While the Mill Sleeps

For forty-three years, Libânia woke at five in the morning, and for forty-three years she did not need an alarm clock, because her body had the factory inside it, and the factory woke her.

It was a thing she did not even think about, so much her own: at five, her eyes opened in the dark, and before her head knew anything whatever, her body already knew that it was a Spinner day, that there was the shift to open, the machines to set going, the workers to receive, and Libânia got up, in the dark, and life began, and it began with her, because she was the forewoman, she was the first to arrive and the last to leave, she was the one who opened the factory and the one who closed it, the one who had the key and the responsibility and the place. The five in the morning were hers and the Spinner's, and the two things, for forty-three years, were the same thing.

The gestures were always the same, and they were so many that she no longer counted them: to get up without lighting the lamp so as not to waste, to put on the clothes she left on the chair in the right order, the stocking first, the headscarf last, to drink the coffee in haste standing in the kitchen, to leave the house when the village still slept and the only thing awake was she and, down below, the water of the river. She went down the cobbled street in the dark with her eyes closed, knowing where she set her feet, reached the gate of the Spinner before any other soul, put the big key in the big lock, and there was in that gesture, in the creaking of the bolt giving way, a deep satisfaction that she had never explained to anyone because it would never occur to anyone to ask: the satisfaction of being the one who opens, the one who makes the day begin for the others, the one who arrives first at the place where she is needed. She lit the lights of the hall one by one, and the empty hall lit up before her, the machines stopped and waiting, and Libânia went among them in the silence before the work, and it was the only moment of the day when the factory was hers alone, before the workers arrived, and she liked that silence as one likes a secret thing.

She knew the machines as one knows people. She knew which of them squealed in the morning before warming up, which pulled the thread with more force, which was of moods and stopped for no reason and only she knew where to strike it to make it go again. She had given them names, as a girl, and the names had stuck, and even now the new workers spoke of the Stubborn One and the Gentle One without knowing that it had been Libânia, at fifteen years old, who had christened them. She set them going one by one, in the right order, and when the last one started and the whole hall trembled with the noise that to those outside was infernal and to her was music, Libânia felt a thing resembling what others feel at Mass: that she was in her place in the world, doing the thing she was good for, and that everything, in that moment, was as it should be.

The Spinner was the wool-mill of the village, by the river, downstream, and it was more than a factory: it was the heart that gave work to half of Véspera, the place where the girls entered at twelve or thirteen years old and left old, the rhythm that marked the days of the village with its whistles and its shifts. Whoever was born in Véspera was born in the shadow of the Spinner, and most ended up in it, and Libânia had been one of those, she had entered a girl and risen, over a lifetime, from spinner to forewoman, the only woman to reach forewoman in the history of the factory, and she had of that a pride that was the deepest thing of her life, deeper than everything, because it was the proof that she, the poor girl of the house with too many mouths, had come to be someone.

And to reach forewoman had cost her what it costs a woman to reach where only men reached. They had made her life difficult, at first, those who thought a woman did not command men, and Libânia had answered them in the only way she knew, which was to work more than all of them, to arrive earlier than all of them, to leave later than all of them, never to miss a day, never to give an excuse, never to give anyone the pleasure of catching her in a fault. She had proved, and proved, and proved, until there was no longer anyone at the Spinner who dared to say that she did not deserve the place, and the place was hers by the merit of a whole life of not failing, and she knew it, and that was the pride, but it was also, without her ever having called it that, the chain: because a woman who won the place by never failing is a woman who cannot allow herself to fail ever again, and Libânia, in rising to forewoman, had bound herself to a life in which to stop, to rest or simply to be, without producing, had become impossible, because everything she was rested on doing, and doing better, and doing more than anyone.

The Spinner had been doing badly for years. The wool-mills of the villages were all doing badly, crushed by what came from outside, cheaper, and the Spinner had been holding on, announced closing after announced closing, and at each announcement of closing Libânia and Preciosa, the other one who held the factory, had pulled at everything, had tightened, had endured, and the factory had not closed, and Libânia had of that too a pride, that of being one of those who held, of those who did not let it die.

