* * *
The gateman says that in the evening Grigore regularly goes to the police and reports whom he sold gold chains to in the morning. But he does not report the wedding rings.
The gateman respects Grigore the warehouse supervisor, because Grigore believes in his money.
Well the black market is exactly that, says the gatewoman, after all no one’s making them buy anything. And black business is risky business. The gateman says, one person has, the other needs, and so the world turns. Everyone does what he can.
* * *
The cat can also smell whenever the supervisor takes a woman off to the left corner of the warehouse. He leads them down an aisle between the heaps of clothing and up to a lair hollowed out of the gray mountain, right below the window. The women lie on the slope of clothing, so when they lift their legs their feet are the same height as their head. When Grigore undoes his pants, the cat comes in off the roof and sits on the top of the mountain, overlooking the lair. From the women’s point of view the cat is sitting upside down, because their rubber boots are raised above their eyes. The eyes of the women race through their foreheads to the eyes of the cat. Shoo her away from there, say the women, shoo her away. And Grigore says, that doesn’t matter, she can’t see anything, let her be, that doesn’t matter at all. The cat twitches her eyes and watches.
Afterward the women stand in front of the desk, covered in sweat, with a gray padded jacket over their arm. They find their name on the supervisor’s list and sign for their clothing. The cat doesn’t wait for them to sign. She clambers outside and saunters between the wire spools in the courtyard and into the workrooms.
* * *
The image remains fixed for a while in the eyes of the cat, so everyone can see what’s happened. And everyone talks about it, about the latest love hastily performed standing up or lying down. The talk about the love is also hasty. They all rest their hands on the wire, wherever their fingers happen to be when the cat comes near. Because no image grows very old. Because another one comes along and is fixed for a while in the eyes of the cat. And envy spurs each woman on, as does the oil splattered on her face, convincing her that she will be next, that the next image in the eyes of the cat will feature her. Come spring or come fall, when the padded jacket wears out and tears at the elbows and when the wind scratches cold or warm against the tar paper and blows through the fence onto Victory Street, the other women will be watching. Because the cat will carry their thighs through the factory, naked in the lair and spread wide and raised higher than their heads — the thighs now resting under their smocks in front of their looms.
* * *
When the cat mourns her young, her eyes have no image, but that’s only one week during the year. Whoever is seized by love in the haste of this fleeting blind week is lucky, say the women. They believe no one will see them because there will be no image in the eyes of the cat.
Many bribe the gatewoman to tell them when this week will be. They all do, she says, so I fill the calendar, and I tell each of them whatever I want.
And each woman tries to jump the queue, rushing into the false week of mourning with short hasty thrusts.
* * *
But during the actual week of mourning, the love lines all get tangled, between the workrooms and the factory yard, the washroom and office, and so the coupling men and women do end up being seen, by the gatekeeper, the cleaning woman, the foreman and the stoker. There is one small difference, though: because there are no images in the eyes of the cat during the real week of mourning, each of these encounters remains a rumor.
* * *
The women’s children all look like Grigore, says the gatewoman. Thank god the mothers don’t bring them to the factory. I’ve never seen the children all grouped together, only one here and one there. Short or tall, skinny or fat, black-haired or blond. Girls and boys. When they stand next to each other you can tell they’re siblings. They’re all different, says the gatewoman, but every one of their faces has a palm-sized piece of Grigore.
* * *
From the moment they’re born, the women’s children suffer from sleeplessness. The doctors say it comes from the machine oil. These children start growing and for a few years it seems they will grow up and away from the factory.
But sooner or later, says the gatewoman, they come here to the gatehouse looking for their mothers. It’s rarely anything urgent. Most of the time there’s no reason.
The gatewoman says the children stand there next to the gatehouse and tell her their names so the gateman can call their mothers. And that while they’re standing there they clutch their cheeks with their fingertips because they’re afraid. That they don’t see either of the gatekeepers. That from the moment they say their names they only have eyes for the wire, the spools, the sunken factory yard, which they stare at with empty eyes. And that the longer they stand there, the more the palm-sized piece of Grigore starts to show in their faces.
And the gatewoman sees the rust on their small or large shirts, on their small or large clothes, on their knee socks. While the children are standing and waiting next to the gatehouse, some small, some bigger, some nearly grown-up, the gatewoman can always spot the rusty stains — every child has one on some piece of clothing, like a toothed and tattered leaf.
The rust comes from the hands of the mothers, from the same hands that mix melon blood into the men’s soup before dinner. The black rims on their fingernails dissolve when they do the laundry. And then the rust is not in the water and not in the foam. It’s in the fabric. And there’s nothing to do about that: drying in the wind doesn’t help, or ironing, or stain removers, says the gatewoman.
* * *
Even ten years later the gatewoman recognizes Grigore’s many children who have no idea they are related. By then tons of rust and wire mesh have been driven through the gate. And new tons of rust and wire mesh have been woven and piled in the same spot, before the grass can find any sun to grow. And by then these children, too, are working in the factory. They never wished it, they’re here only because the factory is all they know. From the tip of their noses to the tips of their toes they never find another way because there is no other way for them to find. Nothing but this gutter of poverty, hopelessness and tedium, from mother to child and on to that child’s children. One day without warning they discover they have no choice: at first they’re angry and loud, then eventually they become soft and quiet, puttering from one day to the next. The tang of the machine oil still stings their nostrils, their hands are long since rimmed with black. They get married and thrust their shrunken love into each other’s bellies during the break between day shift and night shift. And they get children. Who lie in rusty diapers. These children grow and put on small and then large shirts, clothes, socks and stockings. They stand right next to the gatehouse with their tattered leaves of rust. And wait. And they don’t know that they’ll never find a way, that nothing else will occur to them.
Grigore’s mother also worked in the factory. As did the mother of the gatewoman.
* * *
The knitting needles are resting on the table. The factory yard is quiet. The wind smells of malt. Just past the rooftops is the brewery cooling tower. And jutting out of the tower is a large insulated pipe that stretches over the street and into the river. Steam comes out of the pipe. During the day the steam gets shredded by the passing streetcars. During the night it is a white curtain. Some people say the steam smells of rats, because inside the iron vats, which are bigger than the gatehouse, the river rats get drunk and drown in the beer.
On the eighth day, says the gatekeeper, God had a clump of hair left over from Adam and Eve. He used that to make the feathered creatures. And on the ninth day God faced the great void and belched. And from that belch He created beer.