Hana Sobotková and Yasmin Afshar

 

Machine / The Wheels

 

My destination is the most exciting thing of the week, the Wheels, as people call them. I have not seen it just yet, but my buddy says it’s a thrill, so I move as fast as I can because I want to get there before the place is too crowded. One thing I hate is crowds and too many people fighting over something on too small a spot.

 

They built the machine and then everybody forever changed. Nothing was the same anymore. He was standing at the main hall watching the crowd of people break through the fences and striding towards the town square. There was no joy in him. He couldn’t sense their emotions. Instead he felt like he was going to die, like so many people had recently. The hunger was too big.

 

I came to the square and saw it. It was huge. People were everywhere already, on it, circling it. The air was buzzing with joyful noise, but I was not sure where it came from, because all the people I could see were standing still and solemn, wondering, eyes up. There was no motion, but for the Wheels which rotated in regular intervals. The people on it were motionless too.

 

The machine sped everything up. The days went by so fast and in the evenings it was the one thing everybody gathered for on the market square. It blurred the distinction between black and white, between shadow and light, and for most of the townspeople the machine meant total distraction. The more they used it, the more they became addicted to it. But occasionally the loudest laughter vanished while the machine turned round and round.

 

Those reeling on the Wheels were like ghosts to me, because I couldn’t see their faces, only their shapeless bodies turning around and around. In the hot sun their white clothes made sparkling reflections that made my eyes hurt. The sun and the heat, the white clothes glowing in the light contrasting with the skin of the people around, including me, the up and down of the groups of people on the wheel, the dust, all were ever present. But I still watched. I stood there, fascinated by the regularity, until it made me dizzy.

 

In the beginning it was nothing more than a rumor. But as more and more people vanished, things became unpleasant for those who remained waiting behind safety lines. Now that he was standing in front of the machine watching the happy and light-minded children of his own age enjoying the excitement, he was hoping to finally find evidence of the machine’s hidden powers. On and on, turning around and around it caught itself in an endless loop and the faster it turned, the louder grew the children’s laughter – until there was nothing left but silence.

 

The faces were a blur, but I found I was quite good in making up the emotions for all of them. I saw a man with three children who was scared to death by the up and down movement and who was closing his eyes and counting his final seconds. He was clutching all three children who, apparently, thought that the grown-ups were bunch of sissies scared by something that was supposed to make you feel great and cheerful. The kids were the only ones who enjoyed themselves. They talked nonsense and made faces at the people waiting their turn, they were in charge of the place now, looking down on us from their high positions, but that’s really only what I wanted to see, I could not honestly say what the reality was, all I knew was I wanted to see them happy, because I was scared.

 

There it was, he thought. He and his brothers had just witnessed the inexpressible. They rubbed their eyes in order to make sure that their imagination hadn’t just played a trick on them. But it had really happened. The people in the carousel were gone. When it stopped there were only linen and cotton clothes on the seats where before people of flesh and blood had been sitting. The whiteness of the clothes, the color of the ground and the sunset sky – everything started to mingle and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was a dream or a mirage.

 

What I could clearly see were the faces at the other side of the square. As I focused on them I could see a succession of pictures, like comic strips in newspapers, interrupted by the turning wheel. Now the man talks to the lady beside him, now he gesticulates offering her a taste of his ice cream, now he looks away because she has probably refused, now she seems to regret that he hasn’t been insistent enough, because apparently she wants to taste it and she moves her hand forward, now she has a spoon in her hand, now she looks to the sky and makes a face because the ice cream is too cold and she can’t bear it and her teeth hurt, now she laughs and in the next snapshot the man laughs too. They are like a series of still-life paintings, encrypted and framed in the turning wheel, no paint and color, just a display of human activity. I would not like it so much if it was not for the wheel, which kept blocking the view again and again.

 

He only thought for a split second about what he did next …

Suddenly the queue moved. The people were ghosts, the sky darkened, and now it is my turn. I will see what it’s like.

…he went straight to one of the seats and sat down. His brothers glanced at him in a bewildered and angry fashion, but he just waved them off and said: “I have to know where they are going; I want to find the land of plenty. It must be the most beautiful place on earth!” His brothers did not stop him after he had said that, for they all knew that resources were getting scarcer and scarcer every day and sooner or later each and every one of them was going to die, unless they could find something to sustain them all.

 

I hope I will not close my eyes. That would spoil my ride.

 

So while he waited for the machine to start up again, his brothers just stood there and waited for their youngest one to vanish into the swirl of enjoyment. He sat still and didn’t move one inch during the entire ride. He didn’t show a single sign of either enjoyment or dislike, even as the movement grew faster and faster and his seat started to shake. The machine became an angry bear that made loud noises and roared its hunger, and just when he started to think that he was close to the magical moment, in which the machine would swallow him up and take him to its secret land, everything stopped and minutes later he was standing on solid ground again. His face grew brighter than it had in years and a big smile formed on his lips.

It’s nothing.