There Is No Devil
“Cough, cough…!”
One of the women workers spat out a dry cough.
At first I thought nothing of it. Coughing is a perfectly ordinary defense—the body clearing foreign matter or irritation from the airway. In a sealed space like this, it was only natural to think, Well, of course that happens.
But then—
—Cough, cough!
—Hrrk…!
Wasn’t this a bit much?
I even felt a faint scratchiness starting in my own throat…
“Cough, cough….”
Once one person started, coughing broke out all around the floor. It spread like a contagion.
The women who had been hard at work clamped their sleeves over their mouths and kept coughing, then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, picked up their brushes again and went back to smearing adhesive onto rubber.
One girl seized a brush with trembling hands, her face corpse-pale, barely keeping control of her fingers. She was not the only one. Someone set her brush down and pressed her temple as if the room were spinning; another braced a hand against the wall and tried to catch her breath.
“Hey, Anna! What are you dawdling for over there? You dare slack off? Get back to your bench this instant!”
The woman leaning against the wall flinched at the floor supervisor’s bark.
The one called Anna lifted her head with effort. Cold sweat beaded her forehead; her lips were bloodless white.
“I-I’m sorry… Comrade Supervisor. Just… a little dizzy…”
“Dizzy, my foot! Everyone else is working fine—you’re the only one making a scene! Instead of faking, stick another galosh together!”
Anna bit her lip.
“If we don’t hit this month’s quota, your wages get cut first—got it?”
The supervisor smirked and strolled back to his post. Anna’s mouth worked as if she wanted to protest, but she only bit down harder and staggered, weaving, toward her workbench.
I was still watching her pick up the brush with shaking fingers when Ivan stepped up beside me.
“…It’s starting again.”
“What’s starting, exactly?”
I turned, assuming he meant the supervisor’s merciless tongue, but Ivan wasn’t even looking that way. His eyes were fixed elsewhere. I followed his gaze.
—Cough, cough.
A sound like something clawing deep inside the chest began to fill the factory—painful just to hear. Everywhere I looked, women were coughing without pause.
“It’s the devil.”
……?
Ivan’s face was dead serious.
“A devil lives in this factory, Comrade Overseer.”
“…….”
I nearly snorted. I opened my mouth to scoff, but the total absence of joke in his tone left me speechless.
“It comes without sound, without shape, and slips quietly into the girls. Then it rips through their insides without mercy.”
He went on as though he truly believed the devil existed.
“At first it’s just a little throbbing in the head—you think it’ll pass. But once the thing latches on and stays…”
—Thud.
While he was still speaking, a woman collapsed.
“Anna…!”
The other workers rose from their seats, faces white with fear. Not one of them moved toward the fallen girl—as if terrified that Ivan’s “devil” might leap onto them next.
“Comrade Supervisor! Anna’s down!”
“Haa…. The rest of you keep working. I’ll clear her out.”
The same man who had just been berating her sighed, looped Anna’s limp arm over his shoulder, and hauled her up. Ivan watched the scene with a bitter expression and finished quietly.
“…That’s what happens.”
He looked at me and gave a wry little smile.
“This is the true face of the factory you’re trying to save, Comrade Overseer.”
“…….”
“Girls drop like that several times a day. And the ones who leave the factory… never come back. That’s one reason our output is so low. Plenty of raw material—just no one left to work it…”
His words left me cold. They didn’t come back because they couldn’t.
—Step, step.
“C-Comrade Overseer?!”
“Yasha…?”
I ignored the voices of Ivan and Katerina behind me and walked straight onto the shop floor.
“Wh-who are you…?”
The floor supervisor spun around, startled.
“May I examine her for a moment?”
He hesitated, glanced at Ivan, then after a beat laid Anna on the floor. I dropped to one knee beside her and checked her condition.
Her face had a bluish cast. Red blotches mottled her arms and legs; blood trickled from her lips and nose.
…Anna was breathing hard and fast.
The bright red was already draining from her mouth; cold sweat soaked her whole body.
