by Peter Carey
“You have no power over me, young man.”
She didn’t understand me. She thought I was just a scruffy hippy who had come to make a mess in her old boss’s office. She couldn’t know that I have a terrible character weakness, a temper that comes from nowhere and stuns even me with its ferocity and total unreasonableness.
She shouldn’t have spoken to me like that, but she wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t leave when I asked her to. I stood in my office and I asked the old bitch to leave. I asked her coolly and nicely and politely, but she continued to berate me.
I watched her mouth move. It became unreal. I had the 22 under my arm, and my feelings were not like the real world, they were hot and pleasurable and electrically intense.
It was rage.
She had just repeated herself. She had just said something about respect when I drew the pistol and shot her in the foot.
She stopped talking. I watched the red mark on her stockinged foot and thought how amazingly accurate I had been.
She sat on the floor with surprise and a slight grunt.
Barto came running through the door and I stood there with the gun in my hand feeling stupid.
Later the incident made me think about myself and what I wanted from life.
7.
The provincial city nearest the plant was a most unappealing place, catering to the tastes of farmers and factory hands. We devised, therefore, quarters of our own at the plant itself and managed to create a very pleasant island within the administration block.
Here a quite unique little society began to evolve, hidden from a hostile environment by dull red-brick walls. Here we devoted ourselves to the pursuit of good talk, fanciful ideas and the appreciation of good music.
We introduced fine old Baluchi rugs, rich in colour, others from Shiraz, Luristan, old Kilims, mellow and pleasant, glowing like jewels. Here we had huge couches and leather armchairs, soft and old and vibrating with the dying snores of retired soldiers, the suppleness of ancient leathers a delight to the senses. We had low, slow, yellow lights, as gentle as moonlight, and stereo equipment, its fidelity best evoked by considering the sound of Tibetan temple bells. The food, at first, was largely indifferent but the drugs and wine were always plentiful, of extraordinary variety and excellent quality.
In these conditions we marvelled at ourselves, that we, the sons of process workers and hotel-keepers, should live like this. We were still young enough to be so entranced by our success and Barto, whose father sold stolen goods in a series of hotels, was eager that a photograph be taken.
Barto seemed the most innocent of men. He approached life languidly, rarely rising before ten and never retiring before three. Ideas came from him in vast numbers and hardly ever appeared to be anything but wisps of smoke.
Lying on the great Baluchi saddle-bag, graceful as a cat in repose, he would begin by saying, “What if…” It was normally Bart who said “What if…” and normally me who said “yes” or “no”. His mind was relentless in its logic, yet fanciful in style, so the most circuitous and fanciful plans would always, on examination, be found to have cold hard bones within their diaphanous folds.
We were all-powerful. We only had to dream and the dream could be made real. We planned the most unlikely strategies and carried them out, whole plots as involved and chancy as movie scenarios. It was our most remarkable talent. For instance, we evolved a plan for keeping a defecting product manager faithful by getting him a three-bag smack habit and then supplying it.
Our character judgement was perfect. We were delighted by our astuteness.
The product manager stayed but unfortunately killed himself a few months later, so not everything worked out as perfectly as we would have hoped.
We saw ourselves anew, mirrored in the eyes of each new arrival and we preened ourselves before their gaze.
Thelma was the first to arrive. She came to be with Bart and was astounded, firstly by the ugliness of the plant, secondly by the beauty of our private world, and thirdly by the change she claimed had occurred in Bart. She found him obsessed with the business enterprise and unbearably arrogant about his part in it. This she blamed me for. She sat in a corner whispering with Bart and I fretted lest she persuade him to go away with her. She was slender and elegant and dark as a gypsy. She had little needle tracks on her arms, so later on I was able to do a deal with her whereby she agreed to go away for a while.
Ian arrived to take over the sales force and we delighted in his company. He thought our methods of enthusing the salesmen historically necessary but not the most productive in the long term. He took them fifteen miles into town and got drunk with them for two days. He had two fist fights and, somewhere along the line, lost the representative for southern country districts, a point he continued to remain vague about.
He was the perfect chameleon and won them over by becoming vulgar and loud-mouthed. He affected big cufflinks and changed his shirt twice a day. He had his hair cut perfectly and he looked handsome and macho with his smiling dark eyes.
The sales force loved him, having the mistaken idea that he was normal. Naturally he didn’t discuss his enthusiastic appetite for a substance called ACP, a veterinary tranquillizer normally administered to nervous horses which he took, rather ostentatiously, from a teaspoon marked “Souvenir of Anglesea”.
It was Ian who persuaded me to fly in Sergei from Hong Kong. With his arrival, a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders and I had more time to relax and enjoy the music and talk. Sergei was unknown to me and I found him, in some respects, alarming. It was as if he found nothing remarkable in our situation. He made no comment on the decor of our private quarters, our penchant for drugs, or the brilliance of our strategies. It was as if we stood before a mirror which reflected everything but ourselves. He made me nervous. I didn’t know how I stood with him.
