Monument of the Unknown Plumber: Greetings from Underground

A character in bronze

The large hands and expressive face are no accident. Sculptor Maja Rakočević Cvijanov described using the visual language of comic strips for the figure. His helmet and hands catch the light against the darker, greenish bronze of his work clothes. There is enough character here to imagine a conversation, even if the opening subject would probably be pipes.

The people behind the pipes

The city’s water and sewerage utility gave the sculpture to Subotica in March 2012, marking its fiftieth anniversary and World Water Day. It honours generations of workers who built and maintained the networks below the city. The “unknown” plumber is not a single man whose name has been lost. He stands in for the many whose names most residents would never have had a reason to learn.

Their work has an awkward relationship with public attention. Water comes out of a tap, disappears down a drain, and generally receives no applause for either journey. A failure makes the whole arrangement considerably more interesting. Here, the utility gave the people responsible a face before anything needed to go wrong.

At the unveiling, the mayor remarked that the utility had, in a way, also put up a small monument to itself. Its water-drop emblem is set into the manhole cover lying beside him.

The mayor also predicted that the people of Subotica would soon give the plumber a name. A local news site opened its comments, and readers obliged: Super Mario, inevitably, though Mario’s career involves remarkably little plumbing; “Bratislavko”, after Bratislava’s better-known man in a manhole; and the Drowning Man. Another reader advised against naming him at all, since he would be stolen within days.

None of the names stuck. He is still the Unknown Plumber, which is rather the point.

Above the pavement

Seen from a little farther away, he shares the pavement with trees, benches and a line of bollards. Cars fill the road behind him. There is no grand separation between the monument and the ordinary street: his manhole is set directly into the paving. For someone representing the people who keep a city functioning, it seems a sensible place to surface.

Life above ground brought its own maintenance problems. People put flowers, a fan and cigarettes into his outstretched hand. By late August 2012, the wrench in his other hand had disappeared. The sculptor was brought back to replace it, and the weld between hand and wrench was made considerably stronger. By the start of October, he had been disarmed again.

A monument to maintenance workers was already giving someone something to maintain.

The news site that reported the second theft thought he now looked as though he were asking for help.

When I visited, the hand that had held the wrench was gripping a thin strip of metal. The tool in his chest pocket, cast as part of him, was still in place. Someone had left a cigarette end on the rim of his manhole, though not, this time, in his hand. The extended hand was empty, leaving the gesture open to interpretation: a greeting, a call for help, or perhaps an expectation that somebody will finally pass him the right tool.