The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  With more satisfaction than he had felt about anything he had done for Puroil, the Samurai threw the old chicken-wire rack away and substituted his.

  He had done something for the crews, it was a good feeling.

  MATES Fifteen minutes later they waited—pale, blank-faced sheep—for the company bus. They stood in line on Road Nine on the edge of a huge ditch ten feet deep, eighty yards wide and hundreds long, like prisoners on the lip of a mass grave. Behind them was a three million gallon tank floated into position in this ditch.

  Since it was a refinery, Puroil allowed no matches within its gates. Or lighters, though the smart ones carried them. Matches had to be smuggled in. The smartest thing was to smuggle them out, for Puroil matches came in boxes of 1200. This was a real service for all ranks. Some jokers liked to throw empty match boxes about the refinery to nettle the brass, but the best joke was to plant them in someone’s bag or coat then ring the guards at the gate to report the breach of rules.

  Each man checked his bag for prohibited articles that might have been slipped in by a practical joker and gave his socks a last pull to hide the scar.

  THE SURVIVAL OF WEEDS The Samurai waited in line for the bus with the rest of the crew on the lip of the great ditch. Idly he speculated on methods of defence against an attacker from all eight directions. He had been a formidable player in his judo days and it was second nature to him to consider his position at any time in relation to any possible opponent. Since his training from childhood by his peculiarly unworldly mother was away from any show of aggression, he considered only defence. Ambition was a sin, and had been submerged so far under layers of studied inoffensiveness that now this potentially dangerous man had drifted into a job as a shiftworker, a nominally unskilled man, one of the deprived, subhuman mass on whom our rich civilization so tentatively seems to rest.

  The soil he stood on was dead. On its surface miniature mountains rose above pink plains; canals and lakes formed from wheel-tracks, footprints. It was dead, waiting to be torn about by explosions, bulldozers. Inert, plastic.

  There was little talk in the bus and it was confined to aggressive or defensive noises. He considered this soil from the window. Here and there on the mixture of pink clay and shale a tough weed made a way for itself and for a brief lifetime sucked up enough water to go on living. But only the most tenacious, only the toughest lasted through a Puroil summer.

  Here and there was a weed of a different kind; spiky, symmetrical, strange. He had seen it often when he walked among the tanks and bent once to pull out a specimen. Its roots reached as far underground as its leaves did above, but as well there was a penetrating aromatic smell from it and everywhere he touched it his fingers felt sticky so that hours later he was reminded of it. As if it belonged to a different planet. It grew in oil-soaked sand surrounding the tanks. The Samurai was not self-conscious enough to see that something like this was the impression he made on all who came against him.

  BURYING GROUND The Two Pot Screamer’s rumour said right from the start the new plant was Jonahed; it was built on an Aboriginal burying ground and the spirits of the dead would never allow it to go right.

  There was something in the Australian temperament that rejoiced in thinking the odds were against them. They liked to start behind scratch. The Two Pot Screamer, amateur columnist of the house journal, was aware of this. He’d written a short story on it, just to collect more rejection slips. He persisted in thinking of himself as an artist and only submitted his stuff to arty magazines and what did they care for factories? The first Australian factory, at Parramatta, was a place of correction.

  ACROSS THE RIVER The Great White Father wasn’t on the bus that morning. No one knew who clocked off his card; maybe he didn’t bother.

  There were some mangroves grew aslant the creek and he was waiting under one of them for Cinderella who was standing at the foot of Boomerang Street, waiting for the Volga Boatman to ferry her across to the Great White Father’s refuge from the Termitary and Grinding Works. He touched the leaves of those trees. Barely warm. They’d sucked in all the light they could get and were greedy for more.

  On Saturdays and Sundays you heard the roar and echo of the power boats using this end of Clearwater Bay for their derisive turns. On the smelly mud green crabs slid under the blanket of water.

  A LARGE DOB Volga dipped the oars in without a splash, the muscles on his neck strained, the oars bent. He sang, she whistled; both in perfect time. You could hardly hear the sound of his strokes.

