Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage (18 page)

‘
And the
trousers.’

Perry slid them off and kicked
them onto the floor. Wearing only his pants, he suddenly felt
embarrassed and cupped his hands over his privates.

The guards smirked.

Campi knelt down and gathered
up the trousers and ran his hand along the lining. Perry felt the
air slide out of his lungs. A crooked smile appeared on Campi’s
face.

‘
What’s this
we’ve got here then?’

The hidden pocket. All his
money.

Campi had it all.

20

February
ended, but the sky still shook with late summer heat. Perry, used
to the cold Februarys of home, found the heat doubly oppressive.
With most citizens summering in the south, many of the capital’s
estancias, homes and shops lay abandoned ready to be peopled again
in autumn. At the town limits, on
Las
Heras
Street, the National Penitentiary
neighboured stunted cornfields and yellowed grassland. Cicada
chirrups beat ceaselessly against the perimeter walls. A scorched
wind puffed up the occasional cloud of dust from the mud-hardened
street, tanning the whitewash walls a dirty red.

Inside, the heat held no
bearing on daily life. The prisoner workshops still had their
supervisors, the administration offices their administrators, the
courtrooms had their judges and the prisoner pavilions their full
complement of guards. The main sentry tower, thick as a lighthouse,
had an unbroken view of the penitentiary grounds. For the watchers
and the watched, the routine remained unchanged.

It took only a few days to
learn the drill. Monday to Saturday, Count was at six followed by
breakfast. Then it was Work Time with forty minutes for lunch. Then
there was an afternoon Count followed by Patio Rest until seven.
Final Count at half-past and lights out at nine. That Perry’s life
had been reduced to such a strict routine was annoying, but he
could cope with that. It was only a way of structuring a day after
all, like school. What he really couldn’t stand was the unfairness;
it gnawed at him every waking moment of every day. He no longer
even bothered protesting his innocence. Anybody who’d listen had
already got tired of it on his first day. He was just another
inmate claiming the same thing. His one remaining hope was his
trial.

Sunday Mass was mandatory for
all inmates. That first Sunday, Perry filed in past the guards.
There were two confession boxes on each wing and an oversized Jesus
drooping from a giant crucifix at the front. The altar underneath
was covered in a rich red velvet cloth, giving the impression that
His blood had pooled beneath. Perry eyed it balefully, what good
had Jesus ever done for him?

His grey prison pyjamas were
loose fitting, but still trapped in too much heat. He rolled up his
sleeves with the hope of cooling his arms and shuffled along a pew
at the back. The spot by the wall looked inviting. He might rest
his head against the cool stone and nap during the service.

‘
Inglés
!’ A guard barked.

Perry froze.

‘
New inmates
sit on the front row for Mass,’ he fired in all-too-quick
Spanish.

How long would it be before he
was no longer deemed ‘new,’ he wondered. Perry traipsed to the
front row, finding a free spot between two wardrobe-sized inmates.
He burrowed into the gap to vague mumbles of annoyance, but he was
too hot and bothered himself to care. He fanned his face with his
cap and waited for the service to begin.

The chaplain appeared by the
eastern confession box and made his way to the front. The low
murmur of the chapel turned to silence. He was a crow-like man, all
dark robes and bushy eyebrows. He faced the hanging Jesus and in
deep and clear Spanish, began his sermon.

‘
Whenever I
look upon Jesus, I am reminded that when He was fastened to the
cross, He prayed for the very people who crucified Him.’ Pause.
‘His forgiveness was offered at the most impossible of moments. At
his side, two criminals, two thieves suffered the same fate as he.
I quote Luke 23 verse 39: “One of the criminals who were hanged
railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and
us!” ’ The chaplain bellowed the quote without looking at the
bible. He turned to face them now.

‘
This man
offered no repentance. No forgiveness. Only a plea to save his
self. Hardened to the last, obstinate in his unbelief.’ Pause. ‘The
second criminal however, was truly, faithfully repentant and asked
for nothing more than forgiveness. This repentant criminal was
seized at the last from the burning. A monument to Divine
mercy.’

