The Metamorphoses of Titus

The Workers Part ii

At last the sun began to fall behind the hills and, as it grew darker and the light finally gave out, they heard the sound of the bell and could lay down their tools. Then they returned as they did every dusk to the crowded city of huts, long parallel lines of them surrounded by adobe walls which he had them build first for their relaxation. They made their fire in the narrow street between the houses and there sat on the ground to drink weak tea and talk. A broth of vegetables was cooked by others at the entrance and brought to them. This they ate with coarse bread and lots of beer which was strong but sweet and thick with the husks of grain. Some fish on the holy days if they were lucky. And as they ate, they talked, for they had need to after the monotonous singing of labouring and the words came easily as they sucked at their thick soup and nursed their sore skin and aching muscles.

First Hapu:

'Nothing will flower on this high plain between the mountains, only death and dust. They speak of bringing water in great cool cisterns but we see nothing of this. They cannot even bring enough to make the sweat stay on our skin. Remember our village. Not a stone building in sight, it is true, but lovelier than this. Mud huts and fields and plenty to eat. Our ox drew water from the great river in a paddle wheel to nourish our crops. And we knelt down and drew it to our lips in our cupped hands. Cool. From the south where there were clouds and springs of fresh water. I have heard stories. They mutter at their work and I have heard it. They are saying that the weather is changing in its subtle movements as we draw up water from the great river and build new cities in the high plains. They say that it is getting hotter and that the clouds will not come in the low season when the sun drops in the sky. I have heard it and partly credit it'.

Hapu is right', said one, 'I have never known heat like there is up here where they have brought us and where there is no place to hide from it other than that built by man. No tree, no bush, not even the shade of the mountain we are cutting into with hammer and wedge. It is his mighty god in the heavens showing us his power and he that wants us to know it. It is a sign of the new epoch they speak of and it will kill us as we let it'.

Hapu again, 'And there is the dying. A city like this cannot be built without it. Should a new epoch be inaugurated with so much dying?'

They all knew of the avalanche of broken rock caused by a fissure in the side of the mountain, a fissure they had created by their constant burrowing and cutting. The fissure had trembled a moment then broken apart like the torn seem of an old garment and the two parts had come down, crumbling into sand as they did so and crushing the lives out of seven of them. All in a moment. Afterwards only the silence under that terrible sun and sky as the dust settled slowly back. They found the bodies after three days of excavation, cutting smaller stones from the rock until they had cleared away the fallen cliff-face. The bodies were taken to the half built temple and buried with some ceremony and from then on the work continued with less vigour as there was fear hanging over them. Their overseer sensed it and had allowed them a while to regain their confidence and the tempo of the work had slowly come back to normal but always with the tremor of death hanging in the hot air.

Another, breaking in, 'Forget it. What good will all this talk do? Where is the lyre player? Bring him here and let us have some singing. That way we may be able to forget our woes for a moment. The dead are dead and mourning is fixed for a year and a week. We are brothers to those men, it is true, but not related. If we mourn too long for every man that the sun and the rocks kill, we will live in a misery of our own making and we have already enough misery of their making. We knew them for a year and will forget them in a week. And soon enough there will be others to forget, don't you worry'.

There was silence for a moment and then another began, 'What will happen to us after all this is done? Will we be able to return to the land and hut we used to home? It will be granted to others in a moment, as soon as they see it is not being worked, they will come with their scribes and make notes and vanish and in two days other men with other families will appear. They cannot let a harvest be lost for lack of manpower. If you return now there will be new people from the north or blacks from the south, whoever is poorer than you and needs work more than you. We are fools. People like us who own nothing have no more right there, in that old land, than they have here in this new one for they are all like us and will be used. Those with the papers to great tracts of god's land have rights and armies to protect those rights. We have no army. They came and dragged us off to work for the new god. An honour, they said, and here we are. But this will be finished quickly. Three years, they said. It is all made of mud and the soft rock we are cutting. If we do not die here, we will return to our places and find other men working in our fields and other woman tending our fires. And then what will we do? What will there be for us?'