  Far out on the bay, mullet rippled the skin of the water. Water slapped the boat with little chuckles, the rowlocks made hardly a creak. Volga had them lined with cord and smothered with Puroil grease. The inshore blade bit mud and blacked the water.

  The Great White Father watched the Volga Boatman’s thick back coming nearer, and Cinderella in the back of the rowing skiff. Volga’s coming on well; he had character enough to have nothing to do with the company, but he’s only happy when he has a boss to look up to. Poor sods—thinking of the men herded inside the high cyclone wire fence topped with tight barbed wire—they have to be told they’re human. Where had they all got off the track? Was it when they were children, forced to knuckle under in the schools, made to leave their humanity outside the well-drilled classroom with their lunchbags, hanging on a nail? Why did they have to be taught again later that their humanity could be brought inside the classroom and the factory fence? Sooner or later someone has to teach them freedom. He smiled. Not a secret smile. When he smiled it was for all to see. He was no frustrated missionary like the Samurai. He was teaching these poor wretches, trained to captivity, to make life bearable. It was a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the seed with which you plant a nation.

  The sun was hot. Trees shook out their shadows like skirts to keep the soil cool. He slipped under one, touching its naked trunk.

  He’d get them pining for the natural state of man. Where they would start to do what they wanted when they wanted; acknowledge no man’s orders simply because they were orders; where women were easy, as they are if you treat them right; and where you can always get a drop to drink when you’re dry. For my jokes are dirty and I travel light.

  He had no misgivings about freedom. He knew you could never get so much of it that it became a kind of death. He knew, too, that you can always squeeze out a bit more for yourself than you think.

  He thought of Far Away Places who had broken his glasses at two in the morning on a rod welded to a stanchion just where it would poke your eye out. Being the sort he was, he put the compensation papers in but didn’t make a nuisance of himself at the office, pushing his claim and asking questions continually. He had some idea there was a system and if you did your part others would do their part and justice would bring you a new pair of lenses eventually. That was the law, wasn’t it? He didn’t realize justice has to be pushed and teased and prodded and reminded, that the system won’t work without your efforts. Your push is what makes the wheels turn. Without your shove there is no system.

  He thought of Dadda, who had slipped on the polished corridor of the testing lab. Fell sideways, putting out an arm to break the fall. No one else in the corridor; none to see him fall. Hurrying to get done an extra test they put on him at the last minute. Men like the Sleeping Brute or Big Bits were never asked to do extra tests; they always argued. Why should argument exempt a man from work? The answer was built into Puroil; the foremen had to be men with no guts. If they did their job fairly, their own superiors said of them, ‘There’s always trouble wherever he is. Arguments. Complaints. Fuss.’ Superiors wanted quietness and peace, and thought an absence of noise indicated a smooth-running machine.

  Dadda’s wife worked and was changing her pants at work, as they say; he was full of troubles and moody, and when he got into a fight outside a shift workers’ pub one morning a week later, he found his arm was broken from that fall. Fractured radius.

  ‘Where
’s your accident report?’ they said.

  ‘It didn’t feel broken then. I didn’t know it was broken. Do I get the foreman to write out accident reports every time I bump something?’

  They said yes. He did that until they told him to stop it. He tried to explain that he fell trying to get an extra test done quickly, but the people he explained to were personnel people—couldn’t care less about lab tests. He told the lab boss, but he couldn’t do anything about compo claims, he wasn’t in Personnel. There was no one to listen. He got nothing. They even told him to go off work and not come back until he had a certificate to say he was fit. It didn’t pay to have pride, like Far Away, and it didn’t pay to be big and tough, like Dadda. It paid to be weak, cunning and gutless, like the Slug. The Slug was in business outside and although slimy, amoral and a foreman, was always lucky. He won a 16,000 dollar house in an art union, but still collected other men’s empty soft drink bottles for the deposit. He shuffled about with his face rigged in a full, meaningless smile. As if he carried it in his hands and constantly made adjustments.

