Читать книгу Children of Men - Bruno Lessing - Страница 4

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The sewing-machines whirred like a thousand devils. You have no idea what a noise thirty sewing-machines will make when they are running at full speed. Each machine is made up of dozens of little wheels and cogs and levers and ratchets, and each part tries to pound, scrape, squeak and bang and roar louder than all the others. The old man who went crazy last year in this very same shop used to sit in the cell where they chained him, with his fingers in his ears, to keep out the noise of the sewing-machines. He said the incessant din was eating into his brains, and, time and again, he tried to dash out those poor brains against the padded wall.

The sewing-machines whirred and roared and clicked, and the noise drowned every other sound. Braun finished garment after garment and arranged them in a pile beside his machine. When there were twenty in the pile he paused in his work—if your eyes were shut you would never have known that one machine had stopped—and he carried the garments to the counter, where the marker gave him a ticket for them. Then he returned to his machine. This was the routine of his daily labour from seven o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock at night. The only deviation from this routine occurred when Lizschen laid the twentieth garment that she had finished upon her pile and Braun saw her fragile figure stoop to raise the pile. Then his machine would stop, in two strides he would be at her side, and with a smile he would carry the garments to the counter for her and bring her the ticket for them. Lizschen would cease working to watch him, and when he handed her the ticket she would smile at him, and sometimes, when no one was looking, she would seize his hand and press it tightly against her cheek—oh! so tightly, as if she were drowning, and that hand were a rock of safety. And, when she resumed her work, a tear would roll slowly over the very spot where his hand had rested, tremble for an instant upon her pale cheek, and then fall upon the garment where the needle would sew it firmly into the seam. But you never would have known that two machines had stopped for a moment; there were twenty-eight others to keep up the roaring and the rattling and the hum.

On and on they roared. There was no other sound to conflict with or to vary the monotony. At each machine sat a human being working with hand, foot, and eye, watching the flashing needle, guarding the margin of the seams, jerking the cloth hither and thither quickly, accurately, watching the spool to see that the thread ran freely, oiling the gear with one hand while the other continued to push the garment rapidly under the needle, the whole body swaying, bending, twisting this way and that to keep time and pace with the work. Every muscle of the body toiled, but the mind was free—free as a bird to fly from that suffocating room out to green fields and woods and flowers. And Braun was thinking.

Linder had told him of a wonderful place where beautiful pictures could be looked at for nothing. It was probably untrue. Linder was not above lying. Braun had been in this country six long years, and in all that time he had never found anything that could be had for nothing. Yet Linder said he had seen them. Paintings in massive gold frames, real, solid gold, and such paintings! Woodland scenes and oceans and ships and cattle and mountains, and beautiful ladies—such pictures as the theatrical posters and the lithograph advertisements on the streets displayed, only these were real. And it cost nothing to look at them!

Nineteen—twenty! That completed the pile. It had taken about an hour, and he had earned seven cents. He carried the pile to the counter, received his ticket, and returned to his machine, stopping only to smile at Lizschen, who had finished but half a pile in that time, and who looked so white and tired, yet smiled so sweetly at him—then on with his work and thoughts.

He would take Lizschen to see them. It was probably all a lie, but the place was far, far uptown, near Madison Square—Braun had never been north of Houston Street—and the walk might do Lizschen good. He would say nothing to her about the pictures until he came to the place and found out for himself if Linder had told the truth. Otherwise the disappointment might do her harm.

Poor Lizschen! A feeling of wild, blind rage overwhelmed Braun for an instant, then passed away, leaving his frame rigid and his teeth tightly clenched. While it lasted he worked like an automaton, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing save a chaotic tumult in his heart and brain that could find no vent in words, no audible expression save in a fierce outcry against fate—resistless, remorseless fate. A few months ago these attacks had come upon him more frequently, and had lasted for hours, leaving him exhausted and ill. But they had become rarer and less violent; there is no misfortune to which the human mind cannot ultimately become reconciled. Lizschen was soon to die. Braun had rebelled; his heart and soul, racked almost beyond endurance, had cried out against the horror, the injustice, the wanton cruelty, of his brown-eyed, pale-cheeked Lizschen wasting away to death before his eyes. But there was no hope, and he had gradually become reconciled. The physician at the public dispensary had told him she might live a month or she might live a year longer, he could not foretell more accurately, but of ultimate recovery there was no hope on earth. And Braun’s rebellious outbursts against cruel fate had become rarer and rarer. Do not imagine that these emotions had ever shaped themselves in so many words, or that he had attempted by any process of reasoning to argue the matter with himself or to see vividly what it all meant, what horrible ordeal he was passing through, or what the future held in store for him. From his tenth year until his twentieth Braun had worked in factories in Russia, often under the lash. He was twenty-six, and his six years in this country had been spent in sweatshops. Such men do not formulate thoughts in words: they feel dumbly, like dogs and horses.