VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 41, SECTION 1
From Light to Dark: Four Positions on One Person
Last chapter stood outside the shop and looked, at one account, one room, twenty-odd people. Four rules measured at once, and the thing was seen. But after the seeing, a little distance stays in the heart. That is a shop, that is an account, that is another man’s business, held off by one layer.
This chapter pushes the lens up close, onto one person. Because the line of four running at once, if it lands only on a society or a shop, is still far, and a far thing a person looks at once and forgets. What truly gives a person a start is this line: these four are not on four people, they are on one and the same person, and in one and the same day they come round by turns, from before light, hung on all the way to dark. This section walks a day with one person.
One, before day breaks, he is first a son
He is thirty-eight this year, lives on the east side of town, three in the household, and one mother besides. His mother had a stroke three years ago, half her body slow, her speech gone slow too, one sentence taking several breaths.
He rises at six, first boils a pot of gruel, sets out a day of medicine grid by grid, props his mother up to sit, feeds her spoon by spoon, wipes her down, turns her over, tucks the quilt in. By the time this round is done the sky is barely grey, the pot still warm, and his own bowl often goes untouched. Three years, and not a day has broken.
In this stretch of days there is no account. He does not keep count of how many mornings his mother owes him, nor reckon how much these three years cost, how much work missed, how much sleep lost. The one proof he hands over is this: she needs. As for how much strength she put out this month, how much value she made, that question does not even stand in this bedroom; it grates just to ask it aloud.
This is the rule of need, before light, in one bedroom. It is not in a book, not on any document of institution. It is on a bowl of gruel, a grid of medicine, one turning of the body. The third semester said: the lower the layer, the purer the need. A person and his mother are the lowest layer, and the purest. The world over, every morning, there are hundreds of millions of rooms like this, and shut the door and inside them the same rule runs. This thing was never thrown out by any era, for a person must be born and grow old and sicken and die, and there are always those stretches when he can put out no strength.
Two, half past eight, he became the man drawing a wage
Half past eight, he clocks in at the company, sits, boots up, meets, takes work. At noon he bolts two mouthfuls of rice, in the afternoon he carries on, and by the end of the day seven or eight things have passed through his hands. At month end the wage comes by the appraisal. This quarter he did much, and steady, and that number climbs a little. Botch one thing, and it drops a little.
This is the rule of labor, the same rule as the wage sheet last chapter, only the thing measured changed from chairs to something else. What he did this month, his manager writes on the sheet. Whether it is written right, reckoned whole, he still has to go and argue, and where he cannot win the argument he can only take it. This rule is cold, and he does not hate it. He knows in his heart, let more done and less done come to the same, and these years of overtime he put in would have been for nothing.
This position must be seen clear. In this building he is the one who takes the constraint. The clock manages him, the appraisal manages him, one word from the manager can change his number this quarter, one order from the company can move him to another section. The first semester set a line: he who takes the constraint is the slave. This is no curse; this is a setting of position. He is a decent man, a man given respect, a man with cover and paid leave, and yet on the direction of that constraint he stands at the taking end.
If this feels grating here, let a person stop just here and think where the grating comes from. It grates because the word is heard as identity, heard as a verdict on a person’s whole self. It is not identity; it is position, and position changes by the day, look on one more hour and you will know.
Three, half past ten, he sat up in the master’s seat
Under his hand he manages three people. Half past ten he hands them work. This one out before close today, that one to tomorrow, the third to the newcomer to try, and if it is botched he carries it himself.
In the afternoon he checks the work, sends one back, changes two spots, and a little later fills in that appraisal sheet, writing a few lines of comment. These few lines he sets down become those three people’s numbers at month end, and become the proof of whether they are still in this position next year. His hand is heavy as he writes, for he knows those three have each an old one at home, a child, a sum to pay back month by month.