The chapel was so quiet, but
for the echo of the chaplain’s voice. Perry wiped sweat off his
brow and tried to concentrate on the words.

‘
And was the
forgiveness that Jesus Christ showed on the cross not to open the
kingdom of heaven to all penitent, obedient believers? Two men! One
saved through repentance, the other, died, smothered by his own
unbelief, even though a crucified saviour was near! True
repentance, we must all realise, is never too
late.
’

The chaplain made a show of
eyeballing each of the new prisoners in turn. Despite the heat,
Perry felt a shiver run through him as the chaplain locked eyes
with him and moved onto the next.

‘
Each of you
…look within yourselves. Which of the two criminals will you choose
to be?’

As Perry considered this
question, the spell broke. He was clearly neither of the two
criminals. He was in lock-up for something he didn’t do. He was in
a country against his will. He was a victim – what on earth did he
have to be repentant for? Of anyone being crucified, the one he had
the most in common with was surely Jesus himself.

The chaplain held the bible
aloft.

‘
Let us
pray.’

Perry dipped his head and
interlocked his fingers. Forgiveness? No. He prayed that Campi
would burn in hell. Then Niels Saldrup for not helping him and
finally whichever bastard spirited him away to Argentina. For him,
no punishment was severe enough. Dr Fairbanks. Maxwell. That coal
porter. He might as well throw them all on hell’s pyre with the
others. Amen.

After supper,
Perry returned to his cell and read, for the umpteenth time, the
notice screwed to the wall:
Rules for the
prisoner
. Though his Spanish wasn’t totally
fluent, it boiled down to obeying the guards, being quiet during
Patio Rest and while in your cell. The listed punishments referred
to a loss of
privilegios -
he guessed must mean privileges - or
La Cueva
. This word was
unfamiliar; he had no clue what it meant but he doubted it was
good.

Above his bed, a letterbox
window let in a trough of dusky light. At the tiny desk, he took
out paper and a pencil from the drawer, chewed on the pencil as he
had done when he was at school. He longed to write to Eva, to
explain what had happened, to tell her to wait for him, but he knew
it was as pointless in here as it was on the outside. Ma had no
postal address he knew, even if Eva were still there. And now he
had the added complication of earning prison credits to buy
anything from soap to stationery or from stamps to a flannel.

The pencil splintered and
cracked between his teeth. The wet, woody taste was unpleasant but
at least put him to mind of the Bishopstoke woodland. How he longed
for its singing birds, the trickle of the river and the fresh
English air. He wished he knew how long he’d have to wait for his
trial. He had to get out.

Somebody was shouting on the
lower deck, screaming with anger. Perry sifted through the tirade
to pick up a couple of obscenities. Well, at least there was
someone in here more pissed off than him. He returned to the empty
page. The pencil was fractured, but still serviceable. He couldn’t
think of anybody obvious who could help him. He wished he’d been
friendlier, made more of an effort with people. It just hadn’t
seemed worth it - he hadn’t counted on staying for more than a
couple of weeks. There was Vázquez, Lucho at the corner bar and the
Irish lout in his lodgings. None were like to be able to help him
even if they wanted to. The only person of influence he could think
of was the inspector, Niels Saldrup. He had seemed a man of logic
and reason, at least up to the point where Campi had found the
money. Perry could understand how it looked, but most workers kept
money hidden in secret pockets and the like. To his mind, there was
no real evidence against him and under closer scrutiny the case
against him would surely fold. He just needed someone to actually
bother with the scrutiny part. Perry remembered his prayer from
earlier and hoped, with ridiculous superstition, that wishing hell
upon Niels Saldrup wasn’t going to undermine his cause. He felt so
helpless it was sickening.

‘
Knock
knock.’