Yet he was the most ordinary of men: short, slim, and dark, moving with a preciseness which I found comforting in such a skilled accountant. He was eccentric in his dress, choosing neatly pressed grey flannel trousers, very expensive knitted shirts, and slip-on shoes of the softest leather. Only the small silver earring on his left earlobe gave an indication that he was not totally straight.
Sergei talked little but went quietly about the business of wrestling with our cash flow. In the first week he completely reprogrammed our computer to give us a simpler and faster idea of our situation. Each week’s figures would be available on the Monday of the next week, which made life easier for all of us.
After three weeks I gave over the financial function almost completely to his care and tried to spend some time evolving a sensible long term strategy suited to the economic climate we were now likely to live in for some time. It is a curious fact that large companies are very slow to react to changes in the market place.
Whilst the unemployed continued to receive government assistance there would be a multimillion dollar business in satisfying their needs. Companies which should have had the sense to see this continued to ignore it. Obviously they viewed the present circumstances as some temporary aberration and were planning their long term strategies in the belief that we would shortly be returning to normal market conditions.
My view was that we were experiencing “normal” market conditions.
I instructed our new product development team to investigate the possibility of producing a range of very simple frozen meals which would be extremely filling, could be eaten cold when cooking facilities were not available, and would be lower in cost than anything comparable. I had a series of pie-like dishes in mind but I left the brief open. It seemed like a golden opportunity.
Whilst I was engaged in this, word came from Ian that they had had a highly successful sell-in of our existing lines of frozen meals. He had given the trade substantial discounts and we were operating on very low profit margins, hoping to achieve a very high volume turnover, and more importantly get our relationship with the trade back to a healthier state.
The telex from
Ian was very short: “They love us till their balls ache. Sell-in is 180 per cent of forecast.”
I looked out my window as Barto and Sergei walked towards the storeroom which hid the plant itself from my view. Bart’s Colt now sat snugly in a hand-tooled leather holster he had spent the last few nights making.
Beside Bart’s pointy-toed languid walk, Sergei looked as strict as a wound-up toy.
I watched them thoughtfully, thinking that they had the comic appearance of truly lethal things.
8.
My father lost his hand in a factory. He carried the stump with him as a badge of his oppression by factories. When I was very small I saw that my father had no hand and concluded that my hand would also be cut off when the time came. I carried this belief quietly in the dark part of the mind reserved for dreadful truths. Thus it was with a most peculiar and personal interest that I watched the beheading of chickens, the amputation of fox-terriers’ tails, and even the tarring of young lambs. My fear was so intense that all communication on the subject was unthinkable. It would be done just as they had mutilated my cock by cutting off the skin on its head.
I envied my two sisters, who, I was sure, would be allowed to have two hands like my mother.
The factories my father worked in were many and various. I remember only their dark cavernous doors, their dull, hot, metal exteriors, the various stinks they left in my father’s hair, and the tired sour smell of sweaty clothes that could never be washed often enough.
In the sleep-out behind the house I pinned pictures of motor cars to the walls and masturbated. The yellow walls were decorated with dull brown ageing Sellotape and the breasts of impossible girls even less attainable than the motor cars. It was here that I waited to be sent to the factory. Here on hot, stinking afternoons I planned the most fantastic escapes and the most blood-curdling retaliations. It was here, at night, that I was struck dumb by nightmares. The nightmares that assailed me were full of factories which, never really seen and only imagined, were more horrifying than anything my father could have encountered. They cut and slashed at me with gleaming blades and their abysses and chasms gaped before my fearful feet. Their innards were vast and measureless, and they contained nothing but the machinery of mutilation.
The dreams pursued me throughout life and now, at thirty, I still have the same horrible nameless nightmare I first learned when I was five years old. I play it as if it were the music of hell, neatly notated, perfectly repeatable, and as horribly frightening as it was the first time. I am a rabbit caught in the headlights of my dream.
The time had now come to go and confront the factory which was mine. I had done everything in my power to stay away. It was easy enough to make decisions based on engineers’ reports and the advice of the production manager. But finally the day came when the excuses began to look ridiculous.
When we left the central admin block the heat came out of the scrubland and hung on us. I had not been outside for three weeks and the heat which I had seen as air-conditioned sunshine now became a very raw reality. A northerly wind lifted stinging dust out of the scrub and flies tried to crawl up my nose and into my ears, as if they wished to lay eggs inside my brain.
The plant and storerooms blinded me with their metallic glare which was not diminished by the streaks of rust decorating their surfaces, hints of some internal disorder.
Barto, walking beside me on the soft, sticky bitumen, said: “How’s your nightmare?”
His hair seemed surreal, haloed, blue sky above it and shining silver behind. Already I could hear the rumbling of the plant. A rivulet of dirty water came running from the No. 2 to meet us. Barto hopped across it nimbly, his cowboy boots still immaculately clean.
“Not good,” I said. I regretted my confession most bitterly. A confession is nothing but a fart. I have despised those who make confessions of their fears and weaknesses. It is a game the middle class play but they are only manufacturing razor-blades which will be used to slash their own stupid white throats.
