration of books without the slightest hiccup. Only too happy to crunch something other than air, the hammers were having a field day. Even the noblest spines, the sturdiest bindings, were crushed in seconds. The books disappeared into the Thing’s belly in their thousands. The scalding rain relentlessly spewing out of the nozzles around the sides of the tank washed the few flyaway pages that tried to escape down towards the bottom of the funnel. Below, the 600 razor-sharp blades took over, reducing what remained of the sheets of paper into thin strips. The four huge mixers finished the job, converting the whole thing into a thick soup. No trace remained of the books that had lain on the floor only a few minutes earlier. There was nothing but the grey mush that the Thing expelled in the form of great, steaming turds that fell into the vats with a gruesome giant plopping sound. This coarse pulp would be used one day to make other books, some of which would inevitably end up back here, between the jaws of the Zerstor 500. The Thing was an absurdity that greedily ate its own shit. Watching this thick sludge being shat out non-stop by the machine, Guylain often recalled the words of old Giuseppe with three grammes of alcohol in his blood, barely a few days before the tragedy: ‘Just remember, kiddo, we are to the publishing industry what the arsehole is to the digestive system, that’s all!’

  A second lorry drove up to empty its tipper. The Thing’s gaping mouth belched out a string of acid burps, its 500 hammers chomping at thin air. The leftovers from its previous meal, a few sodden, ragged pages dangled from the machinery like strips of skin. Brunner pressed hard on the eager accelerator, launching the attack on the new mound of books, his tongue peeping out of the corner of his mouth.

  6

&
nbsp; The security guard’s hut was an oasis where Guylain liked to take refuge during the lunch hour. Unlike Brunner, who ranted on for the sake of it, Yvon could sit for ages without saying a word, completely engrossed in his reading. His silences were full. Guylain could slip into them as into a warm bath. Sitting with Yvon, his sandwich had less of the aftertaste of boiled cardboard that tainted everything he ate since he’d begun working here. Yvon sometimes asked him to give him his cues. ‘A sounding board,’ he had explained the first time. ‘I just need a sounding board to bounce my speeches off.’ Guylain willingly accepted the part, reciting to the best of his ability lines he barely understood, sometimes changing sex to read the part of Andromaque, Berenice or Iphigenia, while Yvon Grimbert, at the peak of his art, spouted at the top of his voice Pyrrhus, Titus and other Agamemnons of his own composition. Yvon did not eat, contenting himself with his twelve-syllable verses alone, lines which he washed down with the black tea he loved and which he drank by the Thermosful all day long.

  The lorry drew up with the long whistle of a tired whale, inches from the lowered barrier. Yvon abandoned Don Rodrigo and Chimene while he glanced up and noted that it was past the cut-off time for deliveries, and then dived back into Act III, Scene 4. The rules stipulated that out of consideration for the local residents, TERN had to cease all activity between 12.00 and 1.30 p.m., a rule that also included halting the comings and goings of the lorries whose job was to feed the Thing. The drivers all knew this and those who arrived after midday ended up having to park in the street until after lunch. Only a few rare reckless souls like this one occasionally tried to bend the rules and blag their way through.

  Confident in the power of his thirty-eight-tonne truck, the driver pressed his horn and barked impatiently through his lowered window: ‘Hey, I haven’t got all day, you know!’ Stonewalled by the security guard, the driver got down from the cab and marched angrily over to the hut. ‘Hey, you! Are you deaf or what?’ Without looking up from the book in front of him, Yvon raised his hand, palm facing forwards, to indicate that for the moment his attention was occupied by something more important than listening to the insults of a truck driver having a hissy fit. Guylain had always seen Yvon apply this principle, which consisted of never stopping midsentence, for any reason whatsoever. Never lose the thread of the Word, kiddo! Go right to the end; glide through the speech until the final full stop releases you! Tapping on the window in annoyance, the driver said, even more contemptuously, ‘When the fuck are you going to lift the barrier?’

  A new guy, thought Guylain. Only a newcomer would dare to speak to Yvon Grimbert like that! Slipping a bookmark into his 1953 edition of The Cid, Yvon gave Guylain a meaningful look and pointed to the box on the shelf running the length of the hut. It contained years of versifications from his own pen, carefully stowed away. Guylain brought it to him. The box on his knees, Yvon thumbed through his repertoire watched by the furious driver. His moustache quivering with triumph, Yvon picked out sheet number 24 entitled ‘Lateness and Punishment’. Adjusting his tie with an expert hand, he glanced cursorily at the text, just long enough to immerse himself in the role. He smoothed his silver hair with the palm of his hand and cleared his throat. Then, Yvon Grimbert, former pupil of the Alphonse Daubin school at Saint-Michel-sur-l’Ognon, class of 1970, subscriber to Le Français since 1976, fired his first salvo:

  ‘Midday is long since past, look up at the great clock.

  The big hand’s on the half hour and it will not stop!

  Leave off your arrogance, your disdain disavow,

  You might still have a chance that I could open now.’

  The bafflement on the driver’s face erased all traces of anger. His stubbly chin dropped as Yvon recited the quatrain in his booming voice. Guylain smiled. This guy was definitely a newbie. Yvon’s verse often had this effect the first time. The alexandrine caught them off guard. The rhymes assailed them, suffocating them as surely as a hail of blows to the solar plexus. ‘An alexandrine is as direct as a sword,’ Yvon had explained to him one day. ‘Its job is to hit the target, but it must be used wisely. Don’t deliver it like common prose. Recite it standing. Take in plenty of air to give the words impact. Enunciate each syllable with passion and fire; declaim it as if making love, with sonorous hemistichs, broken up by caesuras. The alexandrine demands dedication from an actor. No room for improvisation. You can’t cheat with a line of twelve syllables, kiddo.’ After so many years of practice, Yvon had become a master in the art of delivery. Drawing himself up to his full height, the security guard came out of his hut:

  ‘Many a supplier has come to know my wrath,

  But just get here on time and my voice will be soft.

