Chapter Eight
In which we may witness some of the sad consequences of domestication
“And these,” Doctor Quilty explained, waving a pudgy hand at certain rude upheavals of unfenestrated brick, “are the ovens.”
“They’re very big,” I commented blandly. (Wanting very much to add—And ugly. But one of the first lessons Palmino had given me was to steer clear of aesthetic judgments. The average Dingo was too much at home with ugliness to notice any but the most awful examples.)
“We used to use gas, but that was before the manufacturer who supplied it to us went out of business. A pity too… gas is much more efficient. But the whole chemical industry is gone now—or going. For which we have the Masters to blame. All these years of free power have sapped our technological strength. Fortunately, Frangle was able to have the ovens converted.”
“To what? Electricity?”
The Doctor laughed nervously, as at a particularly gauche joke. “Hardly! We burn logs. You’d be surprised the temperatures one can build up that way. The problem is getting these goddamned pets to go out and cut down the trees. Without lots of firewood, we can’t work the ovens to capacity.”
“What is their capacity?”
“I’m told that working all the ovens around the clock they can turn out twenty thousand units. But of course we don’t work all around the clock. And since it’s the goddamned, lazy pets who have to do all the heavy work, we don’t come anywhere near capacity even in the ovens that are working. Talk about feet-dragging!”
“How many do you do, then?”
“No more than five hundred. That’s a good day. You can see that that doesn’t come anywhere near our needs. Ideally, this should be a profit-making proposition.”
“Selling the ash as fertilizer, you mean?”
“Say, that’s an angle that never occurred to me! We’ve just been dumping the ashes till now. Would you like to see the operation? Are you interested in that sort of thing?”
“By all means, Doctor. Lead the way.”
“It’s just around… Oh! Just a second, please, Major. My feet! there’s something wrong with them these last few days. They’ve been swelling up… I don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested with a small laugh, “it’s not your feet at all. Perhaps your shoes are growing smaller?”
Doctor Quilty smiled wanly in reply, as he loosened his laces. A fat man, Doctor Quilty: even so slight an effort as stooping over his shoes caused him to be flushed and short of breath. His sad flesh drooped in dewlaps from his face and forearms, and his great belly was an edifying reminder of man’s immemorial bondage to gravity and death.
Limping, Quilty led me around the corner of the building, where we could see teams of dispirited pets hauling sawn-up logs from stacks outside the main gate of the prison and restacking them again within the gate. The whole operation, involving nearly fifty pets, was being supervised by only one drowsy guard.
“Look at them!” Quilty said scornfully. “They don’t put any more muscle into the job than a bunch of women would. With their bodies, you’d think they’d at least be able to lift logs.”
“Could it be their morale? Perhaps if they were working… somewhere else… at some other sort of work? Maybe they’re depressed by the ovens.”
“No, take my word for it, they’d do the same halfassed job no matter what kind of work you set them to. And in any case, why should this sort of work depress them? I don’t understand you, Major.”
I colored, mortified at having to become so explicit. It seemed gruesome. “Wouldn’t they show more spirit, if they were working… more in their own interest? Or at least not so entirely against it?”
“But what could be more in their own interest than this? Where else do you think their food comes from?”
“Surely, Doctor, you don’t mean to say that… that these ovens supply…”
“Every loaf of bread in this prison, Major. Yes sir, we’re set up to be completely self-sufficient. And we would be too, if these goddamned pets would show some backbone!”
“Oh, that kind of oven! Well, then there must be some other sort of reason, I suppose, for their apathy. Perhaps they’re not interested in baking any more bread than they can eat themselves. Rather like the Little Red Hen, if you’ve read that story.”
“Can’t say I have, Major, not being as much of a reader as I’d like to be. But the point is—they won’t even bake that much. There are pets in the cellblocks who are starving, while these curs won’t get themselves into a sweat unless you take a whip to them. They just don’t have any sense of the consequences of their own actions. They want to be fed, but they won’t take the trouble of feeding themselves. That’s almost what it amounts to.”
“Surely you’re exaggerating, Doctor.”
“It’s hard to believe at first, I know. Take another case in point: the other day they sent out two hundred, men and women, to dig up potatoes, turnips, and such from the old fields hereabouts. Well, those two hundred pets returned from their day’s work with no more than ten pounds of potatoes per capita. That’s Latin, you know. We doctors are obliged to learn Latin. Two thousand pounds of potatoes to feed to thirteen thousand prisoners! And you can’t tell me they’re not hungry, because, damn it, they’re starving!”
“It must be something in their background,” I theorized, incautiously. (Palmino had been very explicit on just that point: “A Major should never express an opinion that someone else might think original.”) “They’ve come to expect their food to be handed to them outright. And they’ve grown to feel a positive antipathy for any sort of work. That’s understandable.”
“I don’t pretend to understand it,” Quilty said, shaking his head and setting the folds of his chin into swaying motion. “Everybody has to work—that’s life.”
“Well, workers—of course they have to work. But perhaps the pets—the goddamned pets, I should say—have an attitude more like our own, Doctor. Perhaps they think of themselves—however misguidedly—as officers and gentlemen.”
“Do you think doctoring isn’t work?” Quilty asked, wonderstruck. “There are few nastier jobs, to my mind, than poking around in other people’s pustules and looking down their throats and sticking your finger up their pons assinorum!”
“You’re right, Doctor. Absolutely—but still, don’t you think there’s an essential difference between ourselves and common laborers? As you point out, work is demeaning, and if a person could possibly get by without doing any…”
“De-mean-ing? I didn’t say that! I love my work, Major. I need it. I couldn’t get through one week without it. But that doesn’t mean I have to pretend it’s any bed of roses. It’s a job, the same as any other, and it has its bad points the same as… Major? Major, is something wrong? Are you ill? Your face is so…”
My sudden pallor had betrayed the emotion that had overcome me: fear. Only a few yards away and looking directly, intently at me was St Bernard. He had been among the members of the log-hauling crew. Smiling, but still uncertain, he began walking toward me.