Fiasco (40 page)

But they must have spotted something about me that, with due care (or cowardice, if you prefer), I myself undoubtedly hurried to get spotted at every turn, because in the end I was assigned to duties against which even my eerie sense of familiarity could have found nothing to object. You know, the six-storey chasm of the military prison is a canyon whose nether regions have been turned upside down: the sixth floor was a secure area, blocked off from the stairwell by grey-painted iron walls, its inmates, unlike those on the lower floors, wearing an outfit of coarse cloth or striped prison duds, their supervision (what luck!) entrusted solely to a handful of old-hand career NCOs specially trained for the purpose, who, like wood lice, only felt truly at home in the gloom of the prison, not to speak of the nearest drinking den. Moving down, each floor loses a bit of the general bleakness, so that the second floor was no more than a sort of purgatory, inhabited solely by prisoners who worked on the outside, along with those who had the privilege of working in the internal units like the kitchen, the laundry, and the tailor’s, cobbler’s, and repair shops, such as the cooks, the barbers, and the clerks in various offices,
while the prisoner doctors and pharmacist had a comfortable cell there; here was the surgery and hairdresser, and this floor also provided access to the legal block, with its lawyers, and the corridor leading to the court—named, so I was told, as in every prison in the world, “the Bridge of Sighs.”

Well, that was where I was assigned to duties, and I have to say I didn’t have to overexert myself. I went on my shift in the morning, and that was roughly also the end of the day’s work. The large cell spaces were practically all empty, their inmates did whatever they had to do, each in his particular workplace. During the evening hours, I would open and lock doors, more in the manner of an obliging lackey than a surly prison guard, for the groups of prisoners returning from their work, perhaps, needless to say, neglecting to carry out the virtually mandatory frisking. After the evening meal, I would settle down for a bit of a chin-wag in the medics’ cell, then count the prisoners and report the number by internal telephone to the duty officers at the main gate; after lights out, I too would stretch out on my iron bed and sleep peacefully until reveille the next morning, if allowed to. In our prison, you see, I was the decent guard. If you get really bored some day, ask me to tell you about all the things I did for the poor prisoners. Heaps, if that is any saving grace. For some I even smuggled letters in and out—only for the most reliable ones, of course, as that was a fairly risky enterprise. During the day, too, I would occasionally poke my nose outside my room to run an eye over the prisoners waiting along the wall to cross “the Bridge of Sighs” for some reason, and if I spotted signs of dejection or exhaustion in any of them, I would call him out and take him to the toilets so he got a chance to move around and at least rest for a few minutes, and there’s no denying it, I greatly enjoyed playing the role
of mysterious Providence’s local vicar, who suddenly bestows on a prisoner, hey presto!, the thrill of a good deed as unexpected as it was suspiciously unjustified.

That is how I lived, then, resentful about my fate having discarded me there, yet as comfortable as could be in that discardedness, with twenty-four hours on duty alternating with twenty-four hours off, and I supposed that army service would eventually be over and the duties come to an end.

Looking back on it, I can find no explanation for that eerie sense of familiarity. If I try to summon it up, it’s as if I were trying to inspect the life of a stranger with whom I never had anything to do, and about whom I would prefer, if possible, to hear nothing more. The snag, though, is that he is constantly being talked about, and the person doing the talking is me. Do you remember our first conversation in the South Seas? You asked then the question, What was man was fit for? You were right, I too see that now: that really is the question, and an exceedingly awkward question at that, I sense.

