But his reaction, though it originated inside him, took its shape from the outside: it was the old machine saying no that spoke through G, and to do so it chose the silence, or rather the stillness, of the boy. This was how the outside world, in this case the machine, expressed itself. G remained motionless in front of the marks on the floor and, though it had only been a few days, the memory of the old device came to him as the image of a distant labor: a singular, vague idea disfigured by time and enhanced by its simplicity. In that earlier time, harmony was, shall we say, an expression of brutality. It’s hard to stop the labor of the workers when they are inspired, because each one senses the work of the others; it’s a collective feeling that renews their drive and redoubles their efforts. He didn’t know why, but in his reverie G remembered an old math problem from the factory: if a worker needed two days to make, for example, a hammer, how many hammers could ten workers make in four days? The workers would laugh at the way the question was phrased, in large part because of the emphasis it put on the number. The answer might be a quantity, in fact it might be much higher than what mere arithmetic might indicate, but what mattered to them was the advancement of the action, that is, the measure of activity combined with the passing of the day. Above, I suggested that the worker can’t measure his own work; here I should add that this is because his work, and especially the product, the result, seems abstract, somewhat irrational to him, due to the repetitive nature of his labor; yet for this reason, it is also tangible, even weighty. The worker, a consummate expert in material transformation, is baffled by any attempt to translate the value of his work into an order external to the factory, like money or time. Their salary meant a lot to the workers because it was what allowed them to survive; at the same time it represented little, because they didn’t know what effect their physical effort had on what they received or, for that matter, on what they were producing. This impossible translation was the source of the power that emanated from the factory and extended not only to the workers, but also to the true outside world, that is, the nearby streets and the community in general, reaching even those who were unaware of the existence of Delia’s factory, in particular.

Stripped of the instrument that supplied his identity, G was forgotten by the other workers long before he physically left the factory. On that fateful morning, his presence took on an additional quality: that of a stigma. While his thoughts, as he stared at the marks left by the machine, seemed lost in that outdated labor, the other workers fixed their gaze on his expression, captivated by the threat it represented. In G they saw a likely future and a sorrowful past; though they may not have wished it, and though it wasn’t entirely true, that was where they all came from; G represented some part of what they were trying to escape, to erase from their minds with one quick stroke. But they understood that the boy’s troubles were not connected to linear time, that neither he, nor his “problem” represented a retreat or an advance, and so his refusal — and his very presence — were rendered abstract. G’s was the worst kind of threat, because it took root so near at hand. More than a possible future or a forgettable past, which could have been tolerated with a bit of resolve, G was the tragic scene that held the proletarian life of the community together. From one day to the next, the boy had become the inverse of the factory as a whole, and his mind could not take it; in the same way, the workers found that part of their immediate world had turned itself inside out like a glove, bringing into view that which the choreography of the factory, the activity of the machines, the skilled movements of their hands, and the contortions of their bodies had always tried to keep from sight. As Delia would explain, one morning G did not show up at his former machine, or rather, at the new ones that were unable to hide the marks of the old. Though he had always been the first to arrive, during the crisis he showed up even earlier, only to leave long before his shift was over. It was strange to see how life outside the factory went on as usual while this tragedy unfolded inside. I say strange in order to be able to say something; in fact, it was devastating. The truth is that everything was the same inside the factory, too, aside from the moral threat posed by G and suffered by his fellow workers. But if many of the causes and effects of this anomaly were unknown on the inside, where it was produced, they were monumentally ignored on the outside. And this sparked a certain bitterness, because the world went on turning, unaware of G’s terrible experience — either its beginning or its end. How many anonymous victims like him does the world produce every day? This is the true factory of man, though saying it in these words might seem inappropriate.

Delia and G. I’ve often thought that the connection between them — that concrete and enduring bond so pronounced that at first glance they seemed to be brother and sister — remained vital despite G’s dismissal and the different paths their lives took. The boy ended up being abandoned by the factory just like Delia was abandoned by me. The factory dismissed him for the distress he showed when faced with the new machines, filling him with even more suspicion and mistrust; in that same way, I turned my back on Delia and left her in the most painful state of abandonment. I recently mentioned the interior of the factory and the outside world, how one was unaware of what was going on in the other; now I want to describe how something similar occurred between the world in general and Delia’s interior. However barbaric and cruel, my abandoning Delia did not disrupt the course of the world, which went on in spite of her suffering. The world also turned its back on something else that Delia and I knew: the cell of life that had recently settled inside her. This is how both of them ended up as victims, though of different things and under different circumstances. I remember Delia’s expression: she couldn’t believe it. To put it simply, she took it like a swift and fatal blow. Her eyes revealed her shock, opening wide with fearful uncertainty; she couldn’t react, which was a form of reaction in and of itself. I also remember what she said, which was, as always, appropriate. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. Now, writing these words, I remember the other two I wrote above, also in reference to Delia: the victim’s “Please, no.” I am unable now, as I was then, to make it better. It was not only Delia’s eyes, but also her voice that had changed. It seemed to come from somewhere behind her throat, and sounded as though it belonged to someone else, a cracked and pitiful murmur. And I remember that, in spite of this, she struggled to preserve its inflection: it was she who spoke, though she seemed to be on the verge of becoming someone else. She took my hand. “Don’t leave me,” she repeated. Perhaps, without realizing it, she meant to underscore her feelings, which were already eloquent in themselves. Like G, Delia reacted spontaneously. This was surely due to their youth; they were both practically children. The problem with reactions is that they are never clear in the real world: contrary to what happens in novels, where the most unexpected or complex action provokes, in the other characters, a reading or reaction that corresponds to its supposed obscurity. That’s not what happened in my case. Delia and I once went for a walk. I’ve already said that there were uninhabited and diffuse territories that nonetheless had some form of community life. Then there was the opposite case, hybrid spaces that were less a neighborhood than an area that seemed to be made up of one multi-family dwelling: the streets were hallways that could only be traveled on foot, the plazas were no larger than patios. Similarly, there were also shared dining areas, often exposed to the elements, and a few sheet metal doors distributed around the perimeter of the neighborhood were the only way in. As was the case in Pedrera, once inside, things turned out not to be as they appeared from the outside…