For eight hours a day, Pietro rotated round the four machines making the same series of movements every time, movements he knew so well now he had managed to shave off every superfluous blip and adjust the rhythm of his asthma to that of his work with perfect precision. Even his eyes moved along trajectories as precise as the stars, since every machine demanded a particular sequence of glances to check that it didn’t seize up and lose him his bonus.
After the first half-hour’s work Pietro was already tired, the factory noises blended in his eardrums into a single background hum with the combined rhythm of his four machines pulsing above. Thrust forward by this rhythm, he worked on in a near daze until, blessed as the first sight of land to the castaway, he caught the groan of the transmission belts slowing and stopping as a result of a breakdown or for the end of his shift.
But so inexhaustible a quality is man’s freedom, that even in these conditions Pietro’s mind was able to weave its web from one machine to the other, to flow on unbroken as the thread from the spider’s mouth, and in the midst of this geometry of steps gestures glances and reflexes he would sometimes find he was master of himself once again and calm as a country grandfather going out late in the morning to sit under the pergola and stare at the sun and whistle for his dog and keep an eye on his grandchildren swinging on a tree and watch the figs ripen day by day.
Of course, such freedom of thought could only be achieved by following a special technique that had taken time and training: all you had to do, for example, was learn how to break off your flow of thought when your hand had to move the workpiece under the lathe, then pick it up again, almost placing it on the piece as it now proceeded towards the grooving machine, and above all take advantage of the moments you had to walk, since one never thinks so well as when one walks a well-known stretch of road, even if here the road was no more than two steps: one-two, but how many things one could think of in that space: a happy old age, all Sundays in piazzas at political meetings listening hard near the loudspeakers, a job for his unemployed son, and then all at once off with a gaggle of grandchildren fishing on summer evenings, each with his rod on the walls above the river, and a bet on a cycle race to propose to his friend Tommaso, or about the collapse of the government, but something so wild as to knock the big-headedness out of him for a bit – and at the same time glance over at the transmission belt to make sure it wasn’t slipping off where it always did by the wheel.
‘If in … (pull up the lever!) … May my son marries that idiot’s daughter … (slide the piece under the lathe!) we can move out of the big room … (and taking two steps) … that way when the newly-weds lie in on Sunday morning they’ll get the view of the mountains from the window … (now push down that lever there!) and me and the old woman can move into the small room … (straighten out those pieces!) … since who cares if we can only see the gas tank from there,’ and, shifting now to another line of thought, as if the idea of the gas tank near his house had brought him back to everyday reality, or perhaps because when the lathe jammed for a second it inspired a more aggressive attitude: ‘Ifthelaminatesshopstartsindustrialactionoverpiecework, we can … (careful! it’s out of line!) … join them … (careful!) … with our cl … with our claim (it’s gone, damn it!) … for higher pay grades for our spe … cia … liz … a … tions …’
Thus the movement of the machines both conditioned and drove the movement of his thoughts. And little by little, softly and stealthily, his mind adapted itself to the confines of this mechanical mesh, as the slim muscular body of the young Renaissance cavalier adapts to its armour, learns to tense and relax biceps to wake up a sleepy arm, to stretch, to rub an itchy shoulderblade against the iron backplate, to tighten buttocks, to shift testicles crushed against the saddle, to twitch a big toe away from the others: in the same way Pietro’s mind stretched and loosened up inside its prison of nervous tension, automatic gestures, weariness.
For there is no prison that doesn’t have its chinks. So even in a system that aims to exploit every last fraction of your time, you discover that with proper organization the moment will come when the marvellous holiday of a few seconds opens up before you and you can even take three steps back and forward, or scratch your stomach, or hum something: ‘Pompety pom …’ and assuming the foreman isn’t around to bother you, there’ll be time, between one operation and the next, to say a couple of words to a workmate.
So it was that when the hen turned up Pietro was able to go: ‘Chucketty chuck chuck …’ and to make a mental comparison of his own pirouetting between the four machines, big and flat-footed as he was, to the movements of the hen; and he began to drop his trail of maize that, leading to the scrap metal box, was supposed to lure the fowl into laying its egg for him and not for that stooge Adalberto nor for his friend and rival Tommaso.
