Men in Prison (23 page)

A sudden glow of light strikes me in the face. The guard passes, stealthy as a thief, a dark lantern in his hand. Then a wild scream tears through the night. The silence, like thick mire, engulfs it.

“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

A strong voice now shouts this appeal; a feverish head beats rhythmically against the wall. Rapid steps clatter up the iron stairs. A door opens. Murmurs.

“Jesus!” repeats the desperate voice; “Jesus!”

Other voices, low-pitched, try to snuff out that voice.

Three giant shadows, three guards, surround Dillot, the seminarist, in his cell. He is in his nightshirt, his joined hands tremble, his forehead is burning.

“‘E’s loony,” says Cauliflower.

“Throw a blanket over his head,” whispers Ironsides. “Come on!”

The shadows grow larger around the man in the nightshirt, who finally notices them in his fever, and collapses, sobered by his fear, rolling in the dark blanket thrown over him like a sack. He struggles against it for a few seconds with the fury of a drowning man. His arm finds an opening and his voice, now strident, comes through, no longer calling the Son of Man, but men:

“Help! Murder! Help!”

“Will you shut up,” growls Ironsides.

A huge hand crashes down over the lunatic’s mouth, choking off his cries with a gag. The silence, like muddy water, swallows up this madman as they toss him, gagged, into a sack.

… I slept like a stone. Another day is dawning. I am ready. I shall wear down the Mill.

THREE KINDS OF MEN INHABIT THE PRISON, MORE DISTANT THAN IF THEY LIVED
on opposite sides of the ocean. There are the soldiers, sent over from the army post, who take care of outer security. They stand guard in the towers on the outside wall. The guards live inside with us. Many of them have homes and families. They go out to cafés. They wear a uniform with yellow trim which is only slightly different from that of a customs man or traffic cop. But they spend two thirds of their lives inside these walls. The irrevocable condemnation which weighs down the poor oppresses them more heavily than it does most of us. Inmates serve out their sentences, then they leave these walls. Guards don’t leave until they are ready to retire, at sixty, only to finish out their days in dismal, provincial wine stoops. On the back streets of little towns you find those empty cafés, still lighted by oil lamps, whose drab furnishings seem to reek of sordid resentments and stale quarrels. That is where Cauliflower, with his bovine brow, Spike Chin, with his copper complexion, Ironsides, with his strangler’s grip, and Latruffe; pale and flabby, jangling his cupboard keys in his pudgy hands as he now jangles those of the cell block, will finish out their days; playing pinochle. Seeing these old men holding their greasy cards, a chance observer would feel strangely chilled, as if a shadow, ready to snatch him, had suddenly come between him and life; for the old hands of the “screws” continue to play out the same absurd round on the patch of green felt, under the sign of the queen of spades.

Guards fresh out of the barracks start in at eight hundred francs a year. For thirty-five years, from the ages of twenty-five to sixty, they spend twelve hours a day in jail, under the strictest discipline, forbidden to smoke, to talk to the inmates, to talk unnecessarily among themselves, to sit down or to read on duty, while they themselves are kept under watch by the sergeants and are ready, in any case, to denounce each other for the slightest infraction of the rules.

The uniformed man guards his flock of inmates. The same silence weighs down on him; but we are a crowd, our glances are full of understanding, and the guard is alone, surrounded by false or elusive glances, watched by the whole workshop. Are his hours any less heavy than ours? We suffer for years; he suffers by the day; and in the evening he goes out under the poplars toward his supper, his wine, his newspaper, his wife. Several have the bloated faces of alcoholics. Others, yellow-skinned, have liver and intestinal diseases brought back from the colonies. Some are potbellied: peasants living in idleness on potatoes and sour wine; doubtless they find their life a soft one because their hands, destined for rough work on the soil, are idle.

The guards are no better and no worse than the men they guard. We know them all. We know that Tartarin’s sad gaze is sincere; he’s a nice old fellow who doesn’t bother anybody. We know that the elegant Marseillais has syphilis and that he nearly turned bad, having been in trouble as a kid; that’s why he is still a “regular guy.” We know that Reseda, also known as Flowerpot, a big awkward fellow with a red nose, has a good heart and drinks because his wife puts horns on him. But the man who called him “cuckold” was put in his place by Richardeau: “Don’t be a jerk! Can’t you see that man isn’t happy? And I’ll bet you’re more of a cuckold than he is!” We know that Duck Feet, who wears the medal of the Senegalese campaign, is a bit of a nut, friendly but sometimes nasty, and has trouble making ends meet because of his large family. We like Old Gramps, rickety and all white, whose wizened face reminds us of the dead-end kid he used to be. We like him because he once told us:

“Go on, stop complaining. You’ll get out of here. Me, I’ve spent my whole life in this joint: thirty-four years. Twelve more months to retirement. I wouldn’t give two pins for the life I’ve led, you know. And what am I worth now, tell me?”

