Lorraine Connection (4 page)

In the cafeteria, the clusters have re-formed. Some start playing cards. Étienne goes over to Aisha.

‘I’m Nourredine’s friend. I’ve been in packaging for two years. How come we’ve never met?’

‘I’ve only been in finishing for a month.’

‘Of course.’ Flashback: the pale face, the rotor. ‘Rolande took me on in finishing …’
Whatever
you
do,
don’t
mention
the
man
gled
body.
I’ve
put
my
foot
in
it.

Smile. ‘It did me so much good to talk about it, it’s the first time. And the first time too that I’ve ever spoken in front of so many people, at least ten people. I feel a lot better.’ She thinks: he’s different.

Relieved. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’

There’s a queue in front of the coffee machines. Étienne picks up two scalding cups, puts them on a cardboard tray, takes Aisha’s hand and leads her across the eerily silent, deserted factory floor dimly lit by dreary daylight and the orange glow of the safety lights. So different, a bit strange, profoundly silent. Aisha does not withdraw her hand. In the wide, airy spaces of the packaging section, Étienne switches on a row of neon lights. He continues past the machines, which are strangely still, without pausing at the piles of polystyrene or wood, decorative as they are, or at the conveyor belt rising up to the ceiling with its load of packaged tubes, connecting to the warehouse. He leads Aisha towards an old wooden desk in a corner of the workshop and sets down the coffees.

‘This is where we have our snack at break times. The cafeteria is too far away, it wastes too much time. Take a look.’ Proudly,
he opens a drawer that contains a gas ring. In the next drawer is an electric coffee machine. The back panel of the desk slides back to reveal a little fridge and a television set. ‘The TV’s only for the night shift.’ He laughs. ‘As for the rest, we have an agreement with Maréchal: he stays out of the workshop during breaks.’

They drink in silence. Aisha runs her finger over the stained desktop. A bit of freedom all to themselves, at the heart of the
factory
. The women’s workshop on the other side of the sheet-metal partition, a whole other life. The misfortune of being a woman.

‘You haven’t seen everything yet.’ Étienne sits her on one of the stools. ‘Here’s my work station, but the truth is we’re often on our feet, we move around a lot.’ He opens the top drawer of the desk, wide, deep, flat, crammed with miscellaneous cutlery and corkscrews, wiggles out a little board wedged at the back and takes out a tobacco pouch and rolling papers. ‘A quick joint.’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘It’s not a cigarette, it doesn’t do any harm.’

His hands work rapidly, a swift lick, cigarette lighter, he takes a first deep drag, smiles, passes her the joint. Her mind a muddle, Émilienne, Rolande, the strike, Étienne’s hand in her hair, in her hand, her body trembling, she takes the joint, raises it to her lips, takes a long drag, nostrils pinched, eyes closed, as she’s seen her brothers do, inhales the smoke, not very strong, not as strong as she thought, exhales through her nose, without coughing. An airy sensation of well-being.

‘A real pro,’ laughs Étienne.

He switches off the light and the workshop is plunged into a yellowish half-light. Aisha, in a spin, draws frantically on the joint. Randomly Émilienne’s voice comes back to her, helpless with laughter in the cafeteria, telling them about ‘her first time’, lying flat on her stomach on a dustbin under an archway, rain bucketing down. Rolande had smiled at her, then taken her by the arm and steered her to another table to eat her snack. ‘I didn’t even see his face,’ repeated Émilienne, between two outbursts of laughter. Followed by her father’s voice, grating and halting,
cursing
when she refused to go back to the village even for holidays.
I
know
what
can
happen
there.
Étienne moves slowly towards her and takes her by the arm, the waist, to help her up. Fear, no going back now:
After
him,
I’m
not
returning
to
my
father’s
house.
He leads her behind a pile of packing cases. She sees a mat.

‘It’s Nourredine’s prayer mat.’