  Unload your consignment, and don’t look so amazed,

  Ended is the torment you caused with this delay.

  ‘Do try in the future to turn up here on time,

  Legendary patience will not always be mine.

  No matter what the hour, no nuisance is so great

  As to accept receipt of new freight at this gate.

  ‘Do not drive me crazy, warning is now given,

  Within lovely ladies, furies can be hidden.

  I remain your servant, yet hardly need to state

  That within this precinct, I’m master of your fate.’

  By now, the lorry driver was looking seriously worried. All of a sudden, he was no longer watching Yvon Grimbert, lowly security guard, but the all-powerful high priest of the temple. Beneath his greying moustache, Yvon’s crimson lips delivered the defiant lines without trembling. The driver ventured a guarded reply and tiptoed back in his cowboy boots to the cab of his Volvo for protection against the avalanche of rhymes. Yvon pursued him. Standing on the running board, he hurled great volleys of verse into the cab while the panic-stricken young driver frantically wound up the window:

  ‘When you are in distress, a juggernaut will serve

  To hide your shame and stress until you find your nerve.

  If you wish to silence the language of the muse,

  Do not look so aghast and present your excuse!’

  Defeated, his forehead resting on the wheel in an attitude of submission, the driver mumbled a string of garbled words that sounded like an apology. As he made his way back to his glassed-in shelter, Yvon fired off one parting quatrain:

  ‘I’m on my way right now to raise up this barrier

  And quietly bring down my level of anger.

  Now move this truck along, empty out its contents

  May the shredder live long, after you are gone hence.’

  So saying, Yvon opened the way for the huge vehicle, which snorted a cloud of exhaust fumes. Guylain deserted his poet friend for a moment to supervise the unloading. Still in shock, the driver disgorged his load half onto the platform, half onto the car park. His delivery note stamped, he left, only too happy to see the barrier rise without his having to suffer further assaults from Yvon Grimbert, who was already back in his kingdom of Castile watching out for the Moors by Chimene’s side.

  7

  It was time to clean up – the moment Guylain so loathed. It was no easy task being swallowed whole by the Thing in order to scour its innards. Every evening he had to force himself to go down into the tank, but it was the price he had to pay in order to carry out his mission with complete impunity. Since Kowalski had installed CCTV cameras all over the place, Guylain had not been able to remove samples as easily as before. Giuseppe’s accident had given the boss the excuse to equip the entire plant with six state-of-the-art digital cameras, tireless eyes that spied on the workers’ every movement all day long. ‘To prevent another such tragedy ever happening again,’ Fatso had said, his voice full of sorrow. A feigned sorrow that had not deceived Guylain. That bastard Felix Kowalski had never shown an iota of sympathy for the elderly Giuseppe Carminetti, considering him nothing but an unproductive alcoholic, a millstone. Above all he had taken advantage of the unhoped-for opportunity afforded by Giuseppe’s accident to carry ou
t what he had always dreamt of doing: spying on his entire little kingdom without having to move his buttocks off the leather armchair he lounged in from dawn till dusk. To hell with Kowalski and his surveillance cameras.

  After putting the Zerstor out of action, Guylain would slip down to the base of the funnel. The image of a panic-stricken rat clawing at the stainless steel sides often flashed through his mind at this point. He knew that the Thing was powerless to do any harm – the control unit was switched off, the fuel supply disconnected. But Guylain couldn’t help remaining on his guard, alert for the tiniest hint of a tremor, ready to tear himself out of the Thing’s clutches if it suddenly felt the urge to make a little snack of him. He released the cylinder housing and slid between the two rows of hammers. He still had to contort himself and crawl almost two metres to reach the lower rollers. He yelled to Brunner to pass him the grease gun through the side hatch. The gangly Brunner was too tall to be able to get inside the machine. It infuriated him not to be able to board the ship, to be forced to remain on the dock and be content with handing Guylain the 32-mm spanner, the oilcan or the hose. Guylain turned on his head lamp. It was here, in the still-warm steel belly, that he gathered the day’s harvest. There were a dozen or so pages waiting for him, always in the same spot between the stainless steel wall and the bracket of the last roller spiked with knives – the only place that was out of reach of the water jets. Flyaway pages that had been blown against the partition streaming with water and had landed on this spur of metal which had halted their fatal slide. Giuseppe called them live skins. ‘They’re the sole survivors of the massacre, kiddo,’ he would say, his voice emotional. Guylain hastily half-opened the zip of his boiler suit and slipped the dozen or so sopping pages under his T-shirt. After greasing the bearings one by one and thoroughly washing out the Thing’s stomach, he extracted himself from his prison with the day’s lucky pages snug and warm against his breast. As he often did, old Kowalski had torn himself out of his armchair to drag his mass of lard to the edge of the pigeon loft. He was tormented by the thought that one of his workers had been out of range of his spyhole for a few minutes. Despite the winking, blinking red lights on his cameras, he would never know what Vignolles got up to in the belly of the Zerstor. And that angelic smile that Guylain bestowed on him every evening on his way to the shower did nothing to reassure him.