Preciosa had been her companion in those years of holding. They were of opposite temperaments — Preciosa gentle where Libânia was hard, laughing where Libânia pressed her lips — but they had, the two of them, the same stubbornness of not letting the factory die, and at each announced closing the two of them shut themselves in the small office doing accounts until dawn, cutting here, stretching there, inventing ways for the Spinner to endure one more year, one more winter, one more breath. And it had endured, year after year, and each time the closing was un-announced the two of them came out of the office with rings under their eyes and gave one another their hands without saying anything, and Libânia, who had never been one for embraces, let herself be embraced by Preciosa on those dawns, because they were the only ones on which she lowered her guard, the only ones on which she admitted, without saying it, that to hold the factory was also to hold herself, that without the Spinner she would not know what to do with her hands, nor with the five in the morning, nor with life.

But there are closings that have a turning back and there is the closing that has none, and the closing that has none came that winter, and it came in a banal way, as great things come: a paper, a meeting, some men from outside explaining numbers, and the Spinner, at the end of more than a hundred years, closed for good, and this time there was no tightening that held it, there was no announced closing that could be un-announced, it was the end, and Libânia heard it at the meeting, standing, as she heard everything, and said nothing, because the forewoman does not weep in front of the workers, and she went home, that last afternoon, with the key of the factory in her pocket, the key she was going to have to hand over, and it was the heaviest thing she ever carried in her pocket.

Preciosa, that time, did not do accounts. She sat with Libânia in the small office, as at every announced closing, but that time there was nothing to cut nor to stretch, and the two of them stayed there silent, with the papers closed before them, and it was Preciosa who said, at the end of a long silence, what Libânia could not say: it is over, Libânia. From this one there is no turning back. And she added, with a gentleness that hurt more than any number: and you are going to have to learn to live without this, which is the thing you never knew how to do. Preciosa had children, grandchildren, a kitchen-garden, a life outside the factory to retreat into; Libânia had the factory, and beneath the factory she did not know whether she had anything, and it was that, more than the closing, that Preciosa put before her that afternoon, without malice, with pity: that she, of the two, was the one who was going to be left most alone when the lights went out, because she was the one who had given herself most wholly to that place.

The last week was one of dismantling a life. The machines were stopped, one by one, and the silence that fell in the Spinner, after forty-three years of noise, was a thing Libânia did not forget: a silent factory is a corpse, and she went about that corpse, in the last days, taking her leave of the machines she knew one by one, gathering the things of the workers who wept, being the forewoman to the end, holding everyone while she came apart within.

To stop the machines was the worst. Each time one was stopped, on the last day, a little more silence fell in the hall, and Libânia went on noticing the noise dying little by little, machine by machine, until the last one stopped, the Stubborn One, the one she had christened at fifteen years old, and when the Stubborn One stopped there fell in the Spinner a silence that Libânia had never heard, because in forty-three years she had never been in the factory in total silence with the lights on, and that silence was the thing most like death she had ever felt, a silence that had weight, that filled the hall as the water fills a tank, and the workers, who were all standing watching, began to weep low, and Libânia did not weep, because the forewoman does not weep in front of the workers, but within something stopped with the Stubborn One, something in her that had been going for forty-three years also fell silent and went quiet, and she did not know, yet, that that silence within was going to last the whole winter.

And on the last day, she shut the factory, turned the key in the big lock, and handed the key to the man from outside, and it was like handing over a child, or an arm, or her own name, and she went home, that last night, already without a factory, already only Libânia, and she did not know who that Libânia without a factory was, because for forty-three years she had been the forewoman of the Spinner and never, in forty-three years, had she been anything else.

And the next morning, the first morning of her life without a factory, the thing happened that was going to give the book its name: Libânia woke at five.

