The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  The little girl moved closer, still with her rope in orbit about her, and skipped near the Samurai. He moved away, suspicious of kids that got too friendly.

  ‘Are you real old, mister?’

  ‘Pretty old.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if people were born old and got younger and younger till they finished up babies?’

  ‘Yeah, funny.’

  ‘Then maybe I could be your mother.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She lost interest and skipped away. He was glad. Nearby ornamental trees and bushes were clotted with birds. Acacias exploded into blossom like tiny bomb-bursts. High overhead, the last birds were homing, flying on thin bones, trusting to feathers.

  The refinery brigade—a shift of two men, their equipment a water truck and a foam truck—had been supplemented by brigades from a dozen metropolitan stations. No amount of fire-fighting equipment was effective against these fires, however; they had to be isolated and allowed to burn out.

  It was a simple matter for the Samurai to get in. He walked round past the company residences, along the road to the Thieving Magpie’s spot, unclipped the wire and crawled in.

  The slurry tank had blown, flashed and was burning itself out. This corner of the tank farm—for heavier oils—was separated by several large vacant plots from the gasoline tanks. In summer they would have gone up, but now, with the wind blowing, sprays of water on their silver sides saved them.

  That night the newsreel pictures featuring the black smoke from the oil fire looked like news from a war. The opposition companies didn’t send their regular scouts round to see how Puroil was going. Not for a long time.

  Those on night shift were caught up in the excitement for a while, but since the supervision was away huddled together in conferences all night, they soon prepared to do as they’d always done. They spread evil rags to ease the ache of concrete. Swans-down rags.

  A PRIVATE TRAGEDY The old man and woman in the furnished Plymouth had been buried in catalyst dust. They were in the path of the solid column of white-hot powder. Their corpses were uncovered a week later only a little charred, rigid in an embrace, just as male and female citizens of Pompeii were overtaken by volcanic ash and their bodies found milleniums later in the same position—or rather the spaces their bodies had occupied. To call flesh clay is mockery: clay outlasts flesh by eternities.

  ‘I wonder if they finished,’ said the Ant, who found them.

  ‘I reckon so,’ said Volga. ‘They just finished and thought they’d have a little rest. Didn’t know a thing about it.’ Everyone was glad for them; it was considered lucky not to know when you were going to die.

  They’d never had to use the Acme Thunderer, it was found blackened in the glove box of the Plymouth. Volga repossessed it and the Great White Father let it hang on a special nail in the drink hut. A memorial to married love.

  Some of the stolen ivy doing so well round the walls of the Home Beautiful was transplanted near the old car, where it would grow and cover their grave marker. For as a last kindness the old couple were buried under the car in the swamp that was their refuge from a society in which they could not afford to live.

  A TACTFUL SILENCE When the Monday morning tide came in and deposited workers on the Puroil shores a number of heavy men wearing hats were welcomed at the blue gates and ushered into the Termitary. They had never seen the Utopia 1852 poster and scratched their ankles unashamedly as soon as they were seated.

  One asked a routine question. ‘Is there anyone who might have a grudge against the company?’

  There was a silence. The Whispering Baritone picked his flaking fingers carefully, trying not to break the skin. By a miracle there had never been trouble like this before. In the low life they shared, management and labour had never been able to live together, but when it came to the point how could they stand up and say that any or all of the prisoners they guarded might have sabotaged them? Where would the accusations stop? Had a rumour got round about the new plans to put all processes on the computers? Better to shut up rather than give this news to the prisoners on a plate. First the system had to be readied and the work force pared down to a skeleton crew of half a dozen. Could they admit that the mob had destroyed the symbols of their servitude—the machines—because servitude was no longer necessary now machines were so clever? Could they admit that the refinery could be run more efficiently and the consumer charged less for the product without reducing profit?

  The detectives assumed it was a matter of delicacy or reluctance to name a suspect, and waited patiently. After all they weren’t dealing with people on the street: there was a different method of handling men like these. As if they were equals, as the manual said, or superior officers. Respectful but not obsequious. They weren’t to know the wide range of suspects Puroil had to choose from.

  A mile away, the Eel River was alive with oily, spattered gondoliers paddling about in skiffs, trying to fill makeshift containers with black crude from a faraway Sheikhdom, and getting mostly saltwater. To counter residents’ complaints, a few paragraphs appeared in the local rag boasting of Puroil’s vast expenditure on the latest methods of preventing spillage; telling a story of loving concern for the well-being of residents, seagulls, boat clubs, pleasure craft, quite over and above the secondary aim of making a dollar. It might keep the silly bastards quiet.

  The lengthy shutdown was organized to begin right away. The golden handshake time limit was extended a month; after that there was plenty of time to weed out the unwanted. Besides, there was a State election in three weeks and those who benefited in the way of campaign funds from Puroil could have been embarrassed by large-scale sackings just before the voters made their marks on the little scraps of paper to put into power the self-qualified men nominated by small private groups. Politically the people were powerless: unknown men controlled them. Industrially they were powerless: the reins were held firmly elsewhere. Even weak India insisted on local majority shareholding in foreign companies. Yet they still had some power, if only they knew. If they were prepared to have their heads broken and to bleed.

