Workers, Delia told me, are not always paid enough to cover the things they need. That’s why there are people who make loans, because when Tuesday comes around and the worker has to make do until he is paid on Friday, often not even having enough to cover transportation, the extreme, and sometimes only, option is to turn to them. These are subsistence loans: they might amount to the value of a few round-trips or food to last a couple days. And because of this, because they aren’t considered “meaningful investments,” just as those who take them out aren’t about to mount large-scale operations, they are charged the highest interest rates. Ten can turn into twenty over the course of five days, Delia told me. The smaller the loan, the higher the interest. There was a sort of penalty for taking out small loans; the moneylenders probably had no other way of guaranteeing their business, which was almost certainly limited. But then, there was also their tactic of harassing the indebted worker. Delia had to borrow once. It was a Thursday morning (the moneylenders go every morning except Fridays, payday, when they show up in the evening). She needed money to buy a bar of soap, which had run out earlier than planned. Faced with the alternative of not being able to bathe for a day, the household preferred that she take out a loan. Sometimes it’s easier to go into debt that way than it is to ask something of someone who won’t charge interest, Delia told me. It wasn’t a matter of pride: if I understood correctly, it was an act imposed by collective thinking. Since money was a scarce good among the working class, it could not circulate in a non-utilitarian way, that is, in a way that did not satisfy a need. Goods that had no exchange value, like clothes, tools, or utensils, or even materials and labor, could change hands, but rarely food and never money. The proof that this was the effect of more than just the law of scarcity (that which is not abundant does not circulate) lay in the fact that the workers were ashamed to ask for money. Paradoxically, this led to their misreading the behavior of the moneylenders, whose onerous interest was viewed as a punishment, harsh but fair. Just like their proletarian identity, which is only acquired under certain circumstances, this concept of money belonged to the worker alone, contributing to the personal mythology of each and shaping the way their families thought about the world.
A disguise, a visual alibi. A word is not always just that one word, as many novels show. In his difficult situation, anything that could hide him took on the quality of a disguise for F, whether or not it had to do with his apparel. The moneylenders searched for him among the crowd, but eventually gave up thanks to the mimetic talents of the workers: dressed almost identically, their bodies had been worked over in similar ways by the similar movements they performed, and the way they all stood around, facing the street and the world beyond; these were things that effaced individual differences. As a group, they didn’t look like anything in particular, though they were marked by their lack of differentiation. F’s problems went on for a long time, but not long enough to serve as a lesson to his peers. Their exact duration was hard to discern, since they scanned out in trials and tribulations more than in events as such. At one point, the moneylenders threatened to stop making loans entirely if F did not pay off his debt, which had swelled over time. For his part, F never considered leaving the factory in an attempt to avoid payment; his alternatives were more radical. Taking his life, for example. The thing is, the worker is ashamed to be in debt, he feels it calls his very nature into question. In certain cases, like that of F, the inability to pay added a layer of tragedy because, deep down, he didn’t see suicide as a last resort to avoid the problem, but rather as a payment in full. In a completely literal sense, he was capable of feeling that he should “pay with his life.” The lender would probably not recoup his investment this way, but would be compensated by being proved right. And so, the meaning of money would once again be revealed through death. Extensive experience with loans, diverse and sometimes inconsistent feelings toward his debtors — a long history of managing such things had taught the moneylender to gauge the subtlest of reactions, and in this case he knew that F’s evasiveness was not just a matter of not being able to pay, it was also due to his having discovered “the debtor’s truth,” as the lenders called it, which was that death was the ultimate guarantor. For their part, the other workers, aware of F’s practical options and emotional dilemma, grew worried. The suicide of a worker meant the sacrifice of the archetypal member of the species, or the class, in this case. It’s not that F stood out in any particular way; on the contrary, each individual needed to possess a degree of neutrality if he wanted to belong to the tribe, yet there are certain actions that plant themselves like flags, assuming a level of representation that had not existed before. It was precisely this circumstance, that the representation would inevitably be passive, as it was embodied by a dead colleague, that the factory workers feared.
As Delia recounted all this, I realized that I must have seemed like another moneylender when I would stand by the fence to watch her during the break. As I wrote earlier, I noticed that I was surrounded by people whom I took to be curious onlookers. Perhaps the movements of the workers, that close, deliberate choreography that had seemed like some eccentric ritual, those steps that caught my attention for being so minute and insubstantial; perhaps those movements were part of the ruse, the disguise, meant to keep F hidden. The moneylenders stared intently at the group, just as I did when looking for Delia. And yet, as I recall, the gaze with which the workers met ours was somewhat ambiguous, at once an entreaty and a sign of indifference; there was no hint of defiance or indignation, nor, though this may be hard to understand, were they trying to deceive. It was the gaze of someone who just looked away but is still glancing sidelong to see whether or not they’ve remained the focus of attention. As is so often the case, it’s at the point nearest innocence that the most vile or insidious scenes are produced, or at least the ones most difficult to assimilate or understand in the most general sense — that is, if they’re not entirely incomprehensible. And so, the meaning of those moments escapes me now as it did then, though for other reasons. The scene witnessed from the other side of the fence, which to me was about the interest a few workers could spark during their break, as they dedicated themselves to the idleness permitted them by the factory rules, which were otherwise very strict, turned out to be scenes of surveillance and, in some ways, evasion. Delia already knew quite well that life isn’t easy; young as she was, she also understood that things could always be worse. The only thing she hadn’t yet discovered was that passivity can be limitless, and F showed her this. There was a strange approachability to the way F avoided his pursuers, which he did without really putting anything into it, as though it were a bleak and arbitrary procedure executed for reasons unknown. Proof of this was the listless or, rather, inexpressive demeanor with which he made only the slightest attempt to dissolve among so much matter. Few things generated a response in him; since every day he retreated a bit further into his withdrawal, this surprised no one. And so, F displayed certain qualities characteristic of the worker in a casual but pronounced way. Most notable among these was the pressure traditionally put on the worker to become one with his machine, not necessarily that he should join himself to it but rather, and more simply, that he should become its agent. I mentioned all this briefly with regard to Delia — her practical simplicity, her mental distance; in a way, these qualities found their fullest expression in F.