He might have diarrhea, or be so cold his bladder was about to burst, but he had to hold out. He had to quickly use the toilet during those three breaks. The rest of the time he had to remain in place in the belfry, staring straight at the clock. The only time the Bell Striker was allowed to come back down was at 6 a.m., at noon, and at 6 p.m., for twenty-five minutes each, to eat. Tanne, born in the Camp, had learned at school that this terrible crime was called treason against the State. They justified this by saying that the people confined to the Camp were all convicts who had committed a terrible crime. When they occasion warranted it, they killed convicts without compunction. The Supervisors made use of every second to drive the convicts as hard as oxen, allowing them barely a moment to themselves. But the Supervisors suppressed any independence among the convicts, and allowed them no freedom at all. Why don’t they just give him a watch? Tanne always wondered. That from the belfry you could catch a glimpse of the lives of the Supervisors. Tanne had heard the whispered rumors: that a large, white clock was set into the clock tower. And then spend the day staring fixedly beyond the thick concrete walls at the clock tower rising high over the Supervisors’ village. The person assigned to it had to climb up to the tall, rickety belfry even when it rained or snowed or there was a storm even on days when it was so blazingly hot that the iron ladder was too hot to touch. In other words, the nineteen hours that the bell was ringing, from four in the morning until eleven at night, the people of the Camp had to be awake.īeing a Bell Striker was a dangerous job, and was seen as a sort of punishment. On the hour he would ring the appropriate number of times, and once on the half-hour. The Bell Striker climbed a ladder some ten metres up to the belfry and rang the bell every half hour from 4 a.m. The person in charge of ringing the bell to announce the time was called the Bell Striker. They might not be allowed any clocks inside the Camp, but they still made sure that the convicts knew what time it was, reminding them more often than they ever wanted to know. In order to raise production, they had to meet their huge quotas within a set time. We might be the same as goats, Tanne thought, but the Supervisors said we need to know the time. In the Camp elementary school that Tanne attended the teachers always yelled at them, saying, ‘Hey! You there. The Supervisors ridiculed the people locked in the Camp, calling them a herd of goats. Tanne had heard that one old man who’d lived in the Camp forever had complained that they were treated like animals. It was during those short periods that people ate and quickly washed up. The electricity was only on from four to five a.m., and again at night from ten to eleven p.m. The river was nearby so they had plenty of water, but whenever there was a storm the water from the faucets turned muddy. Most of these goods were made within the enormous grounds of the Camp and were of such poor quality that they soon fell apart and were of little use. Their food, clothes, shoes, blankets and eating utensils were all rationed. The only things Tanne had ever read were the shabby, hand-me-down textbooks at school. There were no books, and of course no magazines, newspapers, or radios. If they were missing teeth, or were handicapped through accident or illness, they just had to endure it. They couldn’t have glasses, or false teeth. There were many other things they were forbidden to have. Ever since he was a child, he’d thought of time as something that came down from above, something forced on them. It signaled to them when it was time to wake up, to finish work told them when to eat and when to sleep. So they relied on the bell to tell them the time. In fact there wasn’t a single clock to be found, even in communal areas – the schools, shop floors, and factories. The people locked up in Administrative Camp 16 weren’t allowed clocks. This morning’s bell seemed particularly jarring, pure hatred bubbling up to the surface. Tanne covered his ears with his hands but the bell continued to echo inside him. Maybe it was the sharp clang, or how this bell controlled his frantic life. He’d heard the sound since he was born, but never got used to it. A grating, metallic sound, repeated four times. The bell signalling the time rang out in the darkness.
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