  Meanwhile, technology was in existence that would shortly make their labour an anachronism and their detention financially unsound. On the other hand it was certain to make their enforced future freedom politically unsound. And yet, in public places, great masses of constitutional machinery that with a little bringing up to date could have guided the use of this technology and this freedom lay rusting, unused.

  FINAL SOLUTION When the great wall of still-hot catalyst was dug away from the regenerator under the supervision of Bomber Command, who had regained his position as controller in the inevitable shake-up, the Rustle of Spring was found inside, cooked. Clothes, tarpaulin burned away. When they touched him, slabs of baked meat fell from his bones, giving off a curiously appetizing smell. Men who were prepared to be revolted by cooked human meat simply because of what it was, found their mouths watering in spite of themselves as his bones undressed.

  The Humdinger, who reverenced nothing, had to make a joke of it.

  ‘We’ve invented the solution to the world’s hunger!’ he yelled. ‘Munch a man a month!’

  The others made a fuss at this lack of taste, but not too much. Basically they loathed even each other; what could a stranger expect?

  They couldn’t get the little dead man’s drawings off the inside walls, the heat had baked them on. There was the Samurai in Japanese warrior robes, Desert Head had his halo of mosquitoes, Blue Hills in a coffin marked Puroil, Canada Dry was a tall bottle-shape, the Western Salesman with a brown nose crouching behind the Slug, the Sumpsucker an obscene sketch, the Good Shepherd a bishop, the Beautiful Twinkling Star as Christ, and the Humdinger had a human backside for a face. The Great White Father was shown horizontal doing his falling-flat trick.

  They found Loosehead’s dummy woman. Her rag insides were gone and only skeleton wires remained. The Rustle of Spring had slept with her all this time under his tarpaulin, his only bride
in this arid land. They salvaged his bones and sent them back where they came from. They made a smaller package than on the voyage out.

  THE GREAT WHITE FEATHER The Great White Father hadn’t gone up to the refinery on the day of the fire and was still drunk a few days later. SKlation had given him a new name. All by himself. The Great White Feather. An addition of one letter.

  The name stuck. It says a lot for the adaptability of men and their willingness to accept new ideas that they could change their great man’s name so quickly and led by a man everyone sneered at.

  Now here’s a funny thing. The Great White Feather was out of commission flat on his back for several days and in that time his followers and friends resumed their retreat from the world and work. But something was missing. The girls were there, did what was expected and got their money. The great man’s voice was not heard. But perhaps his friends could have survived his silence.

  It was something else. Volga rowed up to buy the beer as usual, but something wasn’t right. The beer flowed in and out of the drinkers, then came to a stop. Volga wanted contributions and they gave the usual few dollars each, but there wasn’t enough beer. Several argued about it; there were fights. Volga cracked a few heads together, but the arguments persisted and got worse. Some even retreated to a safe distance and accused Volga of sticking to the money.

  A small group of men, seeing that the Home Beautiful was in danger of breaking up, tackled Volga about the money. When he saw they were trying to be reasonable he told them, ‘We’ll be back to normal when we get him on his feet.’

  ‘Who, the Great White Feather? What difference does he make?’

  ‘He dobs in the extra all the time out of his own dough. That’s why you drink well and there’s never any shortage. If it runs out he’ll send me up to the pub for six dozen, say, out of his own kick. Most of the time it’s his beer you’re drinking.’

  One of them started to suggest charging the girls a fee to practise their profession, but Volga squashed that. The Great White Feather was against pimps and landlords, he told them. Volga was going out of his way trying not to be physical.

  The Home Beautiful wasn’t a spontaneous movement of men: it was one man. One good man. They couldn’t manage by themselves.

  With a true appreciation of the ideals that led to the founding of the Home Beautiful and its marriage of bed and board, the men did what they could to revive their leader, and gave him the best of attention. Soon he was on his feet again and spending freely. Happiness returned to the Home Beautiful. Men set out fresh every day to lay hands on and to hold the greasy pig of pleasure.

  They still called him the Great White Feather. Even his staunchest friends used the new name easily, without embarrassment. He never objected. Actually he seemed to like it.

  A WOUND IN THE SIDE When I saw the Two Pot Screamer in the Sullage City Workers’ Club he said, ‘The blow-up I expected has happened. I’ve decided to leave Puroil and go to a quiet place for six months to put it all down.’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘I’ve enough notes for a book. No one will accept it, I know, but I can’t let that stop me. Artists are like prostitutes; they’ll always have a trade.’ I couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘Good luck. I hope you find a quiet place.’ Put it all down? He would select and discard as I did, according to rules established by chance 277 days before I was born.

  He was single, like me. It was the only way to keep free of hire-purchase, the only way you had a chance to thumb your nose at bosses. I asked him about Hillend. He’d knocked around the gold country when he was younger. Hillend carried us through for an hour. Then I remembered something funny.

  ‘Remember the Western Salesman?’

  ‘Sure. With the brown nose.’

  ‘They didn’t make him a foreman. They brought all the new foremen in from outside. He was nearly in tears.’ He laughed. ‘Him and a dozen others. They only used ’em to keep the mob quiet while they got the new agreement in.’

