At midday the factory workshops were a hive of activity drowning in a tide of heat and sweat. As we finished lunch every man fled to his corner of shade, his portion of the blessed wind, to rest out the all too brief break. I left the canteen stuffed full and climbed the steps towards the foundry. I’d hardly crossed the threshold of the casting room when the noise of the pistons crashed onto my ears and numbed them. “I’ll never get used to this infernal racket”, I thought. I almost ran across the open floor, skirting the dump. They had just finished tapping the molten metal and the casts sat and smoked, contaminating the putrid air further still. In that damned place I’d found a place where sun and silence reigned and a huge whole in the breezeblock wall let the wind come dancing in. A strange oasis, perhaps, in the midst of that maelstrom of noise and dust and heat. Then I saw him.
He had his back to me, a welder’s mask in his hand. He was a tall, slight, black man. His silhouette, caught in the frame of light from the back door of the workshop, was somehow familiar. Something, some cog inside my mind began to turn and take me back, back in time. I stopped suddenly when he turned. He stared hard at me, serious at first, with his face’ screwed tight. Then the grimace relaxed and a broad smile brought out the unmistakable face of a boy that came running towards me over the ripples of my memory.
– I know you from somewhere- he said – From…? From…? Wait a minute. From…? (more…)
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Cubastation 