He smiles, kneels down. She sits down, feeling as if she’s
floating
. He loosens her hair, which spreads out over her shoulders. She thinks, ‘This is going from one man to another,’ and lies down, her eyes closed. A cocoon of darkness, silence, Étienne kisses her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. She tenses, he slides his hand down her neck, places it on her hip, runs it down her thigh, slips it under her skirt. She lies still, rigid, her heart pounding. His hand moves slowly up towards her belly where it stops, spread flat, hot, insistent. She waits:
It’s
going
to
happen.

Then everything moves very fast. Étienne pulls down his
trousers
, uses both hands to yank Aisha’s tights and knickers down to her ankles, lies on top of her, penetrates her after two or three attempts.
It
hurts,
I’ve
known
worse,
it’s
all
happening
far
away.
He begins to move up and down, she feels a sharp pain, she cries out, then feels very little. He gets still more aroused, breathing heavily, lets out one last groan and rolls off to lie beside her, his face in her hair, smells nice and clean, little kisses on her cheeks, very sweet. She feels a warm liquid running down her thighs, laughs at the thought of the stains she’s going to make on Nourredine’s prayer mat, her recklessness. Her life’s beginning to change, and that has to be good.

The delegation returns to the cafeteria and immediately
everybody
crowds round. Nourredine clambers up on to the table without waiting.

‘Bonuses will be discussed at the works council in a week’s time. We’ll get no information before then. They say no decisions have been taken. But the Head of HR didn’t deny the rumour. In our view, they’ve decided to cancel them and they’re simply putting off the moment when they’re going to tell us. As far as Rolande’s situation is concerned, the Head of HR will discuss it with the shop stewards only once we get back to work.’

A few protests, cries of ‘thieves’ and ‘bastards’. A short woman with permed hair calls the management ‘serial killers’. The big question:
Now
what
do
we
do?
At first there’s no answer. ‘A
weeklong
strike, until the works council meeting? That’s a long time. And besides, this isn’t really a good time, stocks are plentiful …’ Nourredine suggests waiting for the second shift, which will arrive in less than two hours, and deciding together whether to
continue with the strike or not. A reasonable-sounding proposal, unanimously accepted.

The groups disperse. Some go back to their card games in the cafeteria, others go and play music in the staffroom. Amrouche vanishes, he’s probably gone back to hang out in the admin
section
. Small groups of women stand around chatting by the coffee machine. A few mothers unobtrusively slip away to get on with the washing and two men go off to pick mushrooms. With the arrival of the cooler weather there should be hedgehog mushrooms.

Nourredine is sitting at a table with Hafed, a member of the health and safety committee who was on the delegation. He’s a young technician: slim, elegant, and a know-all, highly valued for his technical skills. One of those men who can’t be intimidated by threats of losing his job. He lives with the certainty, justified or not, of being a man who is indispensable and sought-after. The two men, two different worlds, have never spoken to each other, but today they’re drinking coffee together with a shared feeling of impotence.

One of the women from admin cautiously enters the
cafeteria
, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. She slides in beside Nourredine, leans towards him and says very quietly: ‘The CEO called a removals firm to clear all the stocks of
finished
products. I heard the interpreter, he was calling from the office next to mine while your delegation was waiting to speak to management.’

The two men exchange glances, instinctively clasp each
other
’s hands in a handshake. In it together, cut to the quick. Faced with contempt, they feel like shouting, hitting out, smashing something, showing they exist. And they can hear, very clearly, the threat behind the slap in the face: first the stocks, then the machines, then the closure of the factory, something management has been threatening constantly for the last two years. ‘It’s war,’ mutters Nourredine, gutted. Hafed smiles. ‘Keep calm, it hasn’t come to that yet, but we do have to agree on how to respond.’