She woke at five, in the dark, as she had woken for forty-three years, and the body got up, and began to do the gestures of custom, and it was only halfway through the first gesture, already on her feet, already dressing in the dark, that the head caught up with the body and told it: there is no factory. There is no shift to open. There is nowhere to go. And Libânia stood still, in the dark of the room, half dressed, at five in the morning, with her whole body ready for a life that had ended, and it was there, in that pause, that she felt for the first time the thing she was going to live the following months: the void. Not the void of having nothing to do, for that was only the beginning. The void of not knowing at what hour she existed. Because at five in the morning, for forty-three years, Libânia had existed by having somewhere to go, and now, at five in the morning, without a factory, without a shift, without a key, Libânia did not know whether she existed, did not know what a Libânia who wakes at five and has nowhere to go was, did not know who was left standing in the dark of the room when one took the forewoman from the Spinner.

The house, around her, was in silence, and it was a silence that Libânia, for the first time, truly heard. In forty-three years, at that hour, she was already on her way, and the house stayed behind, empty, and she had never seen it so, still, at five in the morning, with herself inside it. She looked around, in the dark that slowly grew light, and the house seemed to her strange, almost unknown, as though she saw it for the first time, and it was true that in a way she saw it for the first time, because she had always inhabited it in passing, in haste, between shifts, and had never been in it at that hour, at length, looking at it. The furniture, the walls, all the things that were hers and that she scarcely knew because she had never had time to look at them. And she thought, with a shiver, that she was going to have to learn to live inside that house she scarcely knew, with that woman she scarcely knew, who was herself, and that she had before her, suddenly, a face-to-face with her house and with herself that she had fled her whole life by running to the factory.

She sat on the bed, half dressed, in the dark, at five in the morning, and stayed there a long time, without finishing dressing and without lying down again, suspended between a life that had ended and one she did not know how to begin, and it was the first of many mornings like that, the five in the morning without a factory, the body waking for the work and the life without work to go to, and Libânia, in the dark, asked the question she was going to ask every day for months, and that was the deepest question she had ever asked, deeper than it seemed: who am I at five in the morning, if there is no longer a factory? What gets up, in this body, when one takes the work away? Is there anyone left, beneath the forewoman? Or was the forewoman all there was, and now, without her, nothing is left, no one is left, there is not, beneath the badge, a Libânia who exists in herself?

That first week without a factory, the scene repeated itself every morning, with small variations that were always the same defeat. On one, she got up and dressed entirely and put on her shoes and only at the door of the house, with her hand on the latch, did she remember that there was nowhere to go, and she stood still at the door, dressed for a work that did not exist, and had to undress again, and to undress in the morning, after being dressed, was a small and deep humiliation that accompanied her the whole day. On another, she even left the house and went halfway down the cobbled street, in the dark, in the direction of the Spinner, with her feet taking her by the path of forty-three years, before her head checked her, and she had to go back, up the cobbled street, afraid that someone would see her and realise it, the forewoman on her way to a closed factory like a dog that goes back to the house of the master who died. And she went on getting used, with horror, to the idea that her body was more faithful to the factory than the factory had been to her, that the body would go on calling her to a place that no longer wanted her, and that she was going to have to learn, against her own body, not to go.

And she did not know how to answer, that first morning, and the light went on coming slowly to the window, the light of half past five, of six, the light of a day that began without her having anywhere to go, and Libânia, sitting on the bed, watched the day be born for the first time in forty-three years, because in forty-three years at that hour she was at the factory, with her back to the windows, setting the machines going, and she had never, never seen the sun rise, and she saw it now, that first morning without a factory, and she did not know whether it was beautiful or whether it was only the void gaining light, and that doubt, whether the sunrise was a beauty or a void, was going to be the question of the whole winter, and the answer, which she would only find in the spring, was going to close not only her life, but, without her knowing it, the whole book of the records of a village that had taught so many people, for so long, to think that they had to deserve their own existence with the sweat of each day.