  When the Slug had a backlog of orders and instructions for his three outside business enterprises, he would equip himself with an audience of white shirts, cause a panic somewhere, have it announced, then run up steps with the white shirts, working himself into the lead. A dramatic collapse, a clutching of the shirt front and there he was breathless and pale, a dead ringer for a heart attack. Good for five days off with pay while he caught up with his outside work.

  The Great White Father eased the bow of the skiff expertly into the bank of the river Eel with a carelessly extended foot. He shoved the boat about, headed it upstream and stepped aboard.

  ‘How many?’ kicking the sacks of beer.

  ‘Four dozen,’ rolling the words against his palate as if he could taste them.

  ‘Gold Label?’

  ‘Half and half.’

  ‘Good man.’ He kissed Cinderella on the nearest strip of bare flesh that presented itself, her cheek. Too late she turned her lips to him; he was looking away across the water through a gap in the oil-coated mangroves. It was an interesting view. A foreman called Samples was creeping along slowly on a motor-scooter looking keenly westward. He was shifted from distillation work to tankage and knew nothing about his new job, but instead of asking questions he would tell an operator to get him a sample of something, then follow discreetly to see where he got it. The Great White Father smiled. The world was normal.

  Volga aimed the skiff for a spot on the eastern bank where a large overhang of branches hid the stone-slabbed landing-place. There was a narrow canal dug into the bank so the boat could be hidden. The tide ebbed miserably, baring hydrocarbon stains. Muttering rose from the oil-dark waves.

  As he lifted Cinderella on to the stones, the Great White Father got a powerful whiff of talcum powder undoubtedly applied on top of yesterday’s layer. Looking into the blue iris of his eyes that contained the dull black pupil she felt warm and close as if his arms were round her and after uncounted anonymous embraces treasured the touch of his surfaces on hers. He kissed her again, this time on her smeared, shiny mouth. As he did so, his eyes were held by a large dob of sleepy dust which she had moved from the inside corner of her eye on to her dry, thickly coated cheek. His lips must have narrowly missed picking it up when he kissed her before. It seemed to have a hard end of a light brown colour, like a head. And a greyish-white body and wet tail. Almost as if it were alive and had crawled out from her eye.

  FUNCTIONAL MAN Cinderella walked ahead on the twisting secret path to the hideaway. The two men carried the beer.

  ‘What’s all this about making the shacks bigger?’ she asked tactlessly. Shacks! In reproof, a branch whipped back on her face and neatly cleaned her cheek of a patch of make-up.

  ‘The hideaway is going to be extensively redecorated, remodelled and so on,’ said Volga, injured. ‘I like the idea of ranch style,’ he added, lobbying for his own view.

  ‘I like the white look,’ said the Great White Father. ‘Spanish hacienda. White for purity and human buttocks.’ Cinderella waggled hers. ‘But we’ll have it green to match the mangroves.’

  The mangroves grew thicker and thicker, the path made sharply angled turns. It was the only solid ground into the mangroves, all else was wet mud flats. The water reached it at high tide, enough to keep it swampy. There was another entrance from a little spur road off Boomerang Street; only these two men knew it.

  Some of the equipment for the buildings had been brought in the secret way, though most had been carried piece by piece from the banks of the Eel River. Certain contractors’ corrugated iron and timber frame sheds had been left out in the open too long. They disappeared overnight one Christmas Day and were re-erected facing each other deep in the swamp where the mangroves were tallest. Three large sheds, with a courtyard in the centre. One for drinking and eating, one for comfort and one for rest.

