Yet when the generous mood passed, as it does with whole civilizations and empires as well as individuals, he wriggled his shoulders comfortably inside his tough, accustomed carapace and surveyed the world from a mere slit in his armour, a peephole, and felt safe.
The Elder Statesman was at his elbow.
‘The men on the instrument panel need assistance. They should have approached their fellow shiftworkers. Instead, the four top-category men got together and saw the management by themselves. Instead of through the Union. The men don’t like it.’
‘Well,’ said the Glass Canoe, sizing up the situation immediately, ‘why not grab them by the throat and tell them?’
‘Because that would look like coercion or intimidation. Standover tactics. We’ve got to slam them hard and have it look like kindness.’ He laughed through tobacco-edged teeth.
There is no such thing as a joke, the Glass Canoe said to himself. When a word is uttered, someone is being fair dinkum about something, even if it’s only about not being fair dinkum. That assistant’s job would be a good one to go for.
The Elder Statesman moved on, searching the shelves of his mind for the next little capsule to place in the next pair of ears. He hadn’t been stopped by the Volga Boatman’s attempt at revenge. He couldn’t change the way he was made. He was born a bastard and would die a bastard. The Glass Canoe heard him ask Canada Dry, ‘Are there many workers get along to the businessmen’s club? How much can a worker afford to lose on the poker machines? You can’t hold your head up beside men in business who can afford to drop their hundred dollars a week, can you?’ Then he moved off again. That was how he spent his day.
He had pushed the Glass Canoe away from shore, into the current. The rapids were still a long way off.
MAINSTREAM The Glass Canoe was shaken, though. The reference to the private deal with management had stirred him up, as it was meant to do, but the Elder Statesman’s shot at Canada Dry about businessmen’s clubs had penetrated down deep clefts in his confidence. He was not a member of that sort of club, but it was obvious he could and should be.
He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes in prayer and quoted:
The rich are more than mortal. What they do
Is precious, surrounded by an aura of worth
We do not understand. It is their due
To live up there, while we crawl on the earth.
He spoke quietly, his voice barely audible in the control room, but in his own head a voice of thunder.
‘I’ll write out a clear, concise statement of my aims, the amount of money I intend to get, the time it should take me, what I intend to give in return for the money, and a plan for getting it. Money is power. I’ll read it aloud every day—morning and night—I’ll see money in my mind’s eye, then some day I’ll see it in the bank.’
He spoke slowly as if he were receiving dictation from another mind.
‘If I discipline myself, I will get what I want. Naturally, if I didn’t have a wife and kids or if I had enough capital to start with, or a bit of pull in the right direction, things would be different. If I’d had a better education or times were more favourable. If other people understood me I might be able to get a job that would be more of a springboard to success than this one. If I could live my life over again I’d show everyone.’
His mind vomited up all the excuses he had ever used to keep him from action.
‘No,’ he said carefully, ‘I must fight against this terrible lethargy that comes over me. Dreams are all right, but they won’t buy the baby a new bib. It’s time to get cracking. I’ll write down the plan of my future achievements and read it aloud till I am burningly obsessed by it. Yes, obsessed. It’s the only way to get to the top. I must know what I want and stand by it. I will not be deterred. I must not quit. No one is defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. I’ll develop an attractive personality by having a positive attitude, by being sincere, adaptable, prompt, tactful, courteous. With my emotions under control, just and fair to the workers, a pleasant voice and expression, tolerant, frank, with a sense of humour and a bigger vocabulary. Always showing myself to the best advantage. I must cultivate persistence, then the urge to escape poverty and hunger will stimulate my imagination into action. I must root out negative emotions like fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, anger and replace them with love, sex, hope, faith, enthusiasm, loyalty, desire. I will organize my thinking. Successful men are always doing work they like. I must find the best sources of information, mix with other men who have good brains, read deeply and use my mind for good, not evil. I will become enthusiastic; nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. My attention must be controlled, geared to the task in hand. I’ll use the golden rule and opposition will fade away, I’ll get willing cooperation, and happiness will prevail. Finally, I must remember certain principles. A good boss must be ruthless, not with his staff but with himself. He must be able to put aside the personal problems, ambitions and personalities of those around him and consider the company first. To stay in his position of authority the boss must be humble, capable of forgetting himself, capable of relinquishing friendships which may otherwise prove embarrassing.’