  ‘They never learn.’

  ‘And remember the Outside Fisherman?’

  ‘Sure. Has he retired yet?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He was looking forward to that gold watch.’

  ‘He didn’t get it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No. When they came to add up his service he was short by one day.’

  ‘How? He was sure he’d been there thirty years by the time he retired.’

  ‘Two days over. But on a count-back of unpaid sick days he was one day short. He had three days off with arthritis and they deduct the unpaid days.’

  ‘The filthy mongrel bastards,’ he said loudly. The words attracted no attention in the Workers’ Club.

  ‘They haven’t changed,’ I said. I was thinking of the Wild Bull of the Pampas, Stillsons, the Western Salesman, Sea Shells, the Outside Fisherman, the Grey Goldfish, Canada Dry, all those with unpaid grudges against the company and all the others who knew they would be at the bottom of the pile for life. Even the equipment, weakened by neglect, had rebellion built-in. What would happen when they finally tried to run the place with six men?

  ‘No. Thank Christ we’re out of there before the next blow-up. That mob haven’t learned a thing. You know what they remind me of? The Glass Canoe. The way they go on. A cycle of depression, then a torpid state when they couldn’t care less, then a hotchpotch of mental chaos when they thrash blindly around with a thousand different ideas at once, then a real mania when they go for one aim like a bull at a gate.’

  I smiled at his earnest tone. He went on.

  ‘Did you hear that when they took the turbo-expander machines down they were eaten out with catalyst. You know how that stuff slices through steel? Someone put catalyst in the lube oil.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ I could imagine Taffy the Welsh smiling grimly and putting his fist reminiscently in the hole in his side. ‘But wait till you hear this. Remember the computer boys? That were too good to talk to anyone. Well, Puroil bought second and third generation computers so they could use the original memory discs, they put all their operations on the machines and got rid of their programmer and systems analyst. When they want advice they hire a consultant or bring in analysts and programmers for special jobs. They’re not safe either. Even the gardeners. Gone.’

  ‘The gardeners? Why?’

  ‘Nylon grass. No upkeep.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said bitterly, ‘when the ornamental trees die they’ll put up posters with trees painted on.’

  PREFACE Others carry their books inside them—it doesn’t occur to them to put them in print. They build up now and then a sort of word-pressure inside, and let out words at random to ease the pressure—words from their book of life—to family, to familiar strangers in pub and club when alcohol loosens the tongue. Their books last as long as life, and hold secrets of the human universe, but they evaporate.

  It has been my aim to take apart, then build up piece by piece this mosaic of one kind of human life, this galaxy of painted slides, my bleak ratio of illuminations; to remind my present age of its industrial adolescence.

  Well friend, I have not succeeded in putting back together those I have taken apart, for they are split, divided, fragmented, as I am split up and divided between page and character, speech and event, intention and performance.

  If the faces are familiar, the expressions will not be admitted. A man congratulates himself more or less for what he has made, but parts of others are missing and must be supplied by the reader. And I myself am missing, but this lack is essential.

  ONE GOOD MAN The last time I saw the Great White Feather was a few weeks after the fire. Again he was hopelessly drunk. Perhaps the fire made a deep impression on him. Or his christening. Or he was determined to stay drunk till the moon grew hair. Or it was an extension of his falling-flat trick.

  I couldn’t help it—shortly I was to go out of their lives for ever—I asked the question.

  ‘That day you w
ere leading the goat along Highway One—what was it for? What did you do with it?’

  But he was unable to speak. I believe he would have told me if he had been sober. His head was resting on what looked like plans. Perhaps he had been driven underground already. A new race of miners digging for the gold of freedom. This would be an escape story where tunnels were dug with no escape beyond the barbed wire. Escape was in the tunnel. Was this their refuge after being uprooted first from the land, then from industry? Banished from the face of the earth.

  The digging may have started. If so he wouldn’t announce anything till the small group round him finished their work and the tunnels and underground rooms were ready. If, in the Home Beautiful the atmosphere was so free that it seemed like liberty and equality, that was, in my opinion, because the Great White Feather did what he wanted secretly and quickly. Suggestions were accepted afterwards, and improvements; he put in his ideas first. There was no nonsense about voting, or the whole thing might very well have been voted out of existence. He provided what he said they needed, knowing they were useless at making up their minds. He served them from a great height; democracy was unnecessary. Most men would have turned the Home Beautiful into a goldmine, but not all men are stupid, selfish and corrupt when they have a monopoly of power.

  As I turned away I thought of another question, something about the true function of man. Perhaps his true function is to be himself, just as he happens to be, and his whole duty simply to live. But how can that be enough? It was a rather pompous sort of thing to be talking about then. Or any time. I looked for the sixty-dollar cat, but he was off alone somewhere, hunting in the surrounding swamp for animals weaker than himself.

  I ducked into the bed hut to say goodbye to the girls. They were all there, all six. There was real affection in their faces for the helpless man and they seemed to be discussing their life together and the good turns he had done them—in low voices, as if he were dying. I smiled and spoke in a loud voice to cheer them up.