Scrapers

Lötscher is sixty years of age. Bruno, his assistant is twenty. There both workers. Their work: to paint endless pipes in a factory. The younger one questions it all, the older one has long ceased to do so. He stems from an age when it was not customary to put questions. He merely brushes and avoids contemplation:“doesn’t matter what you’re doing as long as you’re doing something”. And then he recounts all the advantages of this sort of work.“a safe job –and it never rains here. Pension fund, old age and dependents insurance, sickness fund, club house and lots more”.These are all good arguments, but not for the young one, who is seeking a purpose in his work: “why all this drudgery? You tell me what its all about for us, these pipes, miles of them, pipes, nothing but pipes? What’s it all for Bert?” –these questions make Loetscher uneasy. He’s been doing his work for 30 years, and next year he gets a gold medal. The young fellow says he couldn’t stand it that long. It stinks here in this damned cellar. The old man replies, it doesn’t stink, but there is the smell of trichloro-ethylene. And anyway in earlier days no one complained about it. He himself, Loetscher, enjoyed the complete confidence of this superiors, had three grown-up sons... The young worker grimaces, he won’t marry, he wants to stay free...The two man speak different languages, they belong to different worlds, different ages. One is willing to take it, the other rebels, even if it’s only down in the labyrinth, where nobody can hear him. -They paint to and for- even though it smells more all time. In principle they should get a breath of fresh air every hour, but they don’t bother. As a matter of habit. So they swallow the poison, the trichlore-ethylene, until they’re drunk with the taste of it, and this drunkenness they come closer, they become friends and forget the lunacy of the work which is breaking them.