ceiling, covered with smoke-black and spider-webs. It was close and
disgusting within the thick walls, which were spattered with stains
of mud and mustiness. . . . We rose at five o'clock in the morning,
without having had enough sleep, and, dull and indifferent, we seated
ourselves by the table at six to make biscuits out of the dough,
which had been prepared for us by our companions while we were
asleep. And all day long, from morning till ten o'clock at night,
some of us sat by the table rolling out the elastic dough with our
hands, and shaking ourselves that we might not grow stiff, while the
others kneaded the dough with water. And the boiling water in the
kettle, where the cracknels were being boiled, was purring sadly and
thoughtfully all day long; the baker's shovel was scraping quickly
and angrily against the oven, throwing off on the hot bricks the
slippery pieces of dough. On one side of the oven, wood was burning
from morning till night, and the red reflection of the flame was
trembling on the wall of the workshop as though it were silently
mocking us. The huge oven looked like the deformed head of a
fairy-tale monster. It looked as though it thrust itself out from
underneath the floor, opened its wide mouth full of fire, and
breathed on us with heat and stared at our endless work through the
two black air-holes above the forehead. These two cavities were like
eyes--pitiless and impassible eyes of a monster: they stared at us
with the same dark gaze, as though they had grown tired of looking at
slaves, and expecting nothing human from them, despised them with the
cold contempt of wisdom. Day in and day out, amid flour-dust and mud
and thick, bad-odored suffocating heat, we rolled out the dough and
made biscuits, wetting them with our sweat, and we hated our work
with keen hatred; we never ate the biscuit that came out of our
hands, preferring black bread to the cracknels. Sitting by a long
table, one opposite the other--nine opposite nine--we mechanically
moved our hands, and fingers during the long hours, and became so
accustomed to our work that we no longer ever followed the motions of
our hands. And we had grown so tired of looking at one another that
each of us knew all the wrinkles on the faces of the others. We had
nothing to talk about, we were used to this and were silent all the
time, unless abusing one another--for there is always something for
which to abuse a man, especially a compan