Perry twisted around in his
chair; it was Martín, from the neighbouring cell, standing on his
threshold. He was a short, thick-lipped man, with straggly black
hair that fell in crinkles around his moon-face and a belly that
tested the strength of the buttons on his prisoner pyjamas.

‘
Yes?’ Perry
said.

‘
You do Press
tomorrow with me.’

They had barely exchanged more
than a few words before and Perry was surprised to be addressed in
English. He reckoned his Spanish was slightly better than Martín’s
English but he wasn’t going to pass up the chance to talk in his
mother tongue.

‘
Right,’ he
got up from his chair. ‘Is it difficult?’

Martín rasped
between rubbery lips and beat a dismissive hand in the air. ‘You
learn everything here soon enough
Inglés.
’

‘
Inglés.
That’s what everyone’s been
calling me. Am I the only Englishman in here?’

Martín
shrugged. ‘Is just a nickname, everybody have one,’ he pointed to
his drooping belly with his thumb. ‘Me,
el
sapo.
The frog.
’

It was a fair enough match.

‘
Hasta
mañana.
’

‘
Until
tomorrow,’ Perry replied.

Perry was issued a single
candle when he arrived, from then on he would have to earn credits
to buy more through working the Press, Laundry, Kitchen or one of
the workshops. As the light faded, he lit it and resolved to write
to Niels Saldrup before the call for lights out. He had barely
pressed pencil to paper when he heard a desperate shout. He reached
for the stub, cupped the flame and hurried over to the bars. On the
floor below, he made out shadows struggling.

‘
Suéltame!
Eh! Suéltame!
’

The words were
frantic.
Let go of me!
Then he heard a new sound, a tap of metal like a spot of rain
on a dustbin lid. Then a second clang, a third and fourth and soon
the whole penitentiary was echoing with the discordant torrent of
metal on metal. Opposite his cell, men silhouetted by candlelight
were banging their mugs against the bars of their cells. What on
earth was going on? A wolf howl rose above the din.

‘
Silencio
!’ a guard yelled, but for
once nobody paid any attention. Perry realised he could use the
racket as cover.

‘
Pssst! Che!
Martín,’ Perry hissed.

His neighbour stopped banging
his mug.

‘
Qué
?’

‘
What’s going
on?’ he asked.

‘
They taking
someone to
La
Cueva
.’

‘
La
Cueva
?’ Perry asked. He
remembered it was a punishment on the
Rules for The Prisoner
tacked on his
wall.

‘
Who are they
taking?’

‘
No
idea
Inglés.
Someone on the ground floor,’ he banged his mug again, plainly
in no mood for further conversation. Perry returned to his letter,
trying to think through the percussive beating and get his plea for
help down on paper.

The following morning, Perry
joined Martín for his new duty. From the breakfast hall it was a
short walk to the seven prisoner workshops. The corridor bent round
in a semi-circle with the workshops stationed like bicycle spokes
around the penitentiary core. Press was the last workshop, with two
guards stationed on the door.

Perry entered and was
immediately taken aback by the size of the thing.

‘
It’s
huge!’

‘
Press,’
Martín said.

Perry reckoned it was about the
size of four train trucks welded together. It wasn’t entirely
unfamiliar. On the steamship over he had been obliged to swab the
floor of the engine room on a daily basis, a supposedly light
punishment for stowing away, albeit involuntarily. The oily looking
drums, dials and straps on the Press were neater and newer than the
vast walls of haggard iron on the ship.

Perry counted five other men
working on the machine; oiling parts with rags, preparing the paper
feed and checking dials. He walked the length of the machinery with
Martín, wondering what his role could possibly be; daunted at the
prospect of doing something wrong that could break this silent
monster. He tried to trace the connections between the parts, to
guess how it might work; it looked like steam powered the cogs, the
straps then pulled round the printing drums, inking each sheet as a
bicycle wheel would touch each new piece of earth. Perry was
fascinated, though nervous; he couldn’t wait to see it actually
work.