Woyzeck in Svappavaara

All the stories you never get around to telling . . .

Stories from Johannesburg to Kilimanjaro, from Namh Dinh to Missentrask. The threads that are there to follow. The unforgettable face. The unthinkable plot.

You want to tell them. Reveal them without doing harm.

You want to tell all: about our condition in time and space.

About being helpless in a community. About being a helpless and impassionate

"the tragedies"

During the 60's I felt pursued. At the meetings I was propelled back and forth between Maoists and the Democratic Alliance. Rules were hard and fast about "how the struggle was to be conducted here!"

while the bombs were falling on Viet Nam.

I asked a woman what it was like being bombed. "Like being abandoned by your loved one," she said and trembled from head to toe.

I would never have dared report such an answer in Sweden. I imagined a mocking headline which with a single word would belittle both the U.S. bomber and anguished love. So, I provided the same old meaningless phrases about the ravages by U.S. imperialists and the people's insane tolerance.

Then, of course, there was Svappavaara!

Day after day I recorded my tapes, typed them and systematized the miners' tales about life underground. The irritations. Working shifts. Work-related injuries. About Mr. Kenning's 31 new rules. (Mr. Kenning had come from General Motors in the U.S. - McNamara had been his boss before becoming head of the Pentagon - there are obviously connections between a "middle of nowhere" like Svappavaara and the "center of the world that is the U.S." - that is, if you dare see them . . . if there is time . . . )

And I wrote about the rage they felt toward the people at the Grangesgerg mine who were competing against LKAB, (the old mine they had sold) by investing the billions they had made in the sale into the Lamco/Liberia mine and then flooding the world market with cheap iron ore - which forced the now completely state-owned LKAB to rationalize so damn hard, shove people around, harass them, install machinery and robotize all existence underground so that the opportunities they had had to meet, talk, tell stories, and help each other were gone.

Saturdays there was dancing in the spot they called The People's House. While they shuffled around, the men told many different stories: about moose and love and about the sort of stupid things that happen and "don't mean anything - they just happen."

Again, I'll never record those yarns. Because they were told to me in confidence and those who told them would be hurt if they saw them in print. But even more because there was an ENEMY who was always ready to pounce on me: ". . . she just hurts what she thinks she's defending by romanticizing it all . . ."

People's lives are infinitely complicated. My documentary, Gruva, The Mine, would have been a thousand pages long if I had included more of those glimpses, and bits of destinies that I still continue to think about now.

Pekka was the Face Man.¹ Oh, Pekka! Georg Büchner should have stayed around to meet you!

The pneumatic pusher was driven by one single man. Pekka. He was the drifter. He stood and steered it toward the rock. Drilled a number of holes in a row. Then the tamper came and filled the holes with grey dough - the dynamite - one stick for each hole - After that they lit the fuse and it was "fire in the hole!" and a certain amount of ore came loose and was transported out.

The guy who drove the pneumatic pusher was called the Face Man. You have to be strong to steer and work the drill so as to make the holes as fast as possible.

Pekka was the hero of his time. No Face Man had had a piece-rate like his, and that had lasted so long. He was beginning to get vascular spasms and had become a bit deaf from the noise. But those things didn't bother him, for he knew what he was worth. He was Pekka.

Wherever Pekka penetrated with his drill, the rock softened like a goddam woman. It was Pekka and the Rock. Which he mounted like a goddam bull.

His real woman at home was a proper Finn who took care of the kids and her house and worked hard at that. He made so much money she didn't have to go out to work, and could take care of him the way women used to. She wasn't interested in other men. Pekka and the kids were all she needed.

But technology is insatiable. A new Face Man came with two drills on his machine. To save time

(for the company or the guy? and what was that saved time supposed to be used for?)

you could drill twice as many holes if you learned to steer and work the two-drill machine.

The younger guys learned fast. But for Pekka things started to go to hell. The drill bits fell off. He got rid of the new machine and picked up the old one again with its single drill - and at lunch the young guys boasted they had made twice as many holes.

In the mine (and maybe everywhere else?) everything is either male or female. No matter what the men say there in the dark, it's always addressed to cocks and cunts and bulls and virgins. Everything has to be mounted, cracked open, plunged and then has to come. The mine is a world of thunder and lust.

And the guys started to make fun of Pekka and his double drill machine. You've got to learn to handle the other one, too! A single drill is old-fashioned. It's out. She wants two of them! Can't you understand that, Pekka - you the Face Man hero for so long!

And one day he stood there and stared at the double drill and mumbled "who is this other . . . who can he be . . . since I only have one . . ."

Pekka pushed over the double machine and tore home to check out his woman. She was standing there ironing and he almost raped her and asked her why her cheeks were so red when he came in.

And the following day the fact that she was baking bread didn't exactly help. She was smart as hell doing all these things that made her hot so that she could hide the shame that made her face red

and he tore open the oven door and pulled out the baking sheets and threw the half-baked loaves at her

and he shouted THE OTHER ONE! YOU JUST WAIT, I'M GOING TO TEACH YOU TO SMOOCH WITH ANOTHER ONE

and she took a hold of his hands which were white from the spasms and said oh my God, you poor boy, are you so damaged that you don't even feel the baking sheets burning you

and he said that the Other One of course had soft fingertips and what does he do when he comes? and what do you say then? you dirty bitch!

And at night he'd see her run around outside naked, summer and white winter. Even though she was lying next to him in bed, he saw her running after the Other One outside and he could never quite manage to hit him no matter what he threw at him - chairs, iron, even the kitchen stove.

Life was ruined. If a machine can have two drills, then all else can be two. A woman might very well be out performing unthinkable indecencies while her usual body is lying there next to him pretending she's asleep

and when he got to work one of the double dicks asked him whether his woman had put the ironing board under the door handle to keep him out

and pulled down the shade in the bedroom to keep him from looking in

and more of the sort that these moose bulls still wet behind the ears threw at him to make fun of him.

Until everything went to hell for Pekka.

They gave him a broom. And above ground. For it's time to let someone else be Face Man and for you to take it easy. His wife moved out because he had become someone else and had hallucinations and was disgusting. He went around with the broom for a short time, then he stopped going to work, he lay down on the sofa at home, deaf, and with fingers like white sticks of wood. Someone came to clean from time to time. His eyes were red from lack of sleep. His wife had gotten his cleaning job at the mine and supported herself and the kids with it.

Pekka the Face Man. He'd made money for the company. And made it possible for LKAB to invest in new machinery. Shortly after the two-drill machine came one with five drills and one with ten. Now all the drilling is done electronically.

"None of us visits Pekka any more. He is a wreck. But he was a hero. Why didn't we tell him about the risks he was running, the risk all of us were running, the fact that it was piece-work that was our common enemy? Instead, we let him down with this dumb talk about learning to handle the Other One . . . Jealousy can kill a man faster than the devil - at that age."

Büchner was only 22 years old when he wrote Woyzeck.

I am 62 now - and have not yet dared to write Pekka's tragedy - even though it contains everything: love, social interest, the cosmic riddle.

NOTE:
1 The man who faces the (sur)face of the rock to be blasted.