29

The batteries proved to be of use much earlier than Kosef J would have imagined. Indeed the man with a cheerful face asked him as soon as he told him that his name had been drawn: ‘Do you happen to have any batteries?’

Kosef J took them out of his pocket and showed them to him.

‘Something nasty is going on,’ the man with a cheerful face whispered.

There were some laws in place, right? They had to be observed, and observed properly and solemnly, not under duress. There were people who only observed them under duress, and this was a serious matter.

The man with a cheerful face handed Kosef J the megaphone used to command order in meetings. He showed Kosef J how to fit the batteries and then urged him to try it out.

‘Say something,’ the man with a cheerful face insisted.

‘Like what?’ Kosef J asked, feeling really awkward.

‘Say SILENCE,’ the man with a cheerful face said.

‘SILENCE!’ Kosef J yelled into the megaphone, overwhelmed by the thunderous sound of his own voice that made him feel powerful.

‘It’s fine,’ the man with a cheerful face nodded.

He then took to feverishly rattling on with a long tirade. How far could equality go? Until it turned ridiculous? Didn’t it suffice that they were sharing the leftovers found in the bins in equal measure? How come that some people would only show their discontent right now? Had everyone suddenly taken up smoking? The cigarette butts behind the guards’ building had never been declared community property. Wasn’t there any hint of common sense whatsoever to be found in these sluggards who have now started to come up with special requirements?

As far as Kosef J could tell, those entering the dome to attend the meeting were all very agitated. An old white-haired man pulled Kosef J aside and shouted something, looking him in the eye. It seemed as if no one was prepared to respect the white hair of the elderly any longer. The white-haired man hadn’t caught anything for at least a good few weeks. The reason for this was that programming hadn’t been thought through properly. And this was unfair, if not absolutely unjust. The majority of cigarette butts were thrown out between eight and twelve o’clock at night when the soldiers would be chatting away and opening the windows in the dorms to let some fresh air in for the night. Who were those whose turn would always fall exactly between eight and twelve o’clock at night? Who were they and how come it was always the same people?

‘What butts?’ Kosef J asked bewildered.

The old man didn’t get around to answering this because the man with a high-pitched voice squeezed in between them, laughing. He congratulated Kosef J for the way in which he would run the meeting, and advised him to be loud and ruthless. The white-haired man spat and moved away.

Once inside the dome, people headed to their seats babbling and swearing under their breath. The majority were tired, cold, with ashen faces and hands blackened from work.

‘Equality will kill us, no other,’ the man with a high-pitched voice observed, and briskly got out of sight.

The man with a cheerful face turned up again and dragged Kosef J away, pointing at a chair and saying, ‘Here.’ Someone pulled him by the sleeve and whispered a few secret words into his ear from behind. ‘Pardon?’ Kosef J reacted, but the man burst out laughing and didn’t repeat his words.

‘Take a drag,’ another man whispered handing him a cigarette butt.

Kosef J did just that, and felt a commendatory pat on his shoulder. ‘Time to get started,’ someone said to him from somewhere at the back. So he took the funnel to his mouth and screamed SILENCE. Yet all one could hear for some reason was a sort of long-drawn bellowing. Everyone broke out in laughter. All those men with ashen faces and blackened hands due to hard work were roaring with laughter. Kosef J felt a little ashamed but in no way sad. He had succeeded after all in cheering them up.

‘Push the button,’ the voice whispered from behind. So he pushed it and shouted SILENCE again. This time it worked out, and a sensation of power took possession of him.

A tall and thin man got to his feet and started to speak in a most agitated manner. He was in no way in agreement with everything that was being shared out, because absolute equality would gradually lead to absolute inactivity. There were some priorities, right? It is agreed that daily food was in some respects a shared problem. Yet everyone had some freedom of movement they could benefit from, right? For years, no one had mentioned those cigarette butts that would be thrown out of the windows in the guards’ building. Why would this suddenly constitute a problem now?

Because one wouldn’t only throw out butts, the white-haired man jumped up. What do you mean one wouldn’t only throw butts? How did the white-haired man know that one wouldn’t only throw butts? No, one wouldn’t really. One would also throw bits of bread and bottles that would at times be still quite full. The tall and thin man let out a long and shrill laugh. Where had the old man seen bottles, that were still quite full, being thrown out by soldiers? Where?

A few voices rose in support of the old man. Yes, bottles were indeed thrown out. And what if these bottles were not quite full? Let’s say they weren’t full but neither were they empty. Some still had a few drops at the bottom, say three or four drops. Who’d lay hands on all these bottles?

A multitude of voices clashed at this point, ushering in a storm. Who did these bottles belong to? Those who’d be there to catch them at the right time. And who were there to catch them? Just about anyone, according to the law. The rules were unfit for purpose in case some people were able to lay hands on cigarette butts and bottles while others didn’t even take their turn. Who didn’t take their turn? Was anybody in a position to feel excluded? Everyone was entitled to an hour and everyone took their turn over the span of a few days. Ten days, someone clarified. So what if this happened every ten days?

‘Silence,’ the voice whispered to Kosef J.

‘SILENCE!’ Kosef J shouted and everyone fell silent.