But neither Pietro’s nor Tommaso’s nests impressed the hen. It seemed she laid her eggs at dawn, in Adalberto’s coop, before beginning her rounds of the workshops. Both the turner and the quality controller got into the habit of grabbing hold of her and poking her abdomen as soon as they saw her. The hen, tame as a cat by nature, let them, but was always empty.
It should be said that Pietro was no longer on his own with his four machines. That is, the job of running the machines was still entirely his but it had been decided that a certain number of pieces needed a special finishing and a few days ago a worker with a file had joined him and every now and then would take a handful of pieces, carry them to a small bench set up close by and, scrape scrape grind grind, he very calmly filed them down for ten minutes. He gave Pietro no help, on the contrary he was always getting in his way and muddling him up, and it was clear that his real job had nothing to do with the filing. He was already well known in the factory, this worker, and even had a nickname: Giovannino the Stink.
He was scrawny, dark as dark, with thick curly hair, and a snub nose that pulled up his lip with it. Where they had found him nobody knew; what they did know was that the first job he’d been given in the factory, the day they took him on, was that of toilet maintenance man; but the truth was he was supposed to be there all day listening to people talk and passing things on to the management. Quite what there was to hear in the toilets that was so important no one ever really understood; it seems that there being nowhere else in the factory where one could exchange a few words without being fired on the spot, two workers from the Internal Committee, or some other diabolical union invention, had taken to swapping ideas from one cubicle to another, pretending they were there to answer nature’s calling. Not that the workers’ toilets in a factory are a quiet place, having as they do no doors or just a low gate affair leaving head and shoulders visible so that no one can stop for a smoke, and with the security men poking their heads in every few minutes to see that no one stays too long and check whether you’re defecating or just taking it easy, but all the same, compared with the rest of the factory, the toilets are calm, even comfortable places. The fact is that these two men were eventually accused of engaging in political activity during working hours and fired; so someone must have told on them and it didn’t take long to identify that someone as Giovannino the Stink as he was henceforth to be called. He was shut away in there, it was spring, and all day he heard watery noises, flushing, plopping, splashing; and he dreamed of open streams and fresh air. No one talked any more in the toilets. So they moved him. Unskilled, manipulated by the unwarranted fears of a management forever in a state of alarm, he was assigned first to one team then another, given vague and obviously pointless tasks but with secret instructions to spy on the others; and wherever he went his workmates turned their backs on him in silence, not deigning so much as a glance at the superfluous tasks he muddled over as best he could.
Now he had wound up on the heels of an old worker, deaf and alone. What was he supposed to find out? Was he too at his last assignment before being put out on the street like the victims of his spying? Giovannino the Stink racked his brains for a trail, a suspicion, a clue
. The moment was propitious; the whole factory was in turmoil, the workers at boiling point, the management with their hackles up. And for a while Giovannino had been churning over an idea. Every day, around the same time, a hen would come into the workshop. And the turner Pietro would prod at it. He lured it with a few grains of maize, got close to it and put his hand right under it. What on earth could it mean? Was it a system for passing secret messages from one workshop to another? Giovannino was sure of it now. The way Pietro touched the hen it was exactly as if he were looking for something, or slipping something inside its feathers. And one day, when Pietro let go of the bird, Giovannino the Stink followed it. The hen crossed the yard, climbed on a pile of iron girders – Giovannino did a balancing act to follow – dived into a segment of piping – Giovannino crawled after it – crossed another patch of courtyard and went into Quality Control. Here there was another old man who seemed to be waiting for the hen: he was watching for it to appear at the doorway, and as soon as he saw it he dropped his hammer and screwdriver and went to meet it. The hen was on friendly terms with this man too, so much so that she let herself be picked up by the feet and, once again! prodded under the tail. By now Giovannino was sure he had struck gold. ‘The message,’ he thought, ‘is sent every day from Pietro to this fellow here. Tomorrow, as soon as the hen leaves Pietro, I’ll have it stopped and searched.’
