To clear his name of this superstition Mr. Izak sent word to the foremost hut people and held meeting after meeting with them in his factory. He declared he would distribute milk to those suffocating from the chemicals. He poured milk down their throats by the gallon; then he built them a mosque next to his factory. Their growing anger vanished like the foam on the milk he distributed, a litre a day, for the following year. But as Mr. Izak’s reputation grew velvet and creamy, his iron fist began to show. Under the mosque he built a storage vault for the refrigerators, and tunnels to connect it to the factory. He opened up more new underground rooms and installed new workers in them. Besides refrigerators he started to turn out washing-machines, radios and cookers. To distinguish the workrooms from the graves he had fluorescent lighting fitted in the ceilings, and the following names were inscribed on the doors:
METALWORKS
GLAZING
PLASTICS
WELDING
POLISHING
LATHE WORKSHOP
ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS
PAINTWORKS
In time Bald Ali’s spare key grew tarnished and rusty and he kept it as a memento of Mr. Izak. Working underground with the others he melted away, dried up and choked. He coined an expression and passed it round all the workers — ‘We took over the garbage hills but were moonstruck and forgot what was underneath’. While the workers were laughing together and inventing sayings full of references to Mr. Izak’s underground factory, Ali mimicked his voice at midday break and nightshirt, and made speeches starting — ‘Brother Workers!’. After every speech he pulled the key from his pocket and pretended to open the doors. The workers guffawed and shouted — ‘Sign us a leave-of-absence chit, Bald Ali!’, and he signed cigarette papers. In a voice pitched high against the roar of the machinery he told them stories of the days when Mr. Izak had worked alongside them. Half the stories were mangled in the press and half were stifled on the conveyor belt. As Ali forgot some of the stories from tiredness and began to sing and dance halfway through others, the workers on the assembly lines never took him seriously.
At the factory doors
Four workers stood.
Over the garbage hills
Sleet fell in showers
In the days of the young thugs whose gunfire had startled the snow-white seagulls into a flight covering the sky with a black cloud, big tough guys had swaggered about Rubbish Road. The workers knew them as the Bully Boys. Workers who talked about unions, or insurance, or compensation, were beaten up until the blood flowed, and their yells mingled with the roar of the machines.
Smoke went on pouring from the chimneys and in time the workers in the factories strung along Rubbish Road joined a union, and the Bully Boys became a legend. Now the machine roar mingled with shouts from the factory owners sitting down at their tables to collective bargaining.
‘Child allowance? And what’s that?’
‘They’ll come to the factory at festival time.’
‘They’ll kiss our hands.’
‘We’ll give them pocket-money.’
When the men of Rubbish Road made a move to enroll in the union, Mr. Izak took on a new factory manager. They heard that Mr. Izak’s new man had come from another country far away and that his first job would be to have hostels built on two of the garbage hills for the factory employees. His name resounded through Rubbish Road like the great seas which surrounded the country he came from and where he had been educated.
The manager put his training into practice in the refrigerator factory. He summoned the workers and first congratulated them for being clever enough to use their neck cloths (issued to polish the refrigerators) for wiping away their sweat and making a mouth mask; then he announced that from now on they could not have the bonus they had had once a year. Instead he would give out biscuits and yoghurt on alternate days.
The workers turned as white as the yoghurt; the refrigerator fumes got into their wide-open eyes, their throats were hoarse and torn from coughing, and their breathing was strangled. The manager said he would install a ventilation system in the factory for those affected and added he was organizing a new method of paying their wages.
That day the workers heard that when a man came on to the new wage-rate, he would become a ‘modern’ worker and would be rated not by seniority but according to output, skill and job commitment.
A little later a new creature called ‘The Regular Worker’ appeared in the factory. Workers were divided into ‘regulars’ and ‘irregulars’, and the regulars were paid more by the hour. The irregulars winced every time they were paid and heard the word ‘regular’; one of them rolled this word round his tongue and spat out the half that had passed into their slang as ‘regs’.
Workers, faster, faster move
Than the aeroplane above.
What if my hand gets caught and trapped
Before my foot can stop the press?
Your fingers will get crushed and torn,
A bloody mess!
Workers, faster, faster move
Than the aeroplane above.
Night and day, the ‘Work Faster’ song battered the ears of the men in the refrigerator factory. It was introduced by Mr. Izak’s new manager who had learned it in the country where he had been trained. The ten workers chosen as regulars began to earn more by the hour than the others; the regulars bent over their yoghurts, chatting and laughing, the others cursing and dawdling. Of the regulars, some were more regular than others and were paid even more by the hour. The more regulars finished their yoghurts fast and got back to the conveyor belt. The lesser regulars who earned less by the hour lined up after them. The irregulars, their heads bent over their yoghurt bowls, looked up and their eyes met. They began to talk. ‘May the yoghurt stick in the throat of the man who switched from a bonus to yoghurt!’, they muttered, and sitting down with their spoons under their arms, refused to eat. The new manager stood beside them, and in a voice soft as down invited them to eat the yoghurt. The men laughed and spluttered over their cream-covered bowls.
That day the new manager tried to give four representatives a kick down one of the roads which straggled and disappeared between the huts below the garbage slopes. But these four stood their ground and waited like four refrigerators at the factory exit. The foreman who had attacked the protesters with a screwdriver hid behind the new manager as he addressed the workers assembled at the conveyor belt:
‘Dear workers of the refrigerator plant, will the union build you hostels on the garbage hills, with windows flaming bright from the garbage glitter? Will it install ventilation in the factory and make the chemicals evaporate in the blue sky?’