Food for the People
a short story by Jiri Kajane
Fiction Attic Press is pleased to present the first new Jiri Kajane story in a quarter century, “Food for the People.” If you enjoy this story, you may also enjoy Winter in Tirana: The Stories of Jiri Kajane (Volume 1), and Some Pleasant Daydream: The Stories of Jiri Kajane (Volume 2), both published by Fiction Attic Press.
It’s early March, snow still on the ground, wind coming through the broken windows of the empty, disused ball bearing factory. Leni and I are sitting on crates, waiting, and the metal door dividing us from the loading docks rattles each time the wind sweeps through. We’ve been here long enough that I have noticed a rhythm to it.
“New beginnings,” Leni says.
“Indeed.”
“Sevasti guaranteed that he will have the first truck here by two o’clock.”
I check my watch; it’s 2:15.
Leni has purchased something called the New Hanjin Automat. An antique dealer in Tokyo, or maybe Sri Lanka, sold it to him in late August, and since then they have been working together to get the unwieldy shipment to Tirana. Finally, after some delays in Malta due to an underpaid crew and an unpaid fuel bill, the automat arrived at the port in Durres late last night. We’ve been waiting for Sevasti and his crew to transport it the last twenty-three miles.
I studied the manifest in my hand: eleven massive crates, containing a series of interconnected machines, each similar though different from the one before it. The machines hook together to form a large U-shape, lining the walls, theoretically surrounding cafeteria tables and chairs. Together, they create an automat. Leni has explained to me at least twice that such places—automats—were popular in forward-thinking western countries in the 1940s and 1950s. They were “an announcement to the people that the future had arrived,” he says, though I’m not sure what that means. I do know though that we’ve never enjoyed an automat here.