Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep
Page 15
And then I thought maybe you actually could. Maybe money was some kind of delicious dish. But sister told me people long ago thought the small, round things were beautiful. And they just wanted to have as many of them as possible. Way back when the world was beautiful, I said to myself dreamily. When people just looked at things because they liked to look at things, beautiful things. Not because they were wondering if this thing or that was edible, like I do. But then, I am always hungry and there is so little to eat in the Newest New World.
In the Old World there once lived a person in Old Town Prague, in her small room in the Big Tower, and she was perfectly happy. Eating, I guess, a lot every day, stuff I have never seen; bread dumplings and roasted duck and potato pancakes, and drinking a lot of hot wine on top of that. Walking around on the cobblestone streets, munching on a Tredlnik, a hot sugar-sweet roll. Whatever that is. Sugar looked like snow, my sister tried to explain, and it tasted a bit like blood. Not fish blood, more like human blood.
The happy person talking through the mechanical bird into my sister's eagerly listening ear worked in a restaurant, a place where they made lots and lots of food. All day long. Every day. I so envy her.
I worked as a bus boy, or in my case, a bus old woman. The salary was low but so were my expenses so I got along just fine. I didn't even mind the long work hours or being trapped all day and half the night inside the steaming kitchen. I had fallen in love with the city and was happy simply being able to stay. My days off I spent wandering the streets, following in the footsteps of Kafka from Old Town Square over Charles Bridge to the Prague Castle and Golden Lane where he supposedly wrote "A Country Doctor". It all looked like something from a fairy tale to me, the small houses by the castle wall, the gigantic cathedral nearby and the famous bridge with all the blackened statues of men, once considered holy, and Christ Himself pinned on a cross of stone.
I was painfully, slowly learning the Czech language, a word here, another there, bila vina (white wine) sleva (sale) and most importantly je mi lito (I am sorry). I almost never met any Czech who really wanted to speak English and of course nobody spoke my native tongue, Swedish. (Besides the tourists, but they soon thought I was an old Russian lady and ignored me totally. Babusjka please. Please, no speak.) Noah was the great exception. He spoke English all the time. But then he only spoke of God. And the End of the World. And nobody wanted to listen. Noah was of course not his real name, he had a Czech name I couldn't pronounce even if I tried. And I tried on several occasions. But Noah fitted him fine because he was babbling constantly about the Great Flood that would come over us. And very soon too. If we didn't repent. Noah was a young man who looked old, with an awful, long, matted beard and clothes that a medieval monk in the days of the Great Plague would have been ashamed to show himself in. Noah had found a place under the Astronomical Clock and there he sat and stood and shouted at the tourists:
"Repent! Repent, you sinners! Before it's too late! The Flood is coming and you will all be drowned."
Nobody listened. Some shouted back in foul language and some just laughed out loud and they were all just waiting for the bells in the Astronomical Tower to strike at the full hour and for the little figurines beside the face of the clock to start to move. The little Skeleton doll, Death, rings his little bell and the Sinners shake their heads. We will not repent! And we will not follow you. No. No. We will go on sinning and sinning.
It seemed quite magical the first time I saw the show. How could they still move after all these years? Noah had only stood there for some weeks and he was already losing his ability to speak, his voice sounded all croaky and broken. Sometimes it was just a faint whisper in the wind. He had no proper shoes and it was getting cold. I wondered where he slept at night.
"I don't," he whispered. "I don't sleep. There is no time."
I promised to listen to all he had to say if he followed me home. I felt sorry for the man. I feared he would freeze to death if I just left him there. He liked the tower. My tower. He thought it was a part of an old church. I sat in my window and let him lie in my bed and I felt like a really good person. Even though he called me a sinner. A sinner like all the rest of us. Humans. It started to snow in the middle of the night. Big flakes of snow like feathers. I felt like I was inside a big snow globe. It was beautiful. And then it was as if the snow globe with the old town of Prague in it was shaken violently. My tower's foundations shook. I fell to the floor – I could just as well have fallen out of the window – and the ancient glass shattered all around and the cold wind blew in on me and my temporary guest. He woke up but was not at all frightened. He actually seemed to be exhilarated. He had a big smile on his face.
"It has started!" he said. "The hand of God."
"It can't be," I shouted. "It can't be the hand of God. If so, God would be like a spoiled kid throwing away his toy ..."
I wanted to say it is an earthquake and what are we going to do, but of course Noah shouted back at me that I was a sinner. A heretic. A blasphemer. And we should pray, go down on our knees and pray. Then the Earth was still again. I looked out and I saw that other buildings had collapsed and there was chaos down in the streets. Noah crawled on his knees to the window but I had seen enough. I just wanted to leave and go somewhere safe, if there was such a place. Where could I go? In that moment I even wished I had stayed in Sweden. Didn't the Gospel say the lands of the North would be saved?
"The Angels have left Heaven and are flying down to us here," Noah whispered.
And I saw them too. Women with big smiling faces and gigantic, white wings flew past us in a screaming whirlwind. A golden angel followed, rotating up and down and round and round and ... I realized the angels were statues.
