Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

‘You mean he could cut the others …’

‘Imagine it though,’ I said. ‘They’d have their work cut out tomorrow morning …’

Bruno laughed, then he shook his head. ‘I told you, Lofty, they’d just hurt each other.’

We heard the boss’s voice over the tannoy — the end of our shift. We ducked out again under the half-closed roller door, Bruno took the forklift to the recharging station, then we went to the staff exit and the changing room. ‘Shall I give you a lift?’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind the detour.’ I usually took the last bus but Bruno gave me a lift home now and then, even though he actually had to go in the other direction. We hung up our overalls in our lockers, put away a couple of other things, had a bit of a chat with the others, most of them looking tired, we swiped our cards through the machine, and then we walked past the boss, who shook everyone’s hand goodbye, down to the staff car park.

‘About Marion,’ he said in the car.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘She has it pretty tough sometimes,’ he said, but I just nodded and looked out into the night.

We were standing outside my house. We’d already said goodbye and as he started to get back in the car I said, ‘How about a beer — you’ve got a quarter of an hour, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ he smiled, locking his car and coming back over to me. ‘My wife’s asleep anyway.’ We went inside and sat down in my little kitchen. I took two beers out of the fridge and opened them. ‘Lugging beer around all night,’ he said and clinked his bottle against mine, ‘makes you thirsty, doesn’t it?’

‘I get hungry as well sometimes with all that lovely stuff we carry around at work.’

‘You were pretty daring, that thing with the cake. That impressed her, that did.’

‘How do you know that then?’

‘It does her good, Lofty, someone treating her nice like that.’

The kitchen window was open slightly and I heard a train crossing the bridge. ‘Help yourself to an ashtray if you want to smoke.’

‘I will, thanks,’ he said. I went over to the fridge and put the ashtray on the table, and he lit up. ‘When you get home from work, can you go to sleep right away?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not usually.’

‘Me neither. I’ve got this bench, out the front, and that’s where I sit then, even if it’s cold out. I have a wee drink there and I can look at the fields. I like looking at the fields. It’s never quite dark, all the lights from the city, you know?’

‘Have you got kids?’

‘No, we haven’t.’

‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’

‘It’s OK.’ We fell silent, drinking and both looking out of the slightly open window into the night. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and drank up his beer. ‘I’d better go.’

‘I’ll see you to the door.’

We said goodbye out the front. ‘We could do this again, eh?’

‘Yeah, let’s,’ I said. ‘That’d be good.’

He nodded and walked to his car. ‘See you tomorrow, Lofty.’

‘See you.’

He was very quiet the next day and the days after; we worked in silence and he disappeared straight away after our shift, and I took the bus home. I was usually the only passenger; the bus drivers knew me by now and said hello or ‘Home time at last, eh?’ And if I wasn’t tired already I got tired on the way, leaning my head against the window, and sometimes I even fell asleep but the drivers woke me; they knew where I had to get off. Then at home I perked up again and spent a long time sitting on my own in the kitchen, drinking beer and looking out into the night and waiting to get tired again.

‘So you’re doing OK are you, rookie?’ She stood in front of me, hands planted on her hips, and gave me an angry stare, two small creases above her nose. Her hair seemed to be even shorter now, and her face had somehow got slightly less angular, but perhaps it only seemed that way to me; I hadn’t seen her for three weeks.

‘How long do I have to work here until I stop being a rookie?’

‘If you help me for a minute I’ll think about it.’

‘Marion …’ I said.

‘So are you coming or not? I asked Bruno but he’s busy.’

‘I’ve got things to do as well, but …’

‘I can ask someone else.’

She turned away and went to leave, but I was standing behind her and said, ‘Don’t run away, Marion, I’m coming, this crap can wait. I’ll always help you if you want, you know that.’

‘Rookie,’ she said, turning to face me. She pressed her lips together, so firmly that her mouth was a thin line. ‘Marion,’ I said. ‘You talk too much,’ she said. ‘There’s work waiting for us. Well, come on then.’ She looked around but the aisle was empty, then she took my hand and set off. She held my hand quite tightly pressed, and I felt her warmth, remembered the warmth on the seat of her forklift, then she suddenly let go and I walked along next to her.

‘Bruno says you’re doing well.’

‘Oh, does he?’

‘If he says so it must be true. Irina was singing your praises too.’ I wanted to turn off into the confectionery aisle but she took my hand again for a brief moment and pulled me further along. ‘I’m standing in on Delicatessen and Frozen Food today.’ We went through the open roller door to the cold storage room. I saw her looking over at the vending machine. But when she saw me looking at her she turned her head aside. ‘We’ve got to go to Siberia,’ she said. ‘We’d better wrap up warm.’ She went to one of the lockers and came back with two thick padded jackets and two hats. I helped her into her jacket, then put one on myself. She handed me one of the hats and I put it on her head carefully, pulling it over her short hair. ‘Hey,’ she said, and I tugged the hat down over her ears. ‘I need to see, you know. I’ve got a list, we have to get loads of stuff for the freezers.’ She tugged at her hat, then pointed at a couple of trolleys. ‘You go and get two trolleys, or better three, we’ve got quite a lot to fill up outside.’ We put gloves on too, and once we were wrapped up as warm as Eskimos we couldn’t help laughing.

And then we were in Siberia, twenty degrees below freezing, our breath came in clouds, and we took large hunks of frozen pork and beef and threw them in the trolleys; it sounded as if we were throwing stones.

‘Imagine if they locked us in here, by accident I mean.’ I was standing on the little ladder, handing down a large venison loin to her. I could feel the cold even through my gloves.

‘You wish.’

‘Hey, now you’re the cheeky one.’ I climbed down from the ladder, folded it closed and leant it against the wall. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I guess we’d have to lug meat around all night to keep ourselves from freezing.’

‘I guess we would.’ We pushed the three trolleys over to another spot. We’d already filled two of them. Our faces were red, our skin felt really tight, as if it were about to tear. ‘Brass monkeys in here,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so soft, we’re nearly finished.’ We were standing close together, the tiny clouds of steam mingling between our faces, and as we were piling crates of frozen pizza in the trolley she suddenly turned to me and looked at me, her hat down to her eyebrows. I didn’t say anything, just looked at her. It seemed as if I could feel her breath through the thick padded jacket. ‘Nice,’ she said, ‘it’s nice of you to help me.’ We stood there like that for a while in silence, then I said, ‘Do you know how Eskimos say hello?’ And I was surprised how quiet my voice sounded in the big cold storage room, as if the cold was swallowing it up. She looked at me, and I bent my head down to her and rubbed my nose against hers. She stayed still and quiet, not moving, and after a few seconds I felt her nose moving too.