The Unseen

by Nanni Balestrini

  34

  At the centre the pickets against Saturday overtime had become a routine and it wasn’t only the workers directly involved who went on them but to some extent everybody did and the first few times everybody enjoyed it too there in front of the factories at six in the morning with grappa music and bonfires of rubber tyres but then after the first few months the first contradictions erupted we started wondering why we were doing it standing there talking to these shits who’ve been made apathetic by work and who only listen to us because they’re more scared of the picket than of the boss and who go back to doing overtime again the next time if you’re not there you can’t keep going forever explaining to them that if they do overtime they’re doing the dirty on the unemployed that they’re opening the door for restructuring the decentralization of production repeating everything over and over again like a broken-down record

  so in the end we stopped getting up at six in the morning to go on the pickets in the end four or five car loads of us would go at ten or eleven o’clock and go round the factories and if we saw people were working we’d immediately start knocking out all the window panes from close range and then it was even better if we managed to get our hands on the cars belonging to those shits who were working or the factory lorries it was quicker to do and more fun and did more damage and the workers and the employers had to calculate whether they earned more with their Saturday overtime than what we took away from them then of course the union made its statements of condemnation and the carabinieri started going round on the lookout for us except that they could only bring in a single bus load in an area where there are two hundred factories and so within a month overtime working comes to a halt in that area

  the news of the struggles reaching us from the cities in the south where the unemployed have organized gives rise to a new collective in the centre made up of unemployed people the majority of the collective doesn’t consist of people who are strictly unemployed it’s more a case of casual workers who work on and off or work off-the-books in workshops or at home there are many who’ve deliberately chosen not to have permanent jobs and to work only the absolute minimum to live on and then of course there are also people with qualifications and even the odd graduate I’m a member of the unemployed collective too because I’ve been genuinely unemployed since I left the celluloid factory the first meetings we hold are really chaotic because it’s difficult to have a definite identity given that there are so many differences

  and then we get the idea of starting an investigation into the organization of production in the region we gather information through the comrades in the factories we collate the data and at the same time a comrade who works in the town hall gets us a huge heliographed map of the area which we hang on one wall of the centre and on it we colour-code the different links in production connecting the big multinationals with the small factories with the warrens of the black economy and with the network of middlemen who organize it who hand out the work to the families and home-workers and who enable the bosses to make a huge saving on labour costs making it possible for them to pay for the work at a tenth of the rate with the added advantage of easy restructuring by cutting down on jobs and still being able to continue production whenever there’s a strike

  we launch a propaganda campaign in all the villages of the area we vilify the middlemen attacking them by name on posters and then we decide to do the rounds against the organization of sweat-shops in the same way as we did against overtime the first time about twenty of us went to one of these basement sweat-shops with our red kerchiefs round our faces and one or two sticks because you never knew China took the aerosol and wrote on the wall close down the sweat-shops you felt sorry for the people working there they were terrified except for an old pensioner who wasn’t in the least perturbed he sat where he was without moving as if nothing was happening not put out at all

  there was a pregnant woman though who started screaming because she thought we’d come to rob the place Valeriana and China tried to explain to her what we were doing and what we wanted but she didn’t understand a thing she nodded her head but she didn’t understand a thing you could tell from how pale she was and the way her eyes stared there were two young kids who caught on right away they didn’t mind us and they said that the boss wasn’t there that he was always out and about to do with work Nocciola and I slashed open the big boxes containing the plastic materials and we threw them all over the place switches screws and plastic sockets then we told the kids to tell the boss to put a stop to the sweated labour or the next time the basement would go up in smoke and so we started our rounds against the sweat shops

  but meanwhile there was another problem hitting us all of a sudden this was the heroin which was spreading like wildfire and even in the movement it was starting to get people we discussed it over and over for days on end clearly this situation is quite convenient for those in power there’s already a big toll of dead and zombies who drag themselves around the fountains in the squares with their syringes and their little spoons it’s clear that heroin in general messes up the most rebellious and the most dissatisfied people those who are most disaffected with this system and can’t cope with it any more with heroin they’re simply offered a personal and self-destructive way out of the wish to change things out of the anger that we have inside

  the fact that heroin is spreading rapidly among young working-class people represents a potential defeat because it’s spreading on that same ground of people’s needs of the will to change life the addicts are living through exactly the same problems as us someone’s an addict because he can’t cope any more and because he doesn’t believe any longer that you can struggle for a different life for this reason we must in no way marginalize addicts nor should we hand over the problem to the institutions it would be a mistake and it would give them a pretext to increase control over us to repress us all the more the greatest weapon we have is solidarity and we must make all the more use of it when it comes to those who are worse off