His voice was a booming sound inside him. It echoed through his whole hollow body.
Outside, a compressor surged, its waves of sound passing through the chests of everyone within a hundred yards of it, fluttering their internal organs. Sudden steam hammer in the 700-pound lines made noise like cannons in the operators’ ears. The Glass Canoe dimly heard approaching, passing and fast-receding voices of those running to catch the emergent condition before it got out of hand. The spit and snort of steam traps. The high, tilting voice of a strangering young prisoner from otherwhere, a gravelled boot slip, fractional word, the solid air split with words and with the fractional distillation of words and human calls of terror and future pain. Emotions passed through the Glass Canoe like gases through a washing bath of reflux, and bubbled upwards, out to the great world beyond his mind. Men ran. The Glass Canoe sat huddled over the tiny dying fire of his own thoughts. The chemistry of his brain had changed, the mood of confidence and resolution was no longer possible. His religion of business success went backsliding.
‘I feel sick,’ he said. And he did, with weakness at the knees and various of the shaky ailments, certain orders of trembling, fainting at the stomach, aches within the head. He pulled a bottle of chlorodyne from his pocket and licked a dozen drops from his palm. ‘The chlorodyne may help. At least a pleasant taste. If I relax completely and not use the eyes at all, the oppression of headache is gone. At such times it is easy to say: I shall think away this head; which is, however, full of bundles of words, of various sizes. Ah, there it is; the light around me hurting the eyes. This is disgusting. Filthy sickness. I am disgusting.’
The pain was high in the front of his head on the left-hand side; not a sharp pain but one that eased when he smiled and resumed its grip when his brow narrowed in concentration on himself. His voice, speaking of his sickness, was softer and strangely poetic. Brimming with sympathy.
‘I remember when I was a boy crying myself to sleep after Dad had forbidden Mum to come and put me to sleep, he didn’t want me to get any comfort and love for Mum. He asked me was that all I had against him. One other thing, I said. Don’t say it isn’t true: I remember you dropping me a great height out of a window. You said: Now try and save yourself if you can! And Dad laughed like mad. Even though I had a four-inch nail through each of his hands into the garage door. Now some nails through your legs, I said, since you always made out you’re Jesus Christ. You fool! he yelled at me. You fool! You cried yourself to sleep because we woke up to your cunning. Time and again she would go in to see you were all right. We had to stand up to you or you’d have driven us crazy. The other thing you remember wrong is the time the car turned over. It landed on its side and I dropped you out the back window to save your life in case the car caught fire. He didn’t cry with the pain and I got the n
ails out with the claw hammer. He told everyone he got some boils lanced, that’s what made the scars in his hands.’
His mind switched tracks now as easily as it had before his last committal.
‘That night a mouse crawled up my back and perched on top of my head. Way up high. I knew it wasn’t there, but I went to the doctor and got some nerve tablets.
‘They didn’t help me with my own boy. He won’t recognize me any more, even after I bought him the mini racing set. Just because I work as an operator in cacky overalls. And boots. He even says the car’s too old. Don’t come to speech day, he tells me. I don’t want my friends to see that old bomb parked outside the school. Then I find he’s only going there two days out of five.
