Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

Take a look at this! said the breezy gentleman.

Reluctantly W. leafed through a few pages in the middle, at arm’s length and without picking up the booklet from the table; he made out sequences of words arranged in lines and stanzas; he snapped the booklet shut again.

Putting it bluntly, we think these publications. . almost all of this type of thing. . are crap, if you’ll pardon my French! said the gentleman. Of course you do, too, and I’m sure you don’t want to be published in there. Still, it would be a first step, and besides, you’d be an enormous asset for a book like that.

Then at least there’d be something readable in it! the younger man in the green anorak piped up for the first time.

Now the older man nodded: And we wouldn’t have to keep butting in! Or asking the people to at least change their completely ridiculous titles, like we did here.

The young man in the green anorak gave a short laugh and explained the last statement: they were stuck between two titles. One was Full Steam into the Morn , the other was Full Steam into the Light of Morn . So we said to them, if you can’t even decide in favour of a diesel locomotive, that is, progress, then at least you have to take: into the Morn ing !

Well, anyway! said the older man. All that would be completely unnecessary if, for instance, you were the head of this working group. Still, we wouldn’t want to talk you into heading a circle like that, as a rule you’d be dealing with a bunch of philistines. The only option would be to get you excused from work more often, you ought to be given the latitude to do cultural work. That would be something to think about, although — and I’ll say it quite frankly — it’s my view that you should focus entirely on writing. And this work here. . every winter, in this boiler house. . we’ve taking the liberty of having a look inside. . your know-it-all colleagues can perfectly well do this work by themselves.

You’ve been doing it much too long already, you have enough experience to go on! the young man added.

But seriously, we’ve got better things in mind for you, the older man said; he slid the booklet back in W.’s direction and rose to his feet. You can take that if you want.

W. pushed away the anthology in disgust and said: No. . I’ve already decided against it. I’m not going to stay on at the factory anyway. And I’m not going to stay in this town either.

Where are you planning to go? asked the breezy gentlemen; the two were already standing at the door, only W. was still sitting where he was. To the city, to Leipzig or Berlin?. . Berlin would be the best place for you, of course. And you’d be rid of me there. . and I of you, I’d be very sorry about that. But let us know in time about a flat in Leipzig or Berlin.

I think I could picture Leipzig, W. replied.

For the most part W. had liked working in his factory, though at times he could hardly take all the conflicts. But never to see his colleagues again. . suddenly the prospect was unbearable. In truth he’d loved them all in some inexplicable way, with all their mulishness and sheep-like stupidity, their meekness and arrogance, with all their morose and paranoid thoughts. Now they made as though they didn’t want to see him, now the grey began to show beneath his black sheep’s coat; dogged as they were, they’d finally scratched it free.

Down in the production halls the atmosphere was glacial, and he went about like a somnambulist; the wall of hostility he faced had acquired a menacing aspect. . all day the foreman was nowhere to be seen, everyone knew that endless deliberations were being held up at management. . he could have bet that he was one topic of discussion there. The secretary from the foreman’s office, well aware of the ugly mood, accosted him shortly before quitting time: Next week you’re going back to the boiler house. Take the night shift for three weeks, then you’ll be out of the firing line. That’s how we’re fixing it.—W. was relieved. . Do you think I’m talking to them voluntarily? he asked. — No idea! Anyway, you’re doing it, and that’s what everyone thinks. I’d think about it, if I were you. By the way, I’m not supposed to tell you, but you can probably figure it out for yourself — the foreman would be happy to accept your notice any time!

After spending the next two weeks in the basement of the boiler house, quietly performing his duties as stoker and using this solitary time for writing, he still hadn’t come to a decision. Perhaps he’d thought that down here in the boiler house he could ride out the resentment that had focused upon him, waiting until the whole thing passed him by and passed over. . which incidentally, he thought, was a tried-and-true method in this country: emerging conflicts weren’t solved, they were allowed to age until they died of decrepitude. Besides, the writing blocked out his thoughts; the work he had to accomplish in the boiler house was gruelling, but it didn’t take much time, mainly a matter of shovelling into the boiler as much coal as possible in as short a time as possible. . and so, hunched over his notebooks, he sometimes felt that the hours passed too quickly, and especially at the end of the shift he felt a new surge of anxiety when he looked up, when he heard the racket of the mopeds in the factory yard, the first machinists arriving at work. . and all at once he was wide awake and asked himself what would happen when the three weeks were up. He asked himself how he would have acted in his colleagues’ place. — In their place, he thought, I’d never forgive myself. — He was in luck, the temperatures plummeted, the last of the regular stokers signed off sick, and W. continued to be required in the boiler house. . this stoker had always been sick, but he’d stuck it out; now it seemed likely that the foreman of the assembly department had urged him to finally see a doctor. So they didn’t want him up in the assembly hall. . but inevitably he was up there for half an hour or so each day; he was treated reservedly, even coldly, but he was left in peace. . ultimately this state of affairs could pass as a slightly exacerbated form of the universal suspicion that prevails in large industrial plants everywhere. .

That was one way of taking it! — Much, much later W. learnt by chance that they had visited the factory once more while he was in the boiler house, probably to assess the effect of their first visit. And then came something they’d probably never imagined: when they headed for the boiler house, a group of people from the assembly hall planted themselves in front of the entrance in what looked like a blockade; their faces were grim and resolute, at the fore the scrawny little bandy-legged foreman, hair on end, trembling with agitation — supposedly they’d had to prop him up from behind — losing quantities of saliva as usual when he spoke, yelling at them in a barely intelligible falsetto: No access to the boiler house for unauthorized p. . persons! — And they’d turned and left the hall.

If he’d learnt of this early enough, maybe everything would have turned out differently. — He’d waited for them in perpetual fear, they hadn’t come, gradually something like relief set in. . he ignored a further summons to the town hall, Room 17, and even after that they hadn’t visited, either in the factory or at home. Incidentally, the summons hadn’t been the usual ominous pre-printed form; this time it was just a slip of paper in an envelope, expressing the typewritten request that he agree to a casual conversation three days thence. The slip bore neither sender nor signature. . he didn’t know then that so innocuous a piece of paper marked the beginning of a new phase. He tore it up and tossed it into the heating stove. . he’d never set eyes on it! The date came and went and nothing happened.