  but at the same time we also decided that it was worthwhile starting to make the rounds against the drug hang-outs we picked out a bar where they pushed heroin and where we knew that the owner of this bar was also tied up in the business because he also extracted a nice fat cut from the deals and so one night China and I Nocciola and Ortica went to set fire to that bar we’d got four petrol bombs ready we’d made them very carefully because we were determined that the whole thing should burn down we’d dissolved expanded polystyrene into saltpetre solvent and we’d added it to the petrol with over-heated oil this way it doesn’t burn instantly but it forms a sludge that sticks to things to walls too and it burns for a very long time wherever it sticks

  we got to the place at one a.m. the bar was closed using a builder’s sledgehammer Ortica battered into the glass frontage and we heard a shattering noise like nothing on earth and from the force of it Ortica ended up inside the bar with all the glass falling down on him but he didn’t get cut China told him to get back outside come on come on hurry up and she lit the fuse of her bottle Ortica leapt outside and China threw it there was a muffled thud a blaze that lit up the whole interior of the bar we threw the other bottles without even lighting the fuses everything went red then a big cloud of black smoke started drifting slowly out of the broken shop-front we ran away everything in that bar was burned there was nothing left not even a single glass nothing

  meanwhile summer had come and plans were underway for going on holiday we were heading for the south for the coast in groups of cars we’d make haphazard stops and stay as long as we felt like it and then we’d take off again for somewhere else we’d get to know other people like us other comrades who do the same things who also talk about the movement nobody went away on their own nobody was on their own any more even couples weren’t on their own any more it had become the normal thing to travel in caravans all together even just to go out to the country on Sundays and every evening we all
met together in the centre the majority turned up after dinner and when you arrived outside the centre there was always the same scene the great beam of light crossing the street the comrades’ cars motor-bikes mopeds filling the whole roadway people in groups in the street and around the benches

  a continual coming and going a great bustle the noise of cars coming and going the music from the car radios parked outside and the music coming out of the centre the twanging music of guitars the sweet sounds of flutes the whistling of pipes the rhythmic drumming of bongos every evening there are new faces every evening new things to see to hear to do greeting all the people you know going round all the rooms the new posters and leaflets to read the sharing out of news information opinions the meetings to be held the mass gatherings the posters to be put up in convoy the debating and joking the awkwardness and shyness of newcomers the self-assurance of the old comrades the arrival of some weirdo or drunk

  all round the centre the streets are busy all the time with groups of comrades the evenings are high-spirited lively noisy with our sounds shouts songs music they’re made colourful by our jackets scarves skirts hats the walls are one long stretch of graffiti drawings writing all muddled together all with slogans one on top of the other against the bosses against sweated labour against all work against the ghettos against the clergy against the mayor against the trade unions against the parties against the city council against men against heroin against fascists against cops against judges against the state against poverty against repression against prison against the family against school against sacrifices against boredom

  35

  A few days after my arrival I had my first visit from relatives my brother and my mother came because my father was ill my brother had a message from China who’d told him to tell me the lawyer was optimistic because it could be proved it was a long time since I or China either had really lived in that house belonging to the solicitor and in fact China hadn’t been bothered at all and so what it all came down to was the question of the lease that had stayed in my name the lawyer said he’d asked for bail for me and that he thought I’d be out of there in a few weeks so he was optimistic and then there was news of the comrades who all sent me regards and of the centre and so on

  my mother was very upset and she kept asking me how I was whether I was eating and telling me that she’d brought parcels with food and clothes however I was only interested in what my brother had to say I asked him things to give me an idea of how the situation was outside what the comrades’ state of mind was like the visit took place in a long narrow room with a long marble table down the middle the length of the whole room we had our visiting time along with the non-politicals there was a terrible racket about fifteen prisoners on one side of the marble table and at least three times that number of relatives on the other side mothers grandmothers aunts children a deafening babble screams shouts of joy weeping hysterics rage desperation abuse for the wives suspected of infidelity slaps scenes

  the guards triple-lock the door and they stand behind a window on the relatives’ side to make sure there are no serious irregularities there were always too many people and despite the controls things always went on notes and letters were passed no doubt that’s something they take for granted that you’ll pass stuff across for them the main thing is that you don’t pass weapons visiting time is a fun-fair a market whole families with grannies and children all shouting to make themselves heard and I too had to shout to make myself heard but I was unnerved by it while I could see that the others were perfectly at their ease the marble table was four and a half feet wide to prevent contact but sometimes children were passed for a minute or two from one side of the table to the other