And this was the beginning of the End. The flood came. Of course, we thought it was temporary and that the rivers and oceans ... All that water ... We thought it would recede. It was only a matter of time. Everything would be as it used to be. Almost. We were convinced that someone had saved something of our civilization. Somewhere in a floating museum of some kind. But no. It came so suddenly. We were all so unprepared. So unwilling to listen to Noah and his kind. Shaking all our heads like little wooden dolls, mechanical wonders, repeating the same gestures for centuries. No. No, we will not repent. And so the old world was gone. Books and paintings and the internet. God, how I miss the internet. And music. Now I have to sing myself, and my voice is terrible. Besides, I've forgotten all the lyrics I wanted to remember. One day I woke up on the ship with the other refugees and thought that Du gamla, du fria was actually a song about pensioners, "you old, you free", next line probably "you don't have to work anymore, you lucky bastard". We sang together, a small group of old people and we knew then that it was a national anthem, my national anthem, but no one knew the right words. The ship that had saved us was in the middle of the ocean, day after day, and we wondered why. Why are we not heading for the nearest port? Why are we not looking for land? Our land. It's not that far away. And of course we were and of course it was. Our land was right there, under us. At the bottom of this new world wide ocean.
"Sister, sister," I said from the bottom of our small boat. I was lying flat on my back looking up at the sky. "Does the bird-thingy say anything about why the flood came? What sins were committed by the sinners in the past that robbed us of our future? The future we could have had, I mean."
But then I realized we had drifted into the Black Water Zone, one of them, and sister had to lay down the bird-thingy and help me get us away from the foul, stinking mess before we got stuck forever. Everything that falls into the black water dies. If you are all covered with the smelly, sticky stuff you can't breathe. The black water is filled with bodies, fish and sometimes birds and humans too. All that meat. And you can't even eat it. What a waste!
Listen! This is the most important part. What we did to our planet, our beautiful home in the universe. We should never have ...
When we had left the Black Water Zone and the world was blue again, sister said bird-thing
y had stopped talking. It never revealed what they had done. Besides, sister and I couldn't talk with each other for a long while because the blue above the water turned all gray and black for hours and miles and miles. The smoke from all the big ships and the thundering sound of their engines filled the air. Sometimes they give me a headache and I feel nauseated and almost lose what I've eaten. We can't afford that. I will try to think of something else to calm my stomach. I try to imagine what that tower looked like. Then, when it was not under all that water, and now, at the bottom of our ocean.
Sometimes I want to go back to my tower. In my dreams all the spires of Prague can be seen over the surface of the waters, like fingers pointing up to the heavens. But when I am awake I don't want to return. I don't want to see my magical city buried under the sea. Treasure hunting divers might be swimming around in and out of my tower, maybe they will find the frail skeletons of drowned pigeons and bats. Or Noah's shoes with holes in both soles.
In my skinny-girl-in-the-little-boat-dreams, I am dreaming of diving for treasure. Swimming around in and out of buildings, deep down at the bottom of the ocean. And somewhere I will find a dry place where a hot fire burns and people from the past are cooking lots and lots of food. And they will invite me inside, asking me, begging me, to share their meal with them. Hot food. Meat. Bread freshly baked from the oven. And they will give me a lot of Tredlnik, my mouth will be all warm and sugary and ... and then of course I wake up and it is not sugar, it is snow and it is wet and cold.
"Punch Card Horses" – Jonas Larsson
It was a four and a half hour drive to the market in Skrivsjö, so Lage only made that journey when he had to. He had nothing against the ride itself – he quite enjoyed the change of scenery, changing his own fields for new streams, hills and forests. There were many stops on the way at the numerous gates in the roundpole fences that divided Småland's villages, farms and pastures. Lage always took the time to talk to the boys and girls who, for a fee of a few öre, would open and close the gates for passersby like him, and keep him updated on the fates and fortunes of faraway neighbors.
In the case of Skrivsjö town itself, Lage did not care for it as much. You could often find some old acquaintance at the market, but there were also people who did not belong. They had traveled far and it was hard for Lage to understand what they were saying. Some talked about how they had returned from America while others told of places that were mysteries to Lage.
He jumped off the cart with the kind of heavy yet springy steps that come from hard work, and tethered the tired ox that had brought him there. The poor beast wouldn't last much longer, that was clear for Lage to see, and the reason he found himself in Skrivsjö. The plough would not pull itself.
The walk to the market was usually a quick one but Lage had to stop halfway there to stare in amazement. The Skrivsjö church tower was visible from most parts of the market town and, when Lage shaded his eyes and looked up toward the light, he could not believe what he saw. Whose idea had it been to tie a large weather balloon to the top? It was ugly and modern and blocked out large parts of the sun.
The market was full of people as usual. Farmhands were jostling and maids were tittering. Children were running and playing and parents were quarreling over prices, but Lage could not find what he was looking for anywhere.
"Excuse me," he asked a passing gentleman with strange spectacles and a pig in his arms, "doesn't anyone have any oxen for sale this year?"
