Days of Laze

“So we won’t pick beans anymore?”

Lu smiled, stroking the child’s head.

“No, Bejn. We will not pick beans anymore,” he told the child.

He eyed the golden sun as it sank into the west, like an inexpressibly enormous honey-drop slowly spreading over the horizon. Like an old man hastening home after a long day’s worth of work, and without thought to give to what tomorrow may hold for him.
So laze, so laze.
Before that sun rose again, the days of bean-picking would be well and gone behind them both. Their backs bent under the sun amongst the crackling leaves – a time bygone, a tale to tell one’s grandchildren. Or perhaps not: who would, after all, want to hear of suffering and gross labouring in the world of tomorrow, where things were to be soft? There would be no tales of coffee-picking in the world of Lu’s children –

The machines will do it for us now.

“Yes, yes. Machines will bend their backs under the sun’s bite. Not us. Machines,” said Lu.

The stout owner of the fields had not come that morning, and that was a sign to be heeded. He would always speak to them – not in the open, not there, for there the sun made his skin itch and his eyes hurt and it made a fool of him. No, he would speak to them through a set of large megaphones placed around the plantation, reminding them that the beans he sold should be picked by with such grace and skill that God Himself – “or Allah, or Buddha or whatever ye call him” – should shed tears, were He to see these beans.

But that morning, he did not come. The megaphones were silent, their lines cut. The very men garrisoned about the fields were missing that morning.
Instead there came a new face: a short man wearing a fine suit – elegant, no doubt, in his own land; whereas cumbersome under the sun of this other country he was now in.

Those working the fields assembled before him, for such was their custom. Lu watched, Bejn on his shoulders, as the newcomer produced a flat screen from his coat and read the letters on it, which preached that no man owned another now, and that no man need bend his back under the bite of these latitudes’ sun in the profit of others, and that all were now free to go their own ways. For machines, said the man, would now do the work others despised and which crippled many as children. He said that the new order – Lu didn’t understand much of this part – would not build upon the ruins of the old, and that it would not have any man own another.
To Lu, and in turn to Bejn, it all meant nothing if not that their days in the plantations were over. No more sweaty skin amongst the rustling of leaves – instead the pebbles of the road and the width of the world before them.

One thing, however, troubled Lu. He tried to overthrow it and the importance his mind gave to it, desperate to focus instead on what the day of tomorrow might hold for him and his young companion.

Lu had known his father for a little time. When he was eleven, his father had been claimed by some horrible disease unknown in those parts before – it ate him from inside and could not be stopped. There was hardly a name for it, since it was not a thing of Lu’s world, but in some faraway land’s tongues its name meant ‘crab’.

Near the end, his father brought Lu close to him and intoned in a broken voice the tale of his life.
Come now, son, he said to him. You see in me now the mere ghost of a man, he said, as life has taken its toll on me. But you must know I once had the heart of a lion; I once was a Warrior.

Lu listened, enthralled. His father had been a Warrior in a gruesome battle between the Men of the Towers and the Men of the Desert: they fought one another because the city where men lived in towers had been claimed by the invading waters of the sea, and they had nowhere to go – so they turned to the desert to build towers again. The Men of the Desert, in turn, had no water at all in their sand-filled dune-cities, and wanted it from the Men of the Towers.

Couldn’t they have traded, asked Lu. A bit of water for some of the desert.

Ha, said Father. You’re very right, but you should know that men will never make happiness of what they have, but instead envy their neighbour for their property.

Lu did not understand well what Father meant, but Father continued his story.

The Men of the Desert, he said, were great warriors. They had much steel on wheels and on wings, and knew the desert like nobody else. They could go without water for unthinkably long days: they could endure a thirst so terrible that it turned one’s insides brown (Lu winced!) and his eyes yellow. They could sleep, at day, under the burning sands of the dunes and run, quiet as the wind, by night. Yes, they were great fighters indeed.

The Men of the Towers were not great warriors. They could not go without water for long, and did not know the desert. They could not sleep beneath the dunes during the burning days, and froze to death in the frost of the nights.

But the Men of the Towers were fearsome. They had weapons that spat fire like God’s wrath, accompanied by thunder and sudden death. They had the power to burn an entire city in a matter of a heartbeat, with a light so terrible that your very eyes, as far as you stood from it, would catch fire in their sockets.

Yes, the Men of the Towers were terrible men indeed.