The next day, having half-heartedly prodded the hen for the nth time and then sadly replaced it on the ground, Pietro saw Giovannino the Stink set down his file and go off almost at a run.
When he raised the alarm, the watchmen on duty gave chase. Surprised in the yard pecking at maggots between bolts strewn in the dust, the hen was taken to the security chief’s office.
Adalberto knew nothing as yet. Given that connivance on his part could not be excluded, the operation had been conducted without his being informed. Summoned to head office, no sooner did he see the hen immobilized by two colleagues on the boss’s desk than his eyes all but filled with tears. ‘What has she done? What’s happened? I always kept her shut in her coop!’ he began to say, thinking they were blaming him for having let the bird wander about the factory.
But the accusations were far more serious, as he quickly appreciated. The security chief fired off a volley of questions. He was a retired carabiniere inspector and over the ex-carabinieri amongst his security staff he continued to exercise the hierarchical authority typical of the force. Throughout the questioning, more than his love of the hen, more than his hopes to become a chicken breeder, what was uppermost in Adalberto’s mind was the fear that he would compromise himself. He came clean, he tried to justify himself for having left the hen free, but when it came to questions about the relationship between the hen and the unions, he didn’t dare compromise himself by clearing the bird or excusing it. He withdrew behind a wall of ‘I don’t know, I’ve got nothing to do with it,’ concerned only that he should in no way be held responsible for the affair.
The security man’s good faith was accepted; but, with a lump in his throat and a pang of remorse, he was now looking at a hen that had been abandoned to its destiny.
The inspector ordered that the bird be searched. One of the agents stalled saying it made him feel sick, and after some fierce pecking another withdrew sucking a bleeding finger. In the end the inevitable experts emerged, more than happy to demonstrate their zeal. The oviduct was shown to be free of any messages inimical to the interests of the company, or indeed of any other variety. Expert in the many techniques of war, the inspector insisted that they search under the bird’s wings, where the Pigeon-Lover Brigade are wont to conceal their messages in special sealed cartridges. They searched; feathers, down and dirt were strewn across the desk, but nothing was found.
Nonetheless, considered too suspect and treacherous to be innocent, the hen was condemned. In the dingy courtyard two men in black uniforms held it by the claws while a third wrung its neck. The bird let out a last long heart-breaking shriek, then a lugubrious cluck, she who had been so discreet as never to dare cluck for joy. Adalberto hid his face in his hands, his harmless dream of a cackling hencoop buried stillborn. Thus does the machine of oppression ever turn against those who serve it. The owner of the company, concerned that he had to meet a delegation of workers who were protesting against firings, heard the hen’s death wail in his office and sensed it boded ill.
Mini Modern Classics
RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen
KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion
DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled
SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth
JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate
PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey
ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace
ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman
TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays
ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard
RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain
EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose
G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
JOSEPH CONRAD Youth
ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady
ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast
MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War
HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited
IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights
E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops
SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth
HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle
M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book
JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants
FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony
RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’
D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums
PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint
H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space
MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic
KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss
CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind
ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita
R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer
FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland
DOROTHY PARKER The Sexes
LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall
JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi
SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon
WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-2 Wife
JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia
H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall
EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake
P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings
VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass
STEFAN ZWEIG Chess
a little history
Penguin Modern Classics were launched in 1961, and have been shaping the reading habits of generations ever since.
The list began with distinctive grey spines and evocative pictorial covers – a look that, after various incarnations, continues to influence their current design – and with books that are still considered landmark classics today.
Penguin Modern Classics have caused scandal and political change, inspired great films and broken down barriers, whether social, sexual or the boundaries of language itself. They remain the most provocative, groundbreaking, exciting and revolutionary works of the last 100 years (or so).
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Modern Classics, we’re publishing fifty Mini Modern Classics: the very best short fiction by writers ranging from Beckett to Conrad, Nabokov to Saki, Updike to Wodehouse. Though they don’t take long to read, they’ll stay with you long after you turn the final page.
eading books on Archive.
The Queen's Necklace Page 4