‘What can I do with him but send him to Surfers’ Paradise? Pay his fare and ten dollars a week to spend, then when he gets through six weeks’ money in three days he comes home on his return ticket. I wasn’t like that when I was a kid. Then he rings up the wife’s best friend one day and tells her there’s an accident at work and her husband has his scalp lifted and he’s in hospital. Come quickly! he says. Then the stupid little bugger ransacks the house—takes everything—calls a taxi-truck on their phone and starts loading everything on to the truck. Their neighbour races out and tries to stop him with nothing but a starting pistol. Front page headlines. Caught. And everyone says he’s a good boy at heart. He was lucky to get off with a bond. All the stupid little bastard could say to me when I thrashed Christ out of him was “You always said what a colossal time I’d have when I grew up a bit and now I try and do what I want everyone says it’s wrong and call the fuzz. I’d rather be a stinking kid again.”’
He looked at his hands. They were weeping with compassion for him. Good old hands. Hands never let you down.
‘When I got to the asylum they made me sit in the middle of the dormitory. The keepers looked the other way. Patients round me in a circle, shouting at me, and me too stupid with largactil tablets to bash their heads in. All I could do was sit and cry like a baby while they accused me of everything from raping babies to sniffing old ladies’ pants. They set up a judge over me and tied me up helpless. Group therapy. I made a dash for the window trying to jump out and kill myself, but I caught my shoulder on the frame. They just let me lie there. So I got up and went back and sat down. When I broke down and confessed everything they wanted, they were happy and let me go. I couldn’t even feel angry at them, I was so glad to get free. One of them gave me a tip about the tablets: next time I got them I drank four pints of water with them and they had no effect.
‘Then they really started on me. The doctors. Strapped down struggling, needles, shock treatment, evil spirits, my soul leaving my body out through the bone of my skull—the top of my head was tender most of the time—I came to believe in the devil, I had strange and peculiar thoughts, terrible filthy words came into my head and stayed there for weeks. I could never remember the words and when I asked afterwards the words they told me were too silly and tame to be right. Words no one ever used before. Afraid to be indoors, yet the windstorms outside could have suffocated anyone, everyone was watching me and I blushed, which is something I haven’t done for years, I had visions that told me I was born from a fire and sent here to be a special agent of God. I could hardly stop myself going to pieces.
‘At times I think I’m no good at all. I haven’t lived the right sort of life. I get urges to do shocking acts in public, as if I must injure myself or someone else. My sins are unpardonable. I brood over them until they hatch out into the light. I deserve severe punishment. They convinced me of that. They convinced me of everything bad about myself.’
He looked down quickly to see if his clothes were on.
THERAPY ‘Now that I’m well and truly churned up inside I ought to try and get out of all this misery. I’ll try to float these sharp thoughts off just as if they were little puff-balls bouncing off the top of my head. Or they might float out through the back of my skull under my hair. If it helps me I’ll keep doing it—even in hospital next time they pull me in off the street.’
Day, which had remained respectfully outside, was blind as a madman with mist and cloud. On the turbine landing men sweated, working a foot from red-hot glowing 48-inch flue headers, their sweat drying quickly, faces burning; cursing the company, the process, themselves, and their mates who disappeared in emergencies or wouldn’t get off their bottoms.
RATIONALE ‘But why should I expect to be happy and comfortable all the time? Once upon a time a man could stare out a window or yell at people or have a fight or walk off by himself without all sorts of bastards rushing out to drive away your bad mood or lock you up alone with it. You’ve got to be desperate sometimes. You’ve got to fight and be alone and have stinking things happen to you now and then. Anyone happy all the time is mad. I’m not mad: just nervous. If you’re in good health you must get unhappy whenever you’ve got good reason. Without having to apologize or be anxious about it.
‘Why should I try to adjust to the way everyone else is? Who says they’re worth adjusting to? I’ll be myself. Use my own brain, push my own talents to their capacity. What does it matter if I’m not popular with anyone?’
DREAMS Inside the Glass Canoe the weather changed again. In a sudden mood of elation he went straight on down to the river Eel and ferried across to the Home Beautiful. He was welcomed there only by the Great White Father, no one else would give him the time of day. He was not aware of this. If he felt like hailing his workmates cheerfully, he did so, and straightaway thought how cheerful everyone was. If he didn’t, he was absorbed in himself and didn’t notice others.