  the surveillance wasn’t very strict I happened to witness some amorous encounters that went pretty far there were people virtually managing to fuck during the visit there were all kinds of special contrivances big overcoats even in the summer that could be opened in a special way then maybe the guy next to them gets mad because there’s the kid or the granny there who can see everything in other words a real mess people insulting one another hitting one another everyone shouting the situation is such that in the three quarters of an hour spent like this you can’t have a conversation about anything the time passes in an instant you hear a bell like in school and visiting time is over and then they take you into an adjoining cell where they search you all over again

  after a while we were transferred to another wing where the difference between us and the non-politicals wasn’t enforced so we had our exercise time along with them the non-politicals in this new wing were different from the ones before who were pretty dubious characters I don’t mean outright bastards but pretty shady though they were the lowest criminal class pimps and people of that kind in short whereas in the new wing the non-politicals were of a different kind all very young gangs of small-time thieves people who got on very well together and so we came in touch with these non-politicals grouped together in gangs every gang had its leader and when you had to talk it was the leader who talked for his whole gang during exercise we were given a very good welcome just as if we were another gang and there were no problems in our contacts with them

  then there was also the fact that we started playing football and volleyball together and we started making friends and we saw that contact with these non-politicals was of a different kind because these guys weren’t always asking you for little favours like the others these guys seemed very proud they acted very self-assured just the opposite they never asked us for anything instead it was them who kept on offering things to us right away they started asking us if we needed this or that with the implication that they had a network of connections inside and outside the prison through which things could be had messages got out and contacts made with other wings and so on

  gradually we understood that between these gangs there were kinds of equilibrium based on whatever they dealt in on their zones of influence from their traffickings inside the prison for example pushing cocaine and heroin there’s no doubt that some of the guards were no strangers to this trafficking because stuff comes into prison mainly through the guards these guards who do this job of bringing stuff inside to sell it to the prisoners are called mules they’ll bring anything inside for payment especially drugs and knives and in fact we saw that among these non-politicals a lot of them were using drugs especially cocaine they used cocaine in a big way and the higher-ranking guards were no doubt aware of it they offered cocaine to us too but we refused it whereas we accepted a smoke and for them giving us a smoke was a sign of friendship

  on one occasion there was a rumpus with these guys from the gangs down in the exercise yard one afternoon it was an exercise period apparently like any other some were playing football some were talking as they walked along or sat on the benches however you could see that there was a bit of unease in the air and at one moment two little gang leaders pulled out sticks from under their dressing gowns these must have been made from stools or the legs of tables in the cells and they started hitting one of the working prisoners in the wing and this in full view of everyone with no warning it was the first brutality I saw in the prison even though I knew it was a normal thing in prison that it was a daily thing that it was part of the law of prison part of its normal mechanism

  and so they hit this working prisoner pretty hard while everybody stood there watching without a move and then they told him to go up and get his things together and to go to the isolation cells for you could make a request to go there by choice because otherwise the next time they’d kill him we politicals didn’t react in any way we didn’t ask any questions but they must have realized that we’d been surprised that we didn’t expect this particularly since this working prisoner that they’d clubbed seemed to us to be somebody who just minded his own business but there’s no doubt that since they’d clubbed him he couldn’t have been somebody who just minded his own business then the next day they t
old us that this working prisoner was a bastard he was one of those who gave information to the administration about what went on in the wing

  a bit later something else like this happened what happened was that a very young boy arrived he never spoke he was very shy he must have been a bit backward he was always there on his own and he never spoke this kid came out of isolation and he came into our wing where he was put in a cell with four others and what happened was that one of these four cellmates of his raped him but we found out about this later on after this shit who did this vile thing was beaten to a pulp what happened was that the other three hadn’t realized at the time because it happened in the toilet that’s separated from the cell by a curtain and while this shit was doing it he was threatening him with a knife at his throat

  afterwards he made it clear to him that he wasn’t to say a word about it otherwise he’d kill him so this kid got scared and he said nothing but the other three were suspicious and they started putting the rumour about the wing that they had these suspicions and so a decision was made to test them out and one of the gang leaders went up to the shit during exercise time and with an air of complicity said to him so you had the kid then and so this shit who also happened to be an idiot told him boastfully that he had then all hell broke loose because they took this guy and they literally beat him to a pulp so that even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him they smashed in his whole face and his head stamping on him and clubbing him till his nose was flattened they totally pulverized him

  it was during this period that one day I was washing dishes in the cell and every so often glancing at the news on television but I could hardly hear anything at all because of the water running suddenly I thought I saw something familiar on the screen an image that reminded me of something but I wasn’t sure what the television camera was going round a room that was all messed up chairs overturned an unmade bed with a big metal bedstead then on one wall I saw a poster with Humphrey Bogart and immediately it dawned on me immediately I recognized that flat where we’d had that famous meeting with Scilla and the others then in the middle of the room you could see a sheet covering something up a motionless body you could see a leg sticking out a naked foot without shoes motionless