An impromptu general meeting. Hafed, speaking in a neutral voice, informs the assembled workers. The collective reaction is immediate: ‘All this belongs to us as much as it does to them.’ ‘We won’t allow the lorries to enter the factory.’ No more
hesitation
, indecision, dispersed groups, everybody joins in the
discussion
. ‘How do we go about it?’ ‘Block the entrance gates.’ ‘Occupy
the porter’s lodge, essential if we want to control the opening and closing of the gates.’ ‘That means occupying the factory?’ Yes, say it out loud, we’re occupying the factory. And we’ve got to move fast, there’s no shortage of removals firms in Lorraine. ‘We occupy until the second shift arrives,’ Nourredine decides. ‘Then we’ll discuss the next move with them.’ Unanimous agreement.

The cafeteria empties and a hundred or so workers including around ten women surround the porter’s lodge at the factory gates. Between it and the front of the building is a somewhat neglected open area of about thirty metres covered in unmown grass, wiry enough to withstand the Lorraine climate. Behind the tinted mirror glass façade are the executives’ offices. The senior and middle managers, Korean and French, must all be there, watching from behind the windows. They are invisible, but the awareness of their presence weighs down on the workers, they feel exposed. At least there’s no sign of any lorries, which feels like a small victory. Maybe there won’t
be
any lorries, it could all be a false rumour. They take what comfort they can from that. Carry out another recce. Two huge sliding gates are electronically operated from the porter’s lodge. One gate leads to the staff car park to the right of the factory; the left-hand one is the lorry route to the warehouse and the loading bays. To the right again there’s a pedestrian entrance. Between the two gates stands the porter’s lodge, a flimsy building with two huge windows. Twenty people should be able to fit in there. For the time being there are only two security guards, staring out of the windows at the workers without moving.

They must go in. Amrouche has joined the workers, his expression inscrutable. The delegation reconvenes and enters the porter’s lodge. Again it’s Nourredine who’s the spokesperson. ‘We’re occupying, we’re taking control of the gates.’ The security guards are two men the wrong side of fifty, beefy, pot-bellied and wearing navy-blue jackets marked ‘Security’. They shrug. ‘As you like, we’re not Daewoo employees and our chief has instructed us not to get involved. He simply told us to maintain a presence in the porter’s lodge, and he’s sending two colleagues as backup to patrol the premises. You’ll be able to identify them, they’ll be wearing the same uniform as us.’ Nourredine asks them to show him how to open and close the gates. It all seems simple. Outside,
a feeble sun has finally broken through and the workers have resumed their conversations. They amble around in small groups, already at a loose end. A few women go inside the porter’s lodge to warm up, others start drifting back to the cafeteria.

The first workers from the second shift begin to arrive, mostly by car. Nourredine opens the right-hand gate. They leave their vehicles in the car park then return in small groups, and informal discussions break out between the two shifts. No bonuses this year. No, it’s not a matter of December payments being delayed, but of no bonuses at all. What about the February agreement? All bullshit. The women talk among themselves. With Christmas coming, no bonuses means no presents for the kids. Reactions veer between anger and disbelief, in an atmosphere of chaos.

Just then Nourredine, who’s still watching the main gate, sees a convoy of three huge articulated removal lorries emblazoned with their company logo crawling towards the roundabout in front of the factory gates. He presses the switch to close the gate, which doesn’t budge. A surge of adrenaline, sweat, turmoiled thoughts, the lorries’ arrival timed to coincide with that of the second shift, gates blocked open from the inside offices.
If
the
lor
ries
get
in,
there’ll
be
fights,
the
police,
and
we’re
fucked.
He rushes outside yelling:

‘The lorries, the lorries! The gate’s stuck, block the entrance, block the entrance.’

The lorries move forward in a slow, relentless convoy. The first one turns on to the roundabout in a majestic curve. The shapes of three men can just be made out in the cab. Two hundred or so workers, only the men, with Hafed in the front line, his jaws clenched. The rest race for the gate, arms linked, and grip the gateposts. They stand several lines deep, united, together, hearts pounding.

Behind the human barricade, Nourredine and five other
workers
all had the same idea at the same time.
Pile
up
some
empty
pal
lets
and
set
fire
to
them
with
lighters,
that’s
all
we’ve
got.
Shit!
Let’s
hope
they
catch
alight.
They catch alight.