Not much, it’s true. Gramps doesn’t care about his job and lets us talk; we watch out so he doesn’t get caught. “No point getting him chewed out just at the end!”

There are probably more bad “screws”
(“gaffs”
in French, from the obsolete slang verb
“gaffer”:
to see) than good ones. Always on their toes, they have the hunter’s instinct. In the workshop, they unexpectedly turn on their heels, throwing the prisoners off their guard, to pounce on a whispered conversation behind the type cases. They notice the thin, white edge of a scribbled note stuffed into an open book, sniff out the
vaguest trace of tobacco in the clothes of a man being searched. Every morning they send a whole stack of reports to the Warden. The other guards, if only to avoid being cited for negligence or incompetence, are thus forced to write up a certain number of infractions. They simply pick out a few unfamiliar faces for punishment.

A few of us were talking about the bad ones one morning in the infirmary courtyard: some consumptives, a blind man, and a fellow recovering from typhus, huddling together in a patch of sunlight. Almost every one spoke up in judgment:

“There’s Madagascar, who steals our letters to get the stamps …”

“Dupart broke a prisoner’s arm after putting him in irons …”

“Aborton lied under oath and sent some poor bastard to forced labor …”

“Cauliflower, when he was a guard in the kitchen, used to steal so much that we nearly starved to death …”

“Begaud, you know, the one they call d’Artagnan, steals wine from the canteen and puts in water … I saw him …”

“And Half Pint got paid twenty francs for carrying a package over the wall and then turned it over to the Warden himself!”

“All of ‘em, go on, all of ‘em,” said someone in despair, “they’re all the same. They’re no better than us …

“They’re worse …”

“They have more power.”

“The ones with more power are the worst.”

They are neither more powerful nor worse. Men are without power in the Mill. And the system is worse than the men.

WE SPEND SUNDAYS IN THE WORKSHOP
. T
HE SILENCE OF THE MACHINES STI
fles our voices. The lack of activity keeps us from moving. We are riveted in our places; the hours drag on slowly, a sluggish river heavy with the silt of memories. We don’t have enough books, especially good books, to use as a steady refuge. We pass from the idle immobility of the workshop to the rhythmic round of the exercise yard. The round goes on and on, sometimes in the heat (our old tunics, buttoned to the neck according to regulations, clinging to our damp flesh), sometimes in the cold (nipping our fingers with invisible pincers). Happy enough if the three trees in the prison yard, frosted with silver dust, remind us of the enchantment of a park in winter.

Twice a month, on Sunday, from ten o’clock until noon, the inmates write their families on stationery with a penitentiary letterhead. It is forbidden to discuss the prison or any subject not directly related to personal affairs … Nouzy, writing to his wife, gave her some advice on the education of their little boy: “… Make especially sure they don’t teach him to respect fetishes; teach him, as early as possible, to see through hypocrisy …” His Honor the Civilian Controller summoned prisoner number 6852 into the little workshop accounting office. His Honor the Civilian Controller Sibour had a sharp nose, a moldy complexion, narrow, square shoulders, and a beige overcoat which came straight down over his big flat feet. He pointed to these lines with a stubby, waxlike finger:

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The stevedore from Rouen, a sly old anarchist, narrowed his lively little eyes:

“That? … fetishes? Why, they’re fetishes, Your Honor, Sir.”

“I’m not talking to you about fetishes. I’m asking you-what you’re writing here to your spouse.”

This official savored the word “spouse.” “His ‘spouse,’ Hell!” said a voice behind him.

“Well, Your Honor, Sir, they’re my ideas …”

“Understand, Nouzy, that you’re not in this place to expound your ideas. If I catch you at it again, I’ll prohibit you from writing. Write this letter over for me for next Sunday …”

“Without the ideas, Your Honor, Sir?”

“You’ve understood me. You may go.”

