Cover image: On the Line
Entering the factory
Of course I was ready for
The stench
The cold
The shifting of heavy loads
The harshness of it all
The conditions
The production line
The modern slavery
I wasn’t there to report on it
Nor was I readying myself for the revolution
No
The factory means I get to earn a buck
Put food on the table
As the saying goes
Because my wife is sick of seeing me lounge around on the couch waiting for a job in my field
So it’s
The agro-industrial plant for me
Food processing
The agro industry
As they say
A factory in Brittany
Handling processing cooking and all things fish and prawns
I’m not there to write
I’m there for the money
At the temp agency they ask me when I can start
I pull out the Victor Hugo
My usual literary go-to
Tried and tested
‘Tomorrow at dawn when the countryside pales I guess’
They take me at my word and the next day I clock on at six in the morning
As the hours and days go by the need to write embeds itself like a bone in my throat I can’t dislodge
But not of the grimness of the factory
Rather its paradoxical beauty
On my production line I often find myself thinking of a parable
One of Claudel’s I’m pretty sure
A man makes a pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres and comes across a fellow busy breaking stones
What are you doing
My job
Breaking these shitty rocks
My back’s done in
It’s a dog’s job
Shouldn’t be allowed
Would sooner die
Some kilometres further on a second fellow’s busy doing the same job
Same question
I’m working
I’ve got a family to feed
It’s a bit tough
That’s just how it is and at least I’ve got a job
That’s the main thing
Further on still
Outside Chartres
A third man
His face radiant
What are you doing
I’m building a cathedral
May the prawns and fish be my stones
At first the smell of the factory irritated my nostrils
Now I no longer notice it
The cold is bearable with a big jumper a hoodie two decent pairs of socks and leggings under my pants
Shifting the heavy loads
I’m finding muscles I didn’t know existed
I am willing in my servitude
Happy almost
The factory has taken me
I refer to it now only as
My factory
As if I had some form of ownership of the machines or proprietary interest in the processing of the prawns and fish
Small-time casual worker that I am
One among so many others
Soon
We’ll be processing shellfish too
Crabs lobsters spider crabs and crayfish
That’s a revolution I’m hoping to see
Hoping to bag some claws even if I already know it won’t be possible
It’s bad enough trying to filch just a single prawn
You’ve really got to hide if you want to eat a few
I’m still too obvious my co-worker Brigitte
an older woman has said to me
‘I didn’t see anything but watch it if the bosses catch you’
So now I sneak them out under my apron with my hands triple gloved to keep out the moisture the cold and everything else so I can peel and eat what I consider at the very least to be some form of payment in kind
I’m getting ahead of myself
Back to the writing
‘I write as I speak when the fiery angel of conversation takes hold of me like a prophet’ wrote Barbey d’Aurevilly or something along those lines somewhere
I’m not quite sure where
I write like I think when I’m on my production line
Mind wandering alone determined
I write like I work
On the production line
ReturnNew line
Clocking on
It’s just an endless white corridor
Cold
With punch clocks at one end where people flock at night when it’s time to clock on
Four o’clock
Six o’clock
Half past seven in the morning
Depending on the job you’ve been given
Unloading which means emptying crates of fish
Sorting or scaling and skinning which means cutting the fish up
Cooking which means anything to do with the prawns
I haven’t yet had the misfortune of doing an afternoon or evening shift
Of starting at four and finishing at midnight
Here
Everybody says
And so far I agree
That the earlier you start
The better it is – not counting the night hours with their twenty percent loading
That way ‘you get your afternoon’
‘If you’re going to get up early anyway
Might as well get up really early’
My arse
Your eight hours of slog
Means eight hours of slog whatever the time of day
And then
When you leave
At knock-off time
You go home
You bum around
You pass out
You’re already thinking about the time you need to set the alarm
Doesn’t really matter what time
It’ll always be too early
After the sleep of the dead
It’s morning smokes and coffee downed
At the factory
And you’re slammed straight back into it
As if there’s no transition from the night-time world
You re-enter in a dream
Or a nightmare
In the neon light
You’re on autopilot
Thoughts drifting
In waking half-sleep
Pulling heaving sorting carrying lifting weighing cleaning
Like when you’re falling asleep
Not even trying to work out why all these actions
All these thoughts are blurred into one
On the line
And the daylight at break time when you get to go out for a smoke and a coffee
It surprises you every time
I know only a few places that have this sort of effect on me
Uncompromising existential radical
Greek sanctuaries
Prisons
Islands
And the factory
When you leave them
You never know if you are returning to the real world or leaving it behind
Even if we know there’s no real world
But it doesn’t really matter
Delphi was chosen by Apollo to be the centre of the world and that wasn’t by chance
The Agora was chosen by Athens for the birth of an idea of the world and that was a necessity
The prison chosen by Foucault was chosen by the prison itself
Islands were chosen by the light the rain and the wind
The factory was chosen by Marx and the proletariat
Closed worlds
Places you go only by choice
Deliberately
Places you don’t leave
How should I say this
You don’t leave a sanctuary untouched
You don’t ever really leave the slammer
You don’t leave an island without a sigh
You don’t leave the factory without looking up to the sky
Knock-off time
Such pretty words
Their origin perhaps long forgotten
But understand
In your body
Viscerally
What it really means to knock off
That need to relax to clean yourself off to shower to wash away the fish scales and recognise the effort it takes to get up to shower when you’ve finally sat down in the garden after eight hours on the line
Tomorrow
It’s never a sure thing
Work
As a casual
Contracts run from two days to a week
Tops
It’s not Zola but it might as well be
How good it would be to write like it’s the 19th century
The age of the heroic worker
But it’s the 21st century
I hope for work
I wait to knock off
I wait for work
I hope
Wait and hope
The final words of Monte Cristo I realise
My good mate Alexandre Dumas
‘Friend, has not the Count just told us the sum of all human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and hope!’
This is an extract from On the Line by Joseph Ponthus, translated by Stephanie Smee (Black Inc. Books). On the Line is available now at your local independent bookseller.
