Every day the factory whistle shrieked tremulously in the grimy, greasy air above workers’ settlement. And in obedience to its summons sullen people, roused before sleep had refreshed their muscles, came scuttling out of their little grey houses like frightened cockroaches. They walked through the cold darkness, down the unpaved street to the high stone cells of the factory, which awaited them with cold complacency, its dozens of square oily eyes lighting up the road. The mud smacked beneath their feet. They shouted in hoarse sleepy voices and rent the air with ugly oaths, while other sounds came floating to meet them: the heavy hum of machinery and the hiss of steam. Tall black smokestacks, stern gloomy, loomed like thick clubs above the settlement.
In the evening, when the setting sun found weary reflection in the windows of the houses, the factory expelled the people from its stone bowels as though they were so much slag, and they climbed the street again—grimy, black-faced, their hungry teeth glittering, their bodies giving off the sticky odour of machine oil. Now their voices were lively, even joyful, for work was over for another day, and supper and rest awaited them at home.
The day had been devoured by the factory, whose machines sucked up as much of the worker’s strength as they needed. The day was struck out, leaving not a trace, and man had advanced one more step towards his grave. But now he was looking forward to rest and to the delights of a smoke-filled tavern and he was content.
On Sundays and holydays the people slept till ten, and then the respectable married ones put on their best clothes and went to mass, scolding the young ones for their indifference to religion. After mass they came home, ate pirogi and slept again till evening.
The weariness accumulated through the years dulled their appetite, so they whetted them with drink, stimulating their stomachs with the sharp sting of vodka.
In the evening they strolled along the streets. Those who owned galoshes put them on even though the ground was dry, and those who owned umbrellas carried them even though the weather was fine.
On meeting their friends they talked about the factory, the machines and their foreman; they never thought or talked about anything not connected with their work. Occasional sparks of feeble faltering thoughts sometimes flickered in the dull monotony of their days. When the men came home they wrangled with their wives and often beat them. The young people went to the taverns or to their friends’ houses, where they played the accordion, sang ribald songs, danced, swore and got drunk. Worn out as they were by hard work, the drink quickly went to their heads, and some uncountable irritation rankled in their breasts, demanding an outlet. And so they seized the slightest opportunity to relieve their feeling by flying at one another with bestial ferocity. Bloody fights were the result. Sometimes they ended in serious injuries and occasionally in killings.
Their human relations were dominated by a lurking sense of animosity,
a feeling as old as the incurable exhaustion of their muscles. People were born with this malady of the spirit inherited from their fathers, and like a dark shadow it accompanied them to the very grave, making them do things revolting in their senseless cruelty.
On Sundays the young people came home late at night in torn clothes, covered with dirt and mud, with black eyes and bloody noses, sometimes boasting maliciously of the blows they had dealt their friends, at other times sulking, raging or crying over their insults; they were drunk and pathetic, miserable and disgusting. Often mothers or fathers found their sons sprawling dead drunk in the shadow of a fence, or on the floor of a tavern. The elders would curse them foully, pummel their vodka-sodden bodies, bring them home and put them to the bed with a certain solicitude, only to wake them up early in the morning when the shriek of the whistle came rushing in a dark stream through the dawn.
They cursed their children and beat them mercilessly, but the fighting and drinking of the young people was taken as a matter of course; when the fathers had been young they too had fought and drunk, been thrashed in their turn by their mothers and fathers.
Life had always been like that. It followed on in a turbid stream, slowly and evenly, year after year, and everything was bound together by deep-rooted habits of thinking and doing the same thing day after day.
Sometimes new people came to live in the factory settlement. At first they attracted attention just because they were newcomers, then a superficial interest in them was sustained by their accounts of the other places where they had worked. But soon the novelty wore off, people grew used to them and stopped noticing them. From what the newcomers said it was clear that the life of working people as the same everywhere. And if this was true, what was there to talk about?
But some of the new comers said things that were new to the settlement. Nobody argued with them, but they listened skeptically. Some were annoyed by what they said, others were vaguely alarmed, while yet others were disturbed by a faint shadow of hope, and this made them drink all the harder to drive away alarms that only made life more complicated.
If they noted anything unusual about a newcomer, the people in the settlement would hold it against him, and they ware wary of anyone who was not like themselves. It was as if they feared he might upset the dull regularity of their lives, which if difficult, were at least untroubled. People were used to having life bear down upon them with equal pressure at all times, and since they had no hope of relief, they were sure any change would only increase their hardships.
The working people silently avoided anyone who voiced new ideas. So the newcomers usually went away. In the rare cases when they stayed, they either grew to be like their fellows or took to living apart….
After some fifty years of such a life a man died.