Happily, few men allowed themselves the privilege of expounding any ideas. Nonetheless, an order from the Warden was posted in the workshop, for the benefit of the half dozen of us who held out, enjoining the inmates to make sure to “write out your correspondence with brevity, dealing, without digressions of any sort, with your family affairs exclusively.” Those who had left loved ones behind in life—a child, a woman waited for, dreamed of for years now in the haunted nights of their cells, in the senseless rounds, in the painful hours of sharp despair—these men turned to the task of writing with an uneasiness mingled with anger and disgust. How could they resist writing what they felt, searching for the words to express the inexpressible? How could they forego the urge to vent that stifled, twisted cry, filling a page mulled over, night after night with words of reproach for the letters that never came, plunging their nights into despair, tormenting their souls with unbearable fear and jealousy? But how could they write on that sheet which bears, next to the letterhead,
the inmate’s registration number,
that sheet which will be read by Monsieur Roussot, the mail clerk (known as “Pinch Ass” because of his skinny behind), and perhaps by his Honor the Civilian Controller, Monsieur Sibour (known as “Verdigris”)?

“When I write my wife,” said Guillaumet, “and when I think that cuckold of a Pinch Ass and that eunuch of a Verdigris are going to pick over my letter with sly little smiles, I’d like to throw this iron crowbar into their faces! What a relief that would be!”

Duclos, my other neighbor, whose registration was Number 4552 (which meant that he had survived four generations of prisoners), said in an almost inaudible voice:

“The worst of it is that you can’t even bare your soul. They always manage to find it and grab it in their filthy hands. After eighteen years, that’s the one thing I haven’t been able to get used to.”

Duclos, the parricide; became my neighbor during my fourth year. For the preceding fifteen years, he had held an office job that kept him clear of the guards’ harassment, allowed him to read and write, and provided him with an incomparable view: ten yards of green grass, a rough stone fountain, and a little pond where goldfish swam about peacefully. The desk of the “general accountant” faced a single window, which looked out over the Warden’s little garden. Alone, his stupid task over for the day, his canteen receipts and supply sheets sent off, Duclos would open Spinoza or
Creative Evolution
and, riveted to his chair by heart disease, with his chilly hands hidden nearly all the year round in a muff of old wool batting, his beret pulled down almost to his ears, looking, with his great nose, his bony cheeks, and his fleshless neck, like Holbein’s portrait of old Erasmus, he would begin to dream. The years had deadened his sufferings, dulled his memories, worn out his body, drained the blood from his brain. “My intellect,” he used to tell me, “has not faltered; but it has grown dim. I have never resigned myself; but resignation has entered me, has bent me down to the ground and told me: ‘Rest.’ To tell the truth, I’m not sure it didn’t tell me: ‘Die, slowly.’” His mind, often slack, no longer followed his book with the patience and ardor of an earlier time: Through the bars of the window his eyes wandered over the little garden with its hardy grass, its rosebush and lilac tree, before settling on that calmest of invitations to daydreaming: traced lightly in the water, like our destiny, in a pond as narrow as human life itself, the evanescent arabesques of the goldfish gliding through the water. “There are so many prisons in the universe,” thought the old prisoner; “every prison is a universe, every universe a prison … Those fish inside their four-foot basin, these men enclosed in their destiny, ourselves in this jail; and all the people who were born and who will die in the airless, lightless rooms of this little town …” He could no longer imagine a sky that was not cut into rectangles by bars. And up there, the celestial spheres turned ceaselessly in their immense crystal prison. He wasn’t sure if
he
were acquiring greater wisdom or simply moving toward a kind of contemplative insanity. He was as calm as it is possible to be in the Mill. “I was really well off. Two or three times a month I used to get hold of a newspaper …” This sinecure aroused jealousies. While Duclos was meditating, Moure, a former attendant in a Jesuit establishment (sex crimes, eight years) lived in his shadow, collecting accounting errors, little favors done in violation of the regulations, oversights of hands numbed by eighteen years of captivity,
dangerous secrets … Moure had as much patience in his soul as he had unctuousness in his movements, velvet in his voice, pallor in his face, and complacent servility in his eyes and in his spine. His denunciation, ripened over a period of three years, was a masterpiece of irrefutability. They went easy on Duclos, who spent thirty days in the “hole,” from which he emerged stumbling, his limbs grown a little more sluggish, his hands a little more gnarled, to become my neighbor. I discovered that he was a man of absolute integrity and rare firmness of character. We were already in his debt for the gift of his books. His presence brought us yet another priceless acquisition.