The door of the No. 2 yawned cavernous in front of me. The floor was an inch deep in filthy water.
Bart stopped. “Fuck, I can’t go in there.”
“Why not?” The bastard had to go with me. I wasn’t going by myself. We stopped at the door. A foul smell of something cooking came out and engulfed us. I thought I was going to be sick. “Why not?” I asked. “What’s the matter?” I tried to make my voice sound normal.
“I’ll get my fucking boots fucked.” Bart stood at the door, legs apart, a hand on his hip, a knee crooked, looking down at his cowboy boots. “Fuck,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll buy you a new pair.” I shouldn’t have said that.
“No, there’s none left to buy. Shit, I’m sorry.” I could see that he was. I could see that there was no way I could talk him into coming with me. I was going to have to do the factory tour alone.
“Fuck your fucking boots.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you can’t buy them anymore.”
I walked gingerly into the lake and kept going, leaving Bart to feel whatever guilt he was capable of.
In waking life it was not only the machinery I was frightened of, although it was terrifying enough. The vats were huge and their sheer bulk was so unrelated to anything human that I felt my throat block off at the consideration of the weight of food they would contain. The production line itself was also particularly old, clanking, wheezing, full of machinery that oozed grease and farted air, and which lifted and pulled and lifted without any regard for life and limb.
It was the people I didn’t want to see.
The heat was impossible, far worse than outside. It mixed with the noise to produce an almost palpable substance which should have suffocated all life. The belt stretched on through this giant corrugated-iron oven, and men and women in grubby white stood beside the line, doing operations that had been perfectly described on the production report.
Line No. 3: four female packers, one male supervisor.
The information on the report was enough. It didn’t help me to know that one of the female packers was tall and thin with a baleful glare she directed accusingly at management, that her companion was just as tall but heavier, that next to her was a girl of sixteen with wire spectacles and a heat rash that extended from her forehead to her hands, that one other, an olive-skinned girl with a smooth Mediterranean madonna face, would have the foolishness to smile at me. And so on.
I have seen enough factories, god knows, but they continue to be a problem to me. They should not be. My fear is irrational and should be overcome by habituation. But nothing dulls me to the assault of factories and I carry with me, still, the conviction that I will end up at the bottom of the shit pile, powerless against the machines in factories. So I look at the people a little too hard, too searchingly, wondering about them in a way that could make my job impossible. The fish in my hand cannot be thought of as anything more than an operation to be performed. The minute one considers the feelings of the fish the act becomes more difficult. So, in factories, I have a weakness, a hysterical tendency to become the people I see there, to enter their bodies and feel their feelings, and see the never-ending loud, metallic, boring days. And I become bitterly angry for them. And their anger, of course, is directed at me, who isn’t them. It is a weakness. A folly. An idiot’s hobby.
I got my arse out of the factory as fast as I could.
Bart met me at the door of the No. 2. “How’s your nightmare?”
I was still in its grip. I was shaking and angry. “It’s really shitty in there. It is really shitty.”
Bart polished his cowboy boot, rubbing the right toe on the back of his left leg. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked, innocently enough.
A confession is a fart. You should never make a confession, no matter what dope you’re on. “I’m not going to do anything, pig face. There’s not a fucking thing to do, if I wanted to. That’s what factories are like.” My suede boots were soaked in
muck. I flicked a pea off and watched it bounce across the bitumen.
“Listen,” the word drawled out of Bart as slow and lazy as the kicking pointy-toed walk he was walking. The word was inquisitive, tentative, curious and also politely helpful. “Listen, do you think they hate you?”
“Yes.” I said it. It slipped out before I had time to think.
“Well,” the word came out as lazily as the “listen,” “I’ll tell you what I’ll do in the next two months.”
I grinned at him. “What’ll you do, smart-arse?”
“I’ll fucking make them love you, smart-arse, if that’s what you want.”
He was grinning delightedly, his hands in his back pockets, his great Indian face turned up towards the screaming sun as if he was drinking power from it.
“And how will you do that?”
“Delegate, delegate,” he drawled, “you’ve got to learn to delegate. Just leave it to me and I’ll fix it for you.” He finished the conversation in my office. “Easy,” he said, “easy-peasy.”
9.
Almost without noticing it, we became quite famous. This gave me a lot of pleasure, but also disappointed me. You imagine it will amount to more, that it will feel more substantial than it is. This, after all, is the bit you’ve dreamed of in all the grubby corners of your life. It is almost the reason you’ve done what you’ve done. This is where the world is forced to accept you no matter what you wear, no matter what you look like, no matter what your accent is. You re-define what is acceptable. This is when they ask you for your comments on the economy and war and peace, and beautiful girls want to fuck you because you are emanating power which has been the secret of all those strong physiques which you lack, which you needlessly envied. This is what you dreamed about jerking off in your stinking hot bungalow, treasuring your two hands. It is what you told the red-mouthed naked girl in the Playboy pin-up when you came all over the glossy page, and what you wished while you wiped the come off the printed image, so as to keep it in good condition for next time.