She is tired. It is a strange, hopeless exhaustion that does not even desire sleep. Besieged by this exhaustion she switches on the light. It's odd to think that she was in this room yesterday morning. It's as if it all happened long ago, and she was standing at the end of it, or rather as if she was already standing at the beginning of a completely new time. She undresses slowly although she has yet to pull out the bed. On her skirt she discovers the shameful dark red stain, now almost black. It was such a beautiful skirt. And she feels like weeping over the white pleated skirt, over her tiredness and over herself, and she goes
out into the passage and fills the washbasin with water. Then she takes the big ball of blue twine, but she has scarcely unwound a few metres when she is overcome with revulsion and rewinds it. And when she has washed off the stain she hangs the skirt over the ironing board. What am I to do now?
She switches off the light and sits down in the rocking chair, and at that moment it strikes her that love is actually like life. You know it's going to end badly, that it's going to end too soon and there is no hope of its lasting, but you go on living all the same. And so people love — in the same way they live — longing for it to last but without any hope of its lasting. They love with their eyes closed and with an uneasiness that permeates their happiness, and they don't think and don't want to think.
The night air creeps in through the closed window. So near to the sky but the stars are dim. In the far distance there is the pale flash of lost lightning and then darkness falls once more, the quiet outpouring of darkness, and gradually, like a mirage, there emerge the outline of the first tower and the soaring chimney, and the plinth for a statue without a statue, and lower and lower. The 'windows are dark; behind them they are all asleep: those who build the monuments, and those who knock them down, those who light the lights and those who put them out, those who study and those who hate all those who study, those who love each other and those who flee towards love, those who have never known love, and those who betray and those who flee from betrayal into the arms of pathetic slobs in search of sympathy at least, and those in the stripy clothes and those who watch them, and those who await their arrival with painful anxiety, and those who torture their own love with worrying.
And I'll go down and be like them under the dim light of the street lamps and someone will catch sight of me and say, You're our little sister. You're so alone there. Come with us. And I'll go anywhere, but I'll go — and I'll float and fall, so long as. . and higher and higher right up to the silhouette of the last tower and the soaring chimney, and the stars, the tiny, enormous stars, and she half closes her eyes, and the stars gradually go out, and instead it is here standing in front of her with its grey coat and long grey mane, the ground dusted with hoar frost, the meadow stretching from horizon to horizon and moving through it is an entire enormous herd of similarly graceful creatures and she is lying in the middle of the meadow and watching and cannot understand how anyone could kill these splendid creatures because of ugly little caged animals and she watches the horses shake their proud heads and can see the enormous herd come closer together and then move apart, and sees them make love — horses — in the middle of the meadow, in the middle of their single day and their single night, with their soft manes, those free horses, lovers for a single night in the middle of a long eternal silent night, and sees a foal running through the herd on spindly legs. My little brothers, she whispers, and no longer feels anxiety. Her tiredness has been soaked up by the hay of the meadow and she is so light that she can fall and float. And thus she sleeps, half undressed, in the rocking chair, while beyond the opening in the roof the day dawns and the foul-smelling city day descends on the room and the free end of the blue twine swings almost imperceptibly to and fro in the invisible draught.
(1964)
THE ASSEMBLY LINE
1
What a morning, a totally uncitylike morning, blue sky above the rooftops, a sky like a seascape, wouldn't it be great to be sailing on it, and fields, it'd be great: ever onwards, if only it were possible to go onwards for ever, never land, never disembark, just ever onwards and the sun would go on rising and you as well, don't just stand there gawking, move along and climb aboard, the tram full of heat, the stench of bodies, suddenly his legs went to jelly, because he didn't manage to have a wash, and the day ahead of him — there was still a chance, but only if the workshop collapsed or there was a plague, CLOSED DUE TO PLAGUE, then I'd head off with Ladya, closed due to plague, oh, Jesus, maybe Eva would go too, even though she went and got married, pity, we'd all head off, closed due to plague, there was still a chance today; he dashed towards the gate and from a distance he could make out a white notice, the letters blurred, closed, if only it said
closed, but it was only an announcement of a meeting for all staff, he should have known, he spat, the time clock, the mechanical watchdog, the unsmiling watchdog of your life, open your jaws you beast, six-o-four, he dashed past the watchman and across the grey yard full of swirling ash, pushed the door open with his shoulder, workshop number one, past the rumbling presses, Anča cutting tin as usual, it's already given her a back like a hazel stick, like a bow, they should cut you out a hole in the ground, you wouldn't have to bend so much — if I were an engineer. . but then who'd care about you, another door and he could already see them standing in that never-ending never-changing row, as every month, as on every summer day and every rainy and miserable and snowy day and on the day he died too if only he could come and take a look then: at one end a bald patch at the other end Eva — hair rinsed the colour of a duckling, she's got married, can't be helped — an empty space alongside Ladya, that's mine, one big and three small cogs in the right hand, two small axles in the left, slide them on, let them click into place, test them, then take four screws and screw them into the holes, hang it up, the foreman's standing in for me now, he's not foreman any more, he's me, that's the kind of place it is: whoever turns up (it could be a preacher or a tight-rope walker, a one-legged deaf wrestler; he could have been that morning at his mother's funeral or come from his first time with a girl) that same day would have to take one big and three small cogs in his right hand and reach for the axles with his left. The foreman's gaze was fixed on the hands of the clock, that was something he could do while he was working, everyone could, stare and think, and even think, while the index finger of his right hand fitted the axle exactly into the holes in the casing. The
foreman opened his mouth full of greyish.porcelain teeth, there's going to be another speech like on television, move off instead, Jesus, it's only six-ten, nine in fact, but it'll soon be ten, while I look at it and the foreman goes on gassing, anyway it's a waste of. . one big and three small cogs, now he's finished, Marie's wearing a sweater of some kind today, one big cog, it's all hot air anyway, one day he'll come and he won't find me here, believe me, that's one day I'd just love to be here, what bliss, and just to look at his face, except that by then I'll be riding my own horse, four screws, screw them in the holes… at last he's. . and it's peaceful, the conveyor belt moves along quietly, take it off and hang it up, Marie's screwdriver squeaks, six-sixteen, an odd stain on the white wall, a strange bluish blotch. He chased it down a totally white road, through an alley of damp-leaved cherry trees, steam rose from the meadows, hi there! under the trees two fellows jumped up and waved madly.