One morning when I went on duty, I was greeted by my fellow guard—a swarthy, stocky, short-legged, and, to all appearances, spruce manikin, except that the prison-guard vocation had taken up residence in him, squatting there like a hideous reptile—with the information that one of the prisoners in solitary confinement was refusing food. I should note that several cells for solitary confinement were installed even on this purgatory-like floor, on side corridors off the ends of the main aisle, though they were not used, as in the nether regions on higher floors, for prolonged seclusion, let alone punishment; at most, unfortunates would spend the first few days of their detention there until they
had got through their first questioning by the examining magistrate and been assigned to a shared cell. There was therefore a speedy turnover in their inmates, so by the time I had registered a face, the next time it would be another looking at me when I opened up or, like it or not, checked through the spyhole. Of all my prison-guard duties, I found that shameful procedure perhaps the most difficult of all to accustom myself to—and if I’m complaining, just imagine what the person whom I was obliged to use it against would say! The very first time—I remember I was still in training for the job on the course—I had to be literally ordered to do it. My heart was in my mouth, I was so frightened of the spectacle that would unfold before me. In the end, it was different from what I had expected; not horrible, but perhaps something even worse: forlorn. Through the hole I could see a cell: a bunk, a toilet bowl without seat, a wash-basin—oh, and of course the man who had to live there. Later on, I tried to look at this as if it were not me looking but a prison guard, but of course it was not long before I had to resign myself to only being able to look as a prison guard, but in particular a prison guard who, sadly, just happened to be me. In no way could I accustom myself to that damned spyhole, through which it was possible to watch the prisoner in his cell at any time, possibly even the most inappropriate moment. It was explained to me that that was precisely the purpose: to be able to inspect the prisoner, check that he was not sick or harming himself or to catch him red-handed doing something prohibited. It was just that I had no wish catch anyone red-handed, and there was nothing at all that I wanted to inspect which might be repugnant or would displease me—I had no wish to know what a person gets up to behind the door, if he happens to
have been locked up in a solitary cell. It was not hard to guess, of course: he is scared and bored, and from certain signs that were eventually distilled, almost involuntarily, as a conclusion within me, I observed, to my astonishment, that even if the prison guard did not enter the cell from time to time, it seemed for some prisoners that this would only fulfil their sense of abandonment. I devised several obvious techniques, such as stamping as I made my way along the corridor, so they could hear that I was coming (which was against the rules: the ape-faced chief warden used to slip felt overshoes onto his boots and approach the coolers like a hyena which had been famished for months; before entering a cell, instead of knocking, I would fumble for a long time with the key on the iron door, as though I was having trouble finding the lock; and although the doors, fitted as they were, with sordid expediency, with a sort of drop-down window hatch, through which the unfortunates were given their food, I always opened the door, so that they would get some air, the noise of rattling dishes, a somewhat cheering glimpse of busy comings-and-goings. As I say, in our prison I counted as one of the better guards.

Well anyway, this prisoner wasn’t eating, says Short-arse. Maybe he’s sick, I tell him. The hell he is: he’s up to no good, says he. Chummy, says I, there’s no need straight off to … Fine, says he, he’s already put in a report, I should make reports about further developments otherwise he would be obliged to report that I am neglecting to make reports. Screw you, I retort in friendly fashion. Just bugger off home, I’m the one on duty now.

We chatted something along those lines, and then I quickly forgot all about it. What did I find, though? He really didn’t want to eat. Neither at noon, nor in the evening.

I waited until lights out, and when the stillness of the night had descended on the prison—a special kind of tranquillity this is, a lit-up, timeless night, the everlastingness of the nether regions, filled with dull, mysterious, muffled hissing and bubbling underwater murmurs, so to say—I open up the solitary cooler rather like an inflamed wound, with a degree of indistinct hope. ‘So, tell me why …,’ I kick off, something like that, not really able to see his long, thin face, as it is covered by a long, wispy beard which ends in a long, wispy, ruffled tip (they’ll soon shear that off when they stick him over in a shared cell, I thought to myself with my supercilious prison-guard gloominess). He tosses out in a flip way something to the effect that his principles demanded it—and I very specifically recall him using the word “principles.”

“What principles are those, then?” I ask with a kind smile, because I had the feeling then that there was no principle on earth that I couldn’t refute. “That I’m innocent,” he snaps, and you see, I don’t even have to refute that, for which of us is not innocent, and anyway: what does it mean?

I said it out loud, or maybe only thought so to myself, I don’t know, but anyway I entered his cell, as it were dropping whatever prison-guard reserve I had. I soon had to realize, though, that my efforts were completely futile: he wouldn’t listen to my arguments, didn’t budge when I ordered him, indeed, did not utter a single word after that. He just kept running that dark, obdurate look of his over my face, like a blindly groping hand. Like someone who doesn’t allow himself to be deluded for one second by deceitful words, he searched about like a cornered animal which was ready to dive under the bunk or scurry away between my legs at the first suspicious sign. I could see he was ready for anything,
looking on me as his enemy, or rather not even his enemy: a prison guard, a screw, a person with whom one does not enter a debate. His eyes were burning, with red blotches over his cheekbones; it was the second day that he had not eaten … I talked and talked; in the end I don’t know what annoyed me more: the look which obstinately banished him from the world of being understood and making himself understood, or the situation he had forced on me and which was slowly making a prisoner of me too, locking me in that cell, along with this prisoner, and all of a sudden, before I could escape, time would draw in on us and the night carry us away.