The Great White Father had got some small-leafed ivy from one of Puroil’s ornamental garden walls and was training it over the huts. He didn’t reject the Glass Canoe’s offer of help, but allowed him to plant a few dozen of the rooted cuttings provided by the gardener. After half an hour the Glass Canoe had begun to remember vaguely that it was his own idea to use the ivy, and he thought out a few modifications to the Great White Father’s plans. After an hour he was convinced of it. This renewed his confidence and from that point he lost interest in the actual work and was easily drawn into the clutches of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He took her techniques and manipulations for flattery. He didn’t mind what she wrote in her notebook. He was used to people writing down what he said and did. He jumped up the steps to the drink hut.
‘Here’s the Glass Canoe!’ said Bubbles who was squatting naked in one corner of the hut ready for his encounter with the Apprentice. ‘He’ll tell you! Didn’t Big Bits stay away on night shift?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said the Glass Canoe. ‘I’m not the pay office. I don’t keep a check on my workmates.’ This was untrue; he was often seen going through the time cards, looking for workmates who had exceeded the overtime limit.
‘Well, he did, anyway,’ grumbled Bubbles. ‘And he got his mate—I won’t mention names—to clock him in and out. When the Enforcer kept coming in and asking Where’s Big Bits?—they told him He’s still out there.—What, still? said the Enforcer. He’s been out for six nights now.—You keep missing him, they said. He had to go away, there was nothing else he could do. A whole seven days’ night shift and he got paid!’ He shook his head a long time, filled with envy. ‘That’s what I call a mate.’
The Glass Canoe bought some cans and settled down to drink, dreaming of promotion, efficiency, progress, greatness. The Great White Father would never be able to wean him from these dreams and Puroil would never dream of fulfilling them.
9
LIGHT ON A DARK NIGHT
GOING HOME IN THE DARK Going out of the refinery at night, hanging their heads, straggling like convicts loosely chained, the lowest grade of prisoners looked in on the occasional parties held in the dining-room where staff men and girls ate from buffet tables lobsters, roast beef and soft pink hams, stood around drinking from dainty glasses and talking of Puroil and its concerns and the details of their lives daily
given for the company in return for monthly bank deposits.
The men passing by in the dark were conscious of their own badges. Their red necks, heavy hands and every word that proceeded out of their mouths, their lack of interest in office affairs, their partial interest in the actual messy business of refining—these were inseparable from them and an insuperable barrier to intercourse with the elegant creatures from the Termitary. It was another world in there. Office people didn’t care what the process was on which they and the prisoners depended: their skills could be transferred to the refining of toffee or the manufacture of hearing aids with no significant difference. The less they knew about oil the cleaner they felt. The men down on the job never understood this—they sneered at accounting people for not knowing refining processes, never realizing that business people didn’t need to know and certainly didn’t want to know anything but through-put and production figures, sales and stocks on hand, costs and revenue, payroll-tax and salary. If there can be said to be a literary culture and a scientific, there must certainly be a business culture in which it is necessary to be able to define money, recite a selected passage of company law and to be inward with the Banking Act of ’45. The men going home in the dark belonged to none of these cultures.
A GRIN IN EVERY GRAVE At the water’s edge, waves muttered little asides and slapped the stone slabs in irritation. Out on the bay, the hop and splash of mullet swimming for their lives. At night the money plants of the refinery were covered in lights; for miles they were Christmas trees on the dark plains of industry. From cars and house windows people admired their fairy grace and pointed happily to them as sights to be seen.
Coming out of the dark it was heartening to see the light in the mangroves. At the Home Beautiful, Blue Hills came on the Great White Father talking to the Glass Canoe. He went past them to get a can of beer and the Glass Canoe dated him savagely, making him jump. He knew the man did this in order to interrupt the Great White Father so that a third person wouldn’t hear him giving advice to the Glass Canoe. Blue Hills had left this sort of pride behind him; he waited frankly for the Great White Father to finish so that he could tell his own troubles.
The Unknown Industrial Prisoner Page 21