  Cinderella went to the comfort shed. It was her day on duty and up to ten men would be deafened if she felt super. When she felt super she hooted triumphantly like a great liner leaving port. When she was normal she hooted like a cheeky little tug. When she was off-colour she could only manage an owl hoot and perhaps this was the most nerve-racking of all. The hoots started when the men started and continued till they finished. Right in the ear. She didn’t know why she did it. She would make about forty dollars today, maybe fifty. The Great White Father had experimented with giving the girls a guaranteed wage, but it didn’t work. The Sleeping Princess slept too long, and there were complications with the others. He let them earn what they could, five dollars a throw. The men wanted a straight go, mostly. No frills, not too much fuss and quick as possible. He tried to liven things up by suggesting variety but they were in such a hurry to get it off their chests they settled for the usual.

  ‘You’ve just come off the plant. Why don’t you have a snore?’ said Volga kindly, watching Cinderella climb the step into the shed. Her heels were dirty as usual. Never mind, the legs were a beautiful shape and clean shaven.

  ‘I might do that,’ said the Great White Father obligingly, seeing him eye Cinderella. Volga liked to be first. Even so, he’d worry that she might have stopped on the way to work. He had a puritan streak: it accounted for his weightlifting, his diets, his regular routines. He was as proud of his strength as Uncle Tom of his master.

  The Great White Father of his people entered the empty sleep hut, threw himself miserably on a stretcher, said, ‘Hell, do I have to die again?’, then slept for two hours, two hours in which the course of life revived at the hideaway. Volga visited Cinderella, who kept her shoes on all the time and hooted like a departing liner into his right ear. He opened a can in the drink hut, then rowed back to the Puroil wharf. He was on duty.

  The refinery opened its mouth and swallowed 750 more people. They were day-workers who sat at desks or maintained equipment or stored spare parts so that our 260 heroes of labour could operate the production end. Unfortunately for our metaphor, the refinery took in its crude oil and production supplies at the other end, so that if its true mouth extended down into Clearwater Bay, the employees must have entered the other end of the refinery’s alimentary tract, for that was the end that discharged the company’s products, suitably refined, into the waiting arms of the public.

  Men came and went, the number of cans dwindled, Cinderella racked up more customers and her hoots diminished to the tortured sound of a weary owl, while at the Refining Termitary and Grinding Works man was alienated from his true essence; he became functional in the service of a handful of far-off anonymous shareholders. His labour, his opinions, his family were for eight or more hours this day, depending on his local status, owned as a means of wealth by someone not himself. It would have been no use to tell him that instead of serving a few shareholders of great wealth, he might be privileged to serve the common good of millions. He would still be serving someone not himself. He would be constantly at war within himself; his deepest in
stincts of self-preservation, selfishness, greed and hate constantly at loggerheads with his collective, anonymous, meaningless duties to a society too large and varied to be intelligible to him.

  Those who took time off from this servitude to visit the mangroves, their energy went into talk and drinking, and when even this got too much for them and the spectre of lifelong bondage to an enterprise they couldn’t understand rose up terrifyingly before their eyes, they retired to Cinderella’s shed for comfort in the eternal soft arms, between the everlasting breasts and bore with fortitude her continual hoots.

  Let us not heap reproaches on Puroil Refining Termitary and Grinding Works. No matter who owned the labour and the life of any of these workers and no matter how many times they switched owners, they would be in the same position. The whole world is Puroil Refining, Termitary and Grinding Works. Except for little outposts of a better order, hidden away from official eyes. Outposts like the Great White Father’s.

  We know man is alienated from his true function, but what is he? What is his true function? That is the hardest question. What should he do? What should he try to be?

  ONE DAY AT A TIME Late into the morning, the Puroil men spoke of what seemed to them to be the past, but which swirled in great gusts around them as the present.

  The Outside Fisherman, with his prominent drinker’s lip and long silver hair always covered with a hat, was amusing Cinderella, who could be persuaded to spend some of her money and have a beer now and then, with a little story of the nearly finished cracking plant.

  He was close to sixty and had been looking forward for years to getting his gold watch. His thirty years’ service would be up two days before he was due to retire. There would be a regular slap-up feast attended by three or four long-service men and forty to fifty office staff to make it look well attended. The decaying prisoners would be presented with reliable gold watches and the freeloaders would clap. He would just make it.