A very calm and puny man relaunched the debate. The warm tone of his voice commanded a certain respect straightaway. The puny man produced a few dirty bits of paper from his pocket, and brandished them as if they were some kind of undisputed evidence. He had studied the situation really thoroughly. The fact of the matter was that one would also throw out other stuff, not only cigarette butts and bottles. There would also be leftover canned food thrown away, cardboard boxes, used tape, walnut shells, wet matches and dry bread, in fact an awful lot of dry bread. Moreover, the amount of leftovers thrown out of the windows on these four floors had simply doubled during the last couple of weeks. This is a sign that at least two or three extra companies had been stationed over. Recently a soldier had accidentally dropped his boots out the window. The soldiers would usually get drunk on Saturday nights, so the amount of objects thrown out of the window would be larger, however, the items themselves would be quite unpredictable. Could those who’d had the good fortune of being there last Saturday and went away with an old coat, half a bag of bread crumbs and a can of broth stand up?

‘The broth was off!’ someone shouted.

The puny man carried on cool-headedly. The point wasn’t that the broth might have been off. What mattered was the unpredictability of the situation. Some of these thrown-away items could have had a major importance for the community. Let’s say that a drunken soldier had thrown out a gun. Shouldn’t this object be immediatey declared and made available for common use? No one would have expected people to share their cigarette butts with others, but it would have been wise for everyone to declare what exactly and how much they’d gathered, and also, in some circumstances, to offer a share to the community. In the case of some items, it should be up to the community to decide whether a particular object could belong to those who had found them or whether they had rather a social significance.

The storm unleashed again. People shook their fists in the air, talked among themselves, and contorted their bodies as if they had been held down by their feet and dragged towards the bottom of a swamp.

‘Silence,’ the voice behind Kosef J whispered again.

‘SILENCE!’ Kosef J bellowed into the megaphone.

And elderly man with a shaven head kept standing up and then sitting back, shouting ‘Not true!’, ‘Not true!’ A voice, as if coming from a drink-burnt throat, kept whining somewhere on the floor by Kosef J’s feet. No one showed signs of agreement with anyone and anything. Menacing questions rolled out of all mouths and flocked together just underneath the dome, where truth should have probably been residing. Each and every mouth had something to say and shout back at the other mouths. There were people who had made a fortune by selling on their cigarette butts, where were they now? Why wouldn’t they make themselves known, for everyone to see them? A few people had grabbed the best time slots as if those time slots had belonged to them and no one else. Why would they pretend that they had no knowledge of what everyone would know anyway? And what about those dens at the back of the colonel’s house, why would there be no talk of them? The colonel’s house tends to generate tens of pounds of food waste on a daily basis. Who would take charge of these so promptly, and why would there be no information on the times when the staff entrance was likely to open and close and when the rubbish crate under the wall would be loaded with new items? And who would keep watch over the short, stocky and cheerful man? How come there was never any talk of the leftovers from the clothes clothing-supply room? Where would the waste and scraps from the tailoring workshop end up? Who had swallowed the myriads of patches and threads? How come the timetable was put together in such a way that some people’s turn would come up between two and five in the morning, when there was basically nothing going on, and others could enjoy peak times when an entire swarm of objects would be spurting from the colony’s sewers? For how many years had the timetable been frozen in this shape?

‘SILENCE,’ an exasperated Kosef J shouted out loud, overwhelmed by the turmoil in the dome.

For about two seconds silence had indeed been restored.

‘What shall I do?’ Kosef J asked, turning around and deperately looking for help.

‘Shout SILENCE,’ the voice whispered again.

Kosef J shouted SILENCE several times, and indeed, there would be silence every time, followed by an even more violent turmoil that would break out straightaway. It had gradually dawned on Kosef J that the crowd had divided into two camps. One camp wanted that absolutely all objects, irrespective of the location where they had been found, to be stored and shared equally between all members of the community. The other found this proposition laughable. How could seven cigarette butts be shared between two hundred people? Should they all wait until two hundred cigarette butts were found? Every so often those in the second camp would be shaking with laughter. Someone from the first camp had made the point that, at least during the winter when obtaining food was infinitely harder, the fair distribution of all produce was more than necessary. To this intervention, someone retaliated with the elementary truth that cigarettes are not meant to be eaten. Tens of people burst out laughing again.

‘We are talking about a principle here, and nothing else,’ someone shouted in. ‘This principle is rubbish, stupid and void,’ someone else retorted. ‘It’s impossible to survive without a firm principle,’ another noted. ‘Those who can, survive, the movers and shakers that is,’ someone observed. ‘It’s an abomination to even think in this way,’ the response stated, and several people clapped. ‘What is abominable is being lazy and expecting society to feed you,’ yelled the man whose earlier point led to this remark, and the dome was suddenly invaded by foot-stomping and a second round of applause.

‘SILENCE, SILENCE!’ Kosef J shouted, and for the umpteenth time people fell silent again.

‘We can’t carry on like this,’ Kosef J shouted again, but there was no reaction. Kosef J turned towards the person who had whispered the word silence to him a few times, but he was unable to spot him among the dark and stunned faces.

‘Could they possibly fear the word silence?’ Kosef J wondered, and looked around examining those frozen faces.

‘We have to take a vote,’ Kosef J said, unaware of how he’d come to this idea.

‘Take a vote on what?’ the voice from behind whispered inquisitively.

‘We have to see who is for,’ Kosef J continued in the deadly silence reigning in the space.

All eyes were on him. Clenching their teeth, everyone was awaiting Kosef J’s signal. Kosef J couldn’t quite understand how such a wretched funnel could possibly trigger such docile behaviour, turning into an almost religious obedience.

‘We can only share those things that are suitable for sharing,’ Kosef J said.

Some of the audience started stirring, and one could hear splashes and mutterings, cracking joints and a snore.

‘We’ll do it in such a way so it works,’ he continued.

The mood of anticipation persisted.

‘Who is FOR?’ Kosef J yelled and noted that more than half of these tired people with darkened faces had raised their hands.