“The smell…”
Then a sweet scent began to rise from her. Not a body odor—something artificial, chemical.
Chemical?
Alarm bells hammered through my skull. Whatever the substance was, Anna’s symptoms looked like acute poisoning.
“Comrade Supervisor! She has to be moved outside—right now!”
“What? What are you talking about—”
“No time to explain. Hurry!”
Moments later Ivan and Katerina came running.
“Comrade Overseer…!”
“Comrade Ivan. As I understand it, a production overseer holds the same authority as the factory director in an emergency—is that correct?”
Ivan nodded, looking bewildered.
“In a crisis, a dispatched overseer does have decision-making power equivalent to the director’s in his absence… but why—?”
“That’s all I needed.”
I cut him off, stood, and raised my voice.
“Everyone—stop work…!!!”
“…What?!”
Every hand froze at the sound of my shout.
“I am Yakov Svanidze, production overseer dispatched from the Leningrad Military District!”
The coughing women, the supervisors still holding glue-laden brushes—all of them stared at me with wide eyes.
“By the authority of the overseer, I order you!”
I pointed at the windows.
“Stop work at once and open every single window! And…”
My gaze swung to the pots of adhesive and the brushes the women had been using.
“Seal every container of adhesive and remove the brushes—set them aside separately!”
The workers looked at one another in confusion. Still no one moved.
I turned to Katerina. She read the silent plea in my eyes, gave a short nod, and drew something from her coat.
…A revolver?
—Click.
Katerina aimed the muzzle at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
—BANG!
The gunshot tore through the workshop.
“Kyaaaaah…!”
Screams erupted. Katerina regarded the women with flat indifference.
“Everyone will obey the overseer’s orders. Failure to comply will be treated as…”
—Click.
“…counter-revolutionary sabotage.”
The air in the shop froze solid.
…I hadn’t expected her to go that far.
I—Yakov—stood speechless at the rather extreme method. But its effect was absolute. The women who a second earlier had been hesitating and watching one another now scrambled into motion, faces drained of color.
“W-what about the pots without lids?”
“Soak a cloth in water and cover the openings.”
In moments every window in the factory stood open and the adhesive pots were sealed and cleared away. Ivan approached me with a dazed look.
“Comrade Overseer. Doing this won’t make the devil disappear…”
I cut his absurd remark short with a single sentence.
“There was never any devil to begin with.”
“Th-then why do the girls keep collapsing like that?”
“The reason is…”
I pointed at the sealed adhesive pots.
“The vapor rising from those.”
“…You mean the benzene?”
What? That stuff is benzene?
I doubted my ears. He seemed to mean the actual toxic compound benzene, not the Russian word for gasoline…
I stared at the containers of what I had thought was only adhesive—now presumed to be benzene. If it really was, Anna was not merely dizzy and fainted; her life was in danger.
Benzene is extremely harmful to the human body. It is a mutagen; during biological conversion—metabolism—it forms benzene epoxide. When the C–O–C bond of that epoxide breaks, the resulting electrophile attacks nucleic acids, especially the nitrogenous bases of DNA that carry genetic information. In plain language: through ordinary metabolism, benzene turns inside us into a substance that causes cancer and systemic toxicity.
“Kacha!”
Katerina slipped the revolver back into her coat and came at once. Even in the rush I noted that the weapon she carried was the infamous M1895, mainstay of the Tsarist secret police—the Okhrana…
“This woman has to go to a hospital immediately!”
I kept my face carefully blank and pointed at Anna.
“It’s far worse than it looks. She needs a doctor without a moment’s delay.”
Katerina nodded without argument.
“I’ll be right back, Yasha.”
She went straight to Anna, lifted the limp body with practiced ease, and cradled her.
“Tell the doctor we suspect benzene poisoning.”
“Benzene… understood.”
She might not have known the full meaning, but she clearly recognized the information as vital. She nodded as if committing the word to memory, then carried Anna out through the door.
A moment later an engine coughed to life; soon the sound of the car faded into the distance.