"I believe I saw someone who had one, but it is already sold. They have become more rare with each passing year."
Lage preferred it when things became more common with each passing year. Now the journey here, wearing out his old ox, had all been for nothing.
"Though there is a man in a stall who sells horses," the man with the strange spectacles continued. "Perhaps you can do your business with him instead?"
"Yes ..." Lage said as he scratched his chin. "Switching to horses doesn't feel right, their humors are different and they eat more. But it doesn't hurt to look. Thank you anyway."
When Lage talked about horses eating the man with the strange spectacles gave him an amused look. Then he shrugged and continued on with his pig.
As Lage continued through the market and got closer to the man who was said to have horses for sale he felt a curiosity that was quite uncharacteristic. Sure, oxen were better, but perhaps horses weren't entirely without merit. Sometimes, when he looked out over his fields day after day, with all the responsibilities and obligations they entailed, he felt a certain weariness inside. Getting to know a horse, with its own unique personality, perhaps might ...
Lage stopped dead.
"What is that?"
"These, my good man, are my horses."
"No, those aren't horses."
In front of Lage stood a man much younger than himself, in something that could have been fancy gentleman's clothes had he not worn dirty work wear over them. They had many black stains and the pockets were full with what Lage assumed were tools.
"Yes, they are horses and much more. They never sleep, never eat, and they can do anything that a plain old horse can do."
They reminded Lage of bronze statues, but they were not cast in one piece. It was as if the sculptor had tried to cast three statues at the same time, depicting a horse, its skeleton and its muscles all separately, but still somehow together. Everywhere there were joints, cogwheels and strange holes.
"I would have preferred to have a real horse," Lage tried explaining. "Do you know where I could get one? Or an ox?"
"I am sorry to inform you that there are no bionatural horses left at this market. They might have some at Backhorva."
"Backhorva. That's a two day journey from here."
"Then I think that you, rather than to go all the way to Backhorva to buy an inferior horse, ought to buy one of these superior automaton horses."
"How do they work?" Lage asked after a long while. "Do they need to be trained?"
"Not at all. Everything is operated with mechanics and plain, simple instructions. You can buy additional modules and modifications, but this basic model is incredibly simple." The man pointed to something wheel-like on one of the horses' chest. "In order to begin working, wind the horse up just like a pocket watch. A one-hour wind-up gives three hours of work, with a maximum time of nine hours. If you haven't already adjusted the horse's obedience memory you need to do so before winding it up."
"Obedience memory?"
"Do you know your Bible?"
Offended, Lage took a step backward. Perhaps he wasn't among the best when it came to answering the questions the parson posed when he made his catechetical hearings, but being a good Christian meant not to recognize such shortcomings.
"Of course I do."
"Then this will be a piece of cake." The younger man took out a box and balanced it on the horse's back. From this, he pulled out something resembling thin metal book pages covered with different kinds of holes. "These are called punch cards. You can get the automaton horse to do different things by putting different combinations of these cards in one of the slots between the horse's ears. The cards are named after various Bible passages, which means that anyone can remember them, at least the easier combinations."
The younger man handed Lage a card to look at. "Jonah and the Whale", it said. After having studied the card, Lage let his eyes rest on the mechanical horse.
"I'll take it."
The fields wouldn't plough themselves.
A month passed, and once again there was a market in Skrivsjö. Lage saw that the young man's stall had become larger, and had more mechanical animals for sale. In addition to horses, chickens went about and pecked at the ground, much to the delight of the children.
Skrivsjö town itself also seemed to have grown, but it was not a flattering change. Now there were three weather balloons blocking out the sun, and several of the roofs were covered by strange metal rods. Lage was not sure, but every now and then one of the rods seemed
to crackle.
"Why, good day!" The young man's face brightened when he recognized Lage. He appeared to have more tools in his pockets than last time. "How is life with your new automaton horse?"
"Not too good. I would like to return it."
"Return it? Doesn't it work?"
Lage did not reply.
"Did you use it to drive here to the market?"
"Well yes, it works for lighter chores. The journey here was perhaps faster than last time with my ox but it's difficult to stop and change punch cards every time the road bends."
"Oh. At how many degrees do you have to change the obedience memory?"
"Degrees?"
"There are more advanced configurations that allow the horse to detect the road conditions and thus manage turns up to 85 degrees. You don't need more than five punch cards. I'm more than happy to show you, free of charge of course."
"Thanks very much, but I still want to return the horse."
"But if you drove here with it how will you get home again?"
"I was thinking I'd buy a real beast for the money I get when I return the horse."
The young man got a tired expression on his face and put a hand on Lage's shoulder.
"I would have loved to give you your money back, but you have to understand that I'm not the one who builds the horses. I'm only a subcontractor selling on commission: hence I can't provide a refund."
Lage blinked his eyes. Subcontractor and commission were difficult words.
"But I can't keep it," he said. "It's not just the cards. I'm getting old and find it difficult to wind it up in the morning. Beginning the workday in that way takes its toll."
The young man's smile suddenly became confident.
"Is that the problem? Oh, my dear friend, then I can really help you. Hold on a moment."