Peter Carey - The Fat Man in History aka Exotic Pleasures

The plant and storerooms blinded me with their metallic glare which was not diminished by the streaks of rust decorating their surfaces, hints of some internal disorder.

Barto, walking beside me on the soft, sticky bitumen, said: “How’s your nightmare?”

His hair seemed surreal, haloed, blue sky above it and shining silver behind. Already I could hear the rumbling of the plant. A rivulet of dirty water came running from the No. 2 to meet us. Barto hopped across it nimbly, his cowboy boots still immaculately clean.

“Not good,” I said. I regretted my confession most bitterly. A confession is nothing but a fart. I have despised those who make confessions of their fears and weaknesses. It is a game the middle class play but they are only manufacturing razor-blades which will be used to slash their own stupid white throats.

The door of the No. 2 yawned cavernous in front of me. The floor was an inch deep in filthy water.

Bart stopped. “Fuck, I can’t go in there.”

“Why not?” The bastard had to go with me. I wasn’t going by myself. We stopped at the door. A foul smell of something cooking came out and engulfed us. I thought I was going to be sick. “Why not?” I asked. “What’s the matter?” I tried to make my voice sound normal.

“I’ll get my fucking boots fucked.” Bart stood at the door, legs apart, a hand on his hip, a knee crooked, looking down at his cowboy boots. “Fuck,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll buy you a new pair.” I shouldn’t have said that.

“No, there’s none left to buy. Shit, I’m sorry.” I could see that he was. I could see that there was no way I could talk him into coming with me. I was going to have to do the factory tour alone.

“Fuck your fucking boots.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you can’t buy them anymore.”

I walked gingerly into the lake and kept going, leaving Bart to feel whatever guilt he was capable of.

In waking life it was not only the machinery I was frightened of, although it was terrifying enough. The vats were huge and their sheer bulk was so unrelated to anything human that I felt my throat block off at the consideration of the weight of food they would contain. The production line itself was also particularly old, clanking, wheezing, full of machinery that oozed grease and farted air, and which lifted and pulled and lifted without any regard for life and limb.

It was the people I didn’t want to see.

The heat was impossible, far worse than outside. It mixed with the noise to produce an almost palpable substance which should have suffocated all life. The belt stretched on through this giant corrugated-iron oven, and men and women in grubby white stood beside the line, doing operations that had been perfectly described on the production report.

Line No. 3: four female packers, one male supervisor.

The information on the report was enough. It didn’t help me to know that one of the female packers was tall and thin with a baleful glare she directed accusingly at management, that her companion was just as tall but heavier, that next to her was a girl of sixteen with wire spectacles and a heat rash that extended from her forehead to her hands, that one other, an olive-skinned girl with a smooth Mediterranean madonna face, would have the foolishness to smile at me. And so on.

I have seen enough factories, god knows, but they continue to be a problem to me. They should not be. My fear is irrational and should be overcome by habituation. But nothing dulls me to the assault of factories and I carry with me, still, the conviction that I will end up at the bottom of the shit pile, powerless against the machines in factories. So I look at the people a little too hard, too searchingly, wondering about them in a way that could make my job impossible. The fish in my hand cannot be thought of as anything more than an operation to be performed. The minute one considers the feelings of the fish the act becomes more difficult. So, in factories, I have a weakness, a hysterical tendency to become the people I see there, to enter their bodies and feel their feelings, and see the never-ending loud, metallic, boring days. And I become bitterly angry for them. And their anger, of course, is directed at me, who isn’t them. It is a weakness. A folly. An idiot’s hobby.

I got my arse out of the factory as fast as I could.

Bart met me at the door of the No. 2. “How’s your nightmare?”

I was still in its grip. I was shaking and angry. “It’s really shitty in there. It is really shitty.”

Bart polished his cowboy boot, rubbing the right toe on the back of his left leg. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked, innocently enough.

A confession is a fart. You should never make a confession, no matter what dope you’re on. “I’m not going to do anything, pig face. There’s not a fucking thing to do, if I wanted to. That’s what factories are like.” My suede boots were soaked in muck. I flicked a pea off and watched it bounce across the bitumen.

“Listen,” the word drawled out of Bart as slow and lazy as the kicking pointy-toed walk he was walking. The word was inquisitive, tentative, curious and also politely helpful. “Listen, do you think they hate you?”

“Yes.” I said it. It slipped out before I had time to think.

“Well,” the word came out as lazily as the “listen,” “I’ll tell you what I’ll do in the next two months.”

I grinned at him. “What’ll you do, smart-arse?”

“I’ll fucking make them love you, smart-arse, if that’s what you want.”

He was grinning delightedly, his hands in his back pockets, his great Indian face turned up towards the screaming sun as if he was drinking power from it.

“And how will you do that?”

“Delegate, delegate,” he drawled, “you’ve got to learn to delegate. Just leave it to me and I’ll fix it for you.” He finished the conversation in my office. “Easy,” he said, “easy-peasy.”

Almost without noticing it, we became quite famous. This gave me a lot of pleasure, but also disappointed me. You imagine it will amount to more, that it will feel more substantial than it is. This, after all, is the bit you’ve dreamed of in all the grubby corners of your life. It is almost the reason you’ve done what you’ve done. This is where the world is forced to accept you no matter what you wear, no matter what you look like, no matter what your accent is. You re-define what is acceptable. This is when they ask you for your comments on the economy and war and peace, and beautiful girls want to fuck you because you are emanating power which has been the secret of all those strong physiques which you lack, which you needlessly envied. This is what you dreamed about jerking off in your stinking hot bungalow, treasuring your two hands. It is what you told the red-mouthed naked girl in the Playboy pin-up when you came all over the glossy page, and what you wished while you wiped the come off the printed image, so as to keep it in good condition for next time.

The middle-class intellectuals were the first to discover us and we were happy enough to have them around. They came up from the south pretending they weren’t middle class. They drank our wine and smoked our dope and drove around in our Cadillac and did tours of the factory. They were most surprised to find that we dressed just like they did. We were flattered that they found us so fascinating and delighted when they were scandalized. In truth we despised them. They were comfortable and had fat-arsed ideas. They went to bed early to read books about people they would try to copy. They didn’t know whether to love us or hate us.

We bought a French chef and we had long dinners with bottles of Château Latour, Corton, Chambertin, and old luscious vintages of Château d’Yquem. They couldn’t get over the wine. They raved about it and we played them Dylan.