“Do you have the slightest idea what you can expect?” I asked him in the end—and, whatever the rules may say, I had long been addressing him in the familiar form, not out of any contempt, not at all, but driven purely by fraternal irritation, to be precise.

“You’re not eating?” I continue. “It’s just they won’t allow you that luxury here,” I laugh, though not out of any amusement. “You can starve, but only if they starve you. And if you don’t eat, they’ll make you, I can assure you. They’ll take you into the sickbay, push a tube down into your stomach, if possible scratching your gullet in the process—I’ve seen it happen,” I lie, though forgivably, as I had heard about what they did but, of course, had taken good care not to be party to such a spectacle. “And if you vomit it up,” I went on, “they run it in up your backside, or else they strap you down on a bed, stick needles into your veins, and push the nutrients in that way. And don’t go thinking that this somehow just happens, as if you were not there or not taking part in it. Or that you can sail through the whole thing without being tarnished by it. You’d be wrong,
very wrong!” I exclaim, and perhaps even I am not aware what sorts of fragmentary memories my own words are reopening within me, or what images are welling up from the depths, as from the cellar of a ruined house when the wind whistles through them. “No one who is tortured,” I yell, “No one can remain untarnished—that’s something I know all too well, and don’t ask me how. Afterwards you won’t be able to speak of innocence any longer, at best of survival. And if you should have a wish to die, that isn’t permitted either. You think they’ll feel any pity for you? They’ll bring you back from death’s door seven times over, don’t worry! Dying can only happen in the permitted manner: with them killing you.”

That’s how I spoke, and my words appeared to be ineffectual. “Is this what you want?” I had another go. “You are doing nothing more than inviting them to commit these outrages, don’t you see?”

All of a sudden, something came to mind; I don’t understand how it had not occurred to me before, or could it have been precisely this that was secretly guiding me all along?

“Apart from which,” I carried on, “you’ll be dragging others into disgrace along with yourself. I’ll have to write a report on you,” slipped from my mouth before I had a chance to think better of it. “Do you give any thought to other people’s innocence?!” I can hear my own reproachful voice. “Here, I’ve never lifted a finger against anyone …,” I stutter and, for all that I’m a prison guard, I might even have got round to begging the prisoner had something not pulled me up. What was that? Now, pin your ears back, or keep your eyes open, because you’ll hear, or rather read, the most disgusting and, at the same time, most obvious thing,
I might well say a flash of genius took wing here. Anyway, the beard covered up a lot, of course, but it seemed to me as though I spotted a scornful smile flitting over the prisoner’s face, at least briefly.

I have tried any number of times soberly to analyse that moment, and may I say in my defence that both analysis and sobriety have always turned out to be my downfall. The way I would like to remember it, the smile infuriated me to the point that I suddenly flew into a temper. However hard I try, however, I don’t recall that I was overcome by anger, especially an anger that would have deprived me of, or even just clouded, my judgement. No, all I felt was disgust, sudden despondency, resentment, and again disgust, which included this gaol-breathed prisoner, with whose, for me, all at once so extraneous wretchedness I had been locked together by the moment, through an equally extraneous series of causes, just as it included me. It was all, all, sweeping me toward the simplest solution, of course insofar as I can consider it a solution, to rid myself of that moment, with panic-stricken haste, and in the simplest possible way, as it comes. But I sensed a resistance, a stubbornly aloof, last-ditch, irrational resistance which is incomprehensibly and unfairly standing straight before me, when all I want is the light of reason, I am undoubtedly right as well; and then, abstractly as it were, I also sensed the disparity of incommensurable forces which pertains between a convict who is being stubborn and a prison guard, who, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, shoulder belt running diagonally across his chest, pistol dangling on his haunch, and trousers thrust into soft top boots, may be the very image of high-handedness and terror, should his whim so will it.