Gonçalo Tavares - Joseph Walser's Machine

“Stop, please!” she said. “Turn on the lights.”

Walser stood motionless.

“I’m sorry Mr. Walser,” said Clairie. “It’s your finger. I can’t get it out of my mind!”

Time had passed.

Two days earlier Joseph Walser had received an odd request from Klober, asking to meet him at the factory.

It was Sunday night, and he’d promised Clairie that he would stop by her house, and his wife, Margha, was also waiting for him so they could go for a stroll. The day was a fine one. The factory, empty.

He entered through the front gate, walked across a small patio, walked up a set of exterior stairs, and, already inside one of the factory buildings — the building where he used to work in the years before the accident with his machine — he started walking down a dozen stairs. A feeling of confusion and a certain fear materialized inside of Walser: he could hear the roar of the machines at work below. How was it possible? It was Sunday, nobody was working, and the factory seemed empty.

Foreman Klober’s office. Same as ever. The door was open. Walser went in.

“My dear Walser, how nice it is to see you.”

Klober extended his right hand to Walser, who responded in kind with his right hand.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but, my, how I’ve missed the touch of your hand! Its absence made my own hand itch. My dear fellow, let me say this right away, let me repeat it: I’ve missed your hand! You abandoned us, you know, my dear Walser? You went off to some other building and left us here all alone with the machines. You’ve already noticed it: can you hear them? They’re all running. Exactly. They run on Sundays. All of them. I turned them on, isn’t that extraordinary? The motors are running on Sunday. But I haven’t called you here to talk about the indolence of some of these apparatuses. My dear Walser, wouldn’t you like to sit down? No? All right, very well, standing, my dear sir, that’s fine, you’re more imposing that way. Okay, dear Walser, I would first like to shut the door, we wouldn’t want to be interrupted, and you never know what will happen on Sunday. I’m going to lock it with this key, if you don’t mind, so we can be certain we won’t be interrupted. Here’s the key, don’t worry, I’ll set it here close to you, right here, you see, within arm’s reach. Very good.

“My dear Walser, you must be frightened, I know you. You are not a man who could be characterized as excessively courageous. You have never found yourself under attack by a single excess — if I may put it that way. You are what we could call a quiet man, Joseph, my friend, and I admire you for it. You know how to parcel out your energy, you’ve always known. Perhaps you know it in a way with which no machine could ever compete. You don’t waste time, my dear fellow, you possess something that could be called an ‘instinct of utility,’ an instinct that allows you to distance yourself, precisely, from waste, from excess. You’re a very precise man, Walser, and you should take this brief introduction as the expression of a fond weakness on your friend Klober’s part: I am, in fact, happy to see you again. To talk to you again, and with plenty of time to spare, no rush. You are a man who listens, Joseph Walser, and it’s not by chance that women must think of you as a valued confidant.

“But I can tell that you’re afraid. Don’t be silly, are we friends or not? How many years has it been? Many, maybe you’d say too many, since those years are evidence of the obvious fact that we’re both getting older. But the startling thing is that I look at you and still see the same young man who first started working with our machines. A hard worker. Can you hear the noise? Listen.

“Wonderful, isn’t it? The machines. All right then, prick up your ears. Now tell me, can you hear the sound of your own machine? Can you? There are many, I know, they’re all running, and all by themselves, which is just absurd, but, after all, today is Sunday, and anything goes, we’ve been at peace for years and we’re in need of some kind of amusement, some novelty, some kind of surprise. But listen. See if you can ferret out your own machine. Do you remember it? It took your finger, which seemed like a tragedy at the time, I remember it well, but look at you now. You’re still going on, still moving forward, you know? I look at you and see that same young man, with the same judiciousness and the same exactitude. And always such a good listener. My, how well you listen to other men! My dear Walser, you should be awarded a medal just for how well you listen to other men. I know that you didn’t take part in the war, you were right to stay away from it, just like me, you could say. Such affairs aren’t for people like us. I know that you stayed away from the weapons and that you aren’t exactly a hero, but if it were up to me, the country would award you a medal tomorrow. You really listen to men. And that’s a rare thing. But now listen to the machines as well, make an effort. See if you can listen to them as intently as you’re listening to me right now; see if you can separate the noise they’re making into individual, distinct words, and see if you can give this noise meaning, an exact meaning, just as you do with the words I am speaking. Yes, prick up your ears, as they say, my dear Walser, it’s time to learn to listen to the machines.

“But I didn’t call you here, on a Sunday, in the afternoon, on a sunny day during which you should be, along with the rest of the city, strolling in the park with your wife, with your amazing, steadfast wife, your faithful wife, and I say that without a hint of irony, I know what I’m talking about, she will never leave you; but as I was saying, I didn’t call you here, depriving you of the sun and the park, to talk to you about machines; my dear friend, I called you here because I want to talk about myself, me: Klober, a simple inhabitant of this city, the foreman of one unit of one of the factories in the empire of Leo Vast, which is led these days by a beautiful woman, about whom they say shocking things, but also wonderful things, as befits the characters of the mighty. But, my dear Walser, we’re on a different floor here. We’re below them. This is my office. How many years has it been? Fifteen, twenty? They always kept me down below, close to the machines, so I wouldn’t forget the warmth of their humming motors. Do you know that I still have never seen Leo Vast’s widow, not even once? Not once. And, just between you and me, they say she’s nice to look at. But what can we do, my friend and I? Here we are down below. We get our kicks with prostitutes. You, my dear Walser, more fortunate than me, sometimes sleep with poor Clairie, who’s getting fatter by the week: indeed, you chose well. I can see that you like large women and I can’t help but agree with you on that score. They’re the ones who appreciate men the most, the ones that hold tightest to men. Life is tragic, my dear fellow, life is absolutely physical, have you noticed?

“It’s when you have a physical defect like you, my friend, or when you are obese, that you realize that life is completely physical and that there is nothing else to it. That there’s no such thing as a spirit, Joseph. There isn’t a single drop of spirit among the living: obese women hold tight to men and never let them go, because they know that they’ll probably never have another, and they hate that likelihood: the likelihood that they’ll never have another. Clairie isn’t holding on to you, my dear Walser, because she’s madly in love with you, she’s holding on to you because she would hate to be alone.

“What was it like to chase after a widow like that, Joseph, my friend? Only you would have done it. Do you know what they call her in the factory? Simply: ‘the stupid fatty.’ Isn’t it excellent, as a summary, as a method of synthesis: ‘the stupid fatty’? Do whatever you want with her. Try out weird things with her, my friend, I heartily advise you to do it. She might complain, but don’t pay attention, women of her caliber only pretend to be offended. It’s a survival instinct: they pretend to be offended. But they cannot refuse.