He who lays the constraint is the master. One and the same person, one and the same office, two hours apart, he walked from the taking end of the constraint to the laying end. And these two positions are not by turns; they are at once. Look up, he is the slave. Look down, he is the master. Two ends of one rope hung on one and the same person, both ends pulling.
That master who could not cook, from the opening of the first semester, appears here again in changed clothes. That master held the slave’s whole freedom, and that slave held the master’s three meals and his life. This manager holds the appraisal of three people, and those three hold whether his section can turn out the work, whether he keeps that chair next year. Two constraints, opposite in direction, biting each other, neither wholly winning. This is the line the first semester set: constraint runs both ways. It is not one saying; it is what he passes through every forenoon.
Four, the tenth of each month, that mortgage
Now the fourth thing. The year he bought his place he borrowed a sum, twenty years to clear, deducted the tenth of each month, and what is left after is what this month has to spend.
This debt is no iron chain, yet its force is much like an iron chain. He cannot quit as he pleases, cannot speak his last word to the manager, cannot pound the table over one unfairness on a whim, because next month the tenth that sum must reach the account, a day late and the record carries one more mark. Two years back a thought moved in him, to change to work he liked better for a little less money, and he ran the calculator three nights and in the end did not change.
This is the shadow of the wall, fallen on a plain man. Not one person chains him. That sheet he signed himself, and signed clear-eyed, comparing three banks’ interest before he signed. The first semester set a line: a clear-eyed handing-over and an unknowing handing-over are two things, and a lock you can see is a lock you can bargain with. This one of his is one he can see, and one he owned only after running the account himself.
But able to see is not the same as light. It pins him at a position all the same, keeps him from moving these years, makes him swallow many words. This thing, in the days of today, looks just like this. It does not shout, does not sound, does not stand in the open; it only, on a certain day each month, reminds him once on time: you cannot leave.
Five, he is a small block of capital too
The third thing is the easiest to miss, for it hides the deepest, so deep the man himself cannot call it to mind.
The housing fund deducted each month, the little savings in the bank, the insurance paid once a year, the bit of fund he bought following others the year before, this money does not lie there still. It goes into the bank, goes into the market, turns a few hands, and becomes the stake of another’s shop, the price of another’s machine, the first sum of another’s opening day. That sum the chair shop borrowed last chapter, maybe a small block of his is in it, only no one can mark which cent is whose.
So he is not only the man measured by capital; he is himself a small share of capital. The second semester said it plain: capital has no eyes, and no heart; it is a dead drive. What truly moves is the person, and what flows in this river is just the savings, the housing funds, the pensions of millions upon millions of plain people. Drain this river dry, and what is left is not a few great men; it is tens of millions of passbooks.
He mostly does not know this layer. He only knows a sum is deducted each month, and at year end he glances at a number, a little more or a little less. But whether he knows or not does not touch that this layer is real. In this river he is both the man measured, and one small drop of that river’s water.
Six, dark falls, and he is back before that bowl of gruel
Eight at night, he reaches home. The child’s homework wants a look, the mother’s medicine wants a grid changed, tomorrow’s food wants some thought, the clothes in the machine are not yet hung. Not one of these is reckoned by how much was done, not one goes onto any sheet.
Lay this day open and look. Before light he was at the need end. In the forenoon he was measured under the rule of labor, and at the same time sat in the master’s seat measuring three others. The tenth of each month that debt pulls him from behind. His money in the market does for him the work capital should do. Dark falls, and he is back at the need end.
Four things, one person, one day. They are not four stages, not four countries, not four kinds of people. They are four positions, hung at once on one and the same person, hung from light to dark, and not one is missing. Last chapter, four running at once, and a shop was watched. This section shrinks it to one person, and the four that run are still the same four.
This is the fact this section lays out. The next section looks at a thing more worth finding. That man who looks the freest, the most like a master, that man who lies down at night still running numbers, staking the money, how many chains are on him.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Two, The Five Ropes: On One Person Too, No One Thing Can Stand Alone to the End