Father had been a Warrior of the desert. He had often seen countless men like him fall upon the tower-men at night and slit their throats before a yell was uttered.
He had also seen his brothers dead, burned by the fire of the tower-men. He had seen the city of his fathers in flames for a few moments and then nothing but the darkness of the night. In the cloudless desert nights, one could gaze up and see a thousand stars hanging there on the black mantle.
Father’s eyes had not burned. There were no stars to be seen in the sky that night.

Then, Lu’s father had wandered, alone and nameless. Obviously he was not the last desert-warrior alive – there were many others, which after sparse struggle, were felled. Old survivors often travelled far to see these heroes’ graves, and they too fell in a rain of iron and blood.
The survivors, like the warriors, Father had said, were killed not by Men – but by Machines.

As Lu and Bejn tread down the pebble-road, these thoughts lingered in the mind of the eldest.

Machines kill warriors. How could Machines that spill blood give people lives?

The sun continued its descent, as if ignoring Lu’s ruminations.
So laze, so laze…
Why should Machines that kill warriors be put to picking coffee-beans?
Perhaps, there were no more warriors to kill anymore.
So laze, so laze.

Death by a blade: there you have an honourable way to go, had said Father. But death by fire – what heresy! Only God could submit a man to such a fire. The tower-men had subjected to it an entire city…

And the Machines? What hell-bound offense it is to mirror God’s design! Father had roared. The Men of the Towers had no God like those of the Desert: the God of the tower-men had been remade so that he no longer ruled the world, but explained it to men: what a terrible, terrible thing it is to know! Now, this God had given the tower-men Machines and fire to burn the world.

Lu and Bejn rested for a moment. Bejn had begged to, and not even Lu’s reasoning – “It will soon be dusk, Bejn, we must walk as far as we can” – managed to defeat the boy’s persistence. They, therefore, rested.
The road will be the last thing to hasten us, thought Lu. Where we go, nothing will push us; not even our bodies’ hunger. Where we go, hunger is a bad word.
Gentle days await, Lu sighed. Gentle days of laze.

The fire, said Father, had proved too dangerous. It burned too deep – and so far that birds might drop dead in neighbouring towns, far from where the fire was lit.
That was why Machines came to be. The Men of the Towers would not put blood on their hands, and would not bend their backs under the biting sun chasing the leftovers of the desert-warriors. Why should they? Machines bent their backs under the sun – not men. Machines did.
So laze, so laze.

A Machine that might strive to kill may also be made to strive in the fields, though Lu. The almost-rhyme amused him, and he smiled.

“What do you smile at?” asked Bejn.

Lu shook his head.

Men made the Machines kill the warriors they wouldn’t kill. Machines were now to pick the beans Lu and Bejn didn’t want to live picking. Aren’t Machines a wonderful, useful thing: perfect for days to be gentle. Days where one needn’t think – Machines would not either, but they would work at any rate. So laze, so laze…

The old survivors, Father had said, carried no weapons. Nothing. They merely visited a grave where fallen companions rested.
But Machines never think, and they behaved no different that day: and so they killed all the un-warring, harmless old survivors where they stood. A tomb upon a tomb.

Machines did not think that day nor any other; they were not built for that. They were made to work. Others had to do the thinking.

But nobody was thinking!

The sun had almost disappeared, so Lu and Bejn remained there for the night.

Machines killed those survivors because men would not think nor work. Machines at least did the work.
Machines were now to pick coffee-beans so that Lu and Bejn should not do it.
Machines would work in their stead so they could spend their days gentle in laze, away from sorrow and grief.
Machines would now work so that men should not think –
So laze, so laze!

Where they went, Lu thought, things were soft and the sun was gentle. The body was saved the harshness of the world so that the mind may enjoy itself. So laze, so laze… one might lose himself in the pleasures of life and never see the roses’ thorns, there where they went.
There where they went, people lived gentle days of laze. There where they came from, machines bent their back under the bite of the sun. In neither place did anyone think.
Men did not think, Lu meditated, and then Machines killed.

There where I go, men do not think. What might Machines do?

At dawn, Bejn awoke alone. Surprised, he looked along the road: to the west went nothing but the pebble-path. To the east, under the rising sun, walked a lone figure.

“Lu!” called the boy. “Where are you going?”

Lu did not reply, but did hear the boy.

There where I go, he thought, work Machines for men. Perhaps, it will not hurt for a man to think there.
The smell of thorn-less roses was putrid to his senses. Gentle days of laze where far from his mind.

J. Orella