Sam Thompson - Communion Town

As I left, he raised a hand in salute.

In my coat pocket my own hand was stinging. Something sharp had been fixed in the wall where I stumbled, and I’d be picking rust-flecks out of the cut tomorrow. My boots struck the pavement and the Market slid by. Daybreak slipped a notch closer, and my guts twisted: I braced my hands on my knees and coughed a cupful of fluid on the cobblestones. When I raised my head there was movement a way off. Men in donkey jackets were unloading boxes from a van while others trundled handcarts across the stones. One was sorting through polystyrene trays wrapped in clingfilm. They worked without talking, their faces tense against the dawn chill. One of them came towards me, holding what looked like a shovel.

I was a craftsman when it came to my work, you see. I was good at the job. Not everyone can slaughter well. It may look like medieval warfare in here, but don’t be fooled. I never blamed the others for their shortcomings. It wasn’t easy work. They were sent by their agencies without choice in the matter, and lasted a month or two among the churning conveyor-belts and chains and the knives that sawed and squeaked inches apart. The plant was crammed everywhere with wet carcasses and labouring bodies, jammed up against each other and pouring off heat. When they slipped, it cost fingers. They were knocked off catwalks to the concrete by the half-carcasses swinging past. Sweat ran off them even in the refrigerated rooms: dozens squeezed bodily together, shin-deep in the flow sluicing ceaselessly down the gutters, fingers snatching past the blades, fighting wall-eyed through a double shift in the hope of keeping their jobs. They had been known to soil themselves at their posts because they dared not fall behind. Most spoke only the languages of their homelands. When they broke open the digestive tracts and polluted the meat, the line managers screamed in their faces.

Once a week they collected flimsy printouts with perforated edges which they tore open to be reminded what their labour was worth. Sometimes, though, the payslip was pink instead of white, and then you knew the worker would not be coming back tomorrow. There was no notice period, no explanation, no appeal against the printed sheet. Each week I watched to see who received a pink slip. I would avoid the ex-worker’s eyes, not wanting to intrude, but at the same time a small warm feeling would melt luxuriously inside me. I didn’t know why.

What could I do for them? Their existence had two poles. In here, inferno under striplights. Outside, Glory Part waiting for them with open jaws: their rooms, their naggins of oily gin, some fighting and copulation, the cold stinking canals and, above all, our friend the Flâneur, preying on their thoughts because they knew well what he might do to each one of them if he chose.

Nothing I could do. In his own life, the good slaughterman cannot involve himself with the single principle by which the world proceeds. He hates how the workmen tear up the street for the new metro line; he is wounded by the sight of snails broken on wet pavements, and he doesn’t like the way the children shriek by the padlocked park.

When the animals entered the slaughterhouse they came to us one by one along a concrete alleyway, and were guided into a rectangular pen as high as my waist and just large enough to hold one at a time. As it entered, the newcomer would pause, still wet from the spray, hiding its face beneath two big hairy leaves of flesh. It would be smiling to itself, a Chelsea grin, as the knocker pressed the captive bolt stunner to its brow. One side of the pen was a steel gate that would swing open under the weight of a body.

Every station had its own importance, but my job was the crux of it all. I say this without pride or bias. After being incapacitated by the bolt the animal was hoisted on the mechanised rail by its back legs and would begin to move down the processing line, struggling violently, more often than not, because the bolt stunner is a barbarous tool which leaps in the hand and inflicts unpredictable kinds of damage. My task came next: I used a sharp knife to sever the carotid and the jugular, resulting in exsanguination. With the proper expertise the animal was gone in three heartbeats, beyond unhappiness. I euthanised one every twenty seconds and it was an inflexible point with me that none suffered in its time on the killing floor.

I didn’t mind working double shifts. I needed little money, but I did not like to abandon my responsibilities. It wasn’t easy to get the stroke right every time. Most workers I had seen took several attempts to get the job done and let the pace of the production line overwhelm them so that, often, the beasts received the barest of flesh wounds and were sent dazed but awake into their turmoil. Not when I had the knife. I couldn’t sleep if I knew someone else was trying to manage the kill.

What saddened me most was not the change itself, but that they never even consulted me. One evening I arrived at the slaughterhouse to an atmosphere of uneasy holiday and rules unseated: lorries we hadn’t seen before were shunting in the loading bays and the forklifts were moving crates stamped with unfamiliar symbols. The older women, the ones who ruled the packaging rooms with their ribaldry and favouritism, had gathered to watch, dragging on cigarettes and passing comment, while this week’s immigrants waited at a distance because no one had told them where to go.

My hand ached. It had knitted but not yet healed, and though I bound it hard for work, the cut itched. It was impossible to see how the shift was going to get started on time, but then the bell screamed, the old hands flung their fag ends at the ground and we trooped in to find that everything was different.

The new floor supervisor, Fischer, was a compact man with a sarcastic turn in his mouth and sparse blond hair scraped back into a greasy ponytail. As we entered, his stare searched us for resistances and weaknesses. I could see what he was and what he meant for the plant, and I was not surprised when he told us procedures had been reviewed and modified. We were being moved around for no good reason, but you can’t argue. It doesn’t matter if you’re an artist with your tools and you have more experience than the rest of them put together. You go where the supervisor tells you, do the job you’re given.

That night a lanky agency worker I’d never seen before was assigned to my rightful post. As for me, my task now was to drag the stunned animals along the trough from the knocking pen and hook them on the bleed rail. All my expertise and they wanted me hauling carcasses. But there’s no arguing. The shift was about to start. In the holding pens the animals debated their suspicions. Soon the floor would grow gluey, the drains would inhale without relent and the flow would leap across the insteps of steel-toed rubber boots. The air would choke with waste heat. All would do their tasks: the bleeders, the scalders, the dehairers, the eviscerators, the splitters, the washers, the deboners, the carvers and the sorters. The bolt gun would crack, the workers would gag and the new supervisor would stride back and forth behind the scarlet chorus-lines.

I settled my goggles and pulled my hard hat on so tight that the cartilage crackled in my ears. Strapped into my apron, belt and rubbers, I was a golem, crude but potent. The machinery groaned, strained and locked into action.

Before the shift was an hour old, the quality of my replacement’s work began to degrade, and soon he was botching fully half his strokes, though he did not seem to notice. There was nothing I could do about it. I had work of my own, and the muscles in my back were already beginning to quiver.

Fischer stalked the floor all night, yelling instructions over the crashing of the machines. His barrel body seemed spring-loaded on its small legs, and the cords twitched in his neck and forearms. I could picture him lifting weights to make up for being shorter than he wished. The surprise was that he and I were the same in one way. He was a talented slaughterer who handled the knife beautifully whenever he was called upon to step in and correct a mistake. It pleased him when they lost the run of the work and, in panic, blew their air-horns to call him over. He would respond to the summons at a measured pace, shoulder the workers aside and make the necessary incision.