The Unseen (19 page)

Valeriana starts speaking and she starts staring straight at Cotogno we've had separate meetings we women on our own have talked about things among ourselves that's how it started without being planned then it became something more serious it became a need to bring out everything we had inside us how we've lived our relationships with you here in the collective and to make comparisons with the relationships we'd had before well we've discovered that there's no difference being comrades should mean being different from normality being better more advanced culturally and most of all in terms of human relationships but you're not a single millimetre more advanced than other men in relationships you have with women

in our meetings we've managed to bring it all into the open it's been hard lovely sometimes but nasty too we've talked about things that are personal intimate and private what people call fears guilt feelings inferiority complexes all that we experience in relationships with you with each one of you then in individual ways with the men that we're with she's interrupted by Lauro it must be too much for him okay okay you confess everything to one another like we used to do with the priest but Mora doesn't let him go on but how can you be so crude you're crude like when you touch me up like when you fuck me have you never noticed how crude you are Lauro freezes he feels all eyes on him but Mora hasn't finished

you workers' vanguard acting the trade union lover boy because I know very well that you prefer making your smart-alec interventions in the factories where there are women workers that way maybe you get to fuck one of them after the mass meeting you and your partner Ortica because instead of just talking about forty hours pay for thirty-five why don't you tell us about the goings on in the factory the bottom pinching the fucking in the toilets only once upon a time it was the foremen that went after women in the assembly shops while now it's the workers' vanguards like you Lauro is ashen he can hardly stammer what's this have you discovered women's liberation in telling the whole world that I don't fuck you properly well then why don't you go and get yourself fucked by somebody else seeing as it's the only thought you've got in your head

Mora's arm lets fly on cue with a half-peeled orange she had in her hand it's aimed straight at Lauro's face but it misses and lands smack on Aglio who's behind him at first he doesn't move in the general silence everyone's waiting for him to get mad but all he does is to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and quickly wipe his face a couple of little pats to smooth his moustache again then he gets up and goes into another room now Verbena starts speaking she's a bit tense to begin with I'd like to say that it's not that relationships between men and women in the factory are any different from the ones there are in our collective it's the same crap the same roles and you Nocciola you'd better cut out that sarcastic laugh of yours you really had better seeing that you go to whores to fuck and then when you come here you act as if those things were of no interest to you

I interrupt her I'm sorry for Nocciola I say I don't think it's right to insult him and it seems to me it's going too far to attack people personally like this China must be annoyed with me because she attacks me right away you too you'd better shut up you're the one who's always thinking of something else the revolutionary cause comes first and sex comes later maybe on the side I'm convinced you wouldn't care which one of us you fucked while you were thinking of something else thinking about restructuring thinking about the crisis the decentralization of production what does it matter we're a step below you we come in handy for things like that just as we come in handy for using the duplicating machine and handing out leaflets there we go it's my turn I'm thinking how boring it is they're all just repeating the same thing I get up and leave the room I don't even pretend to be insulted I leave them to it

five more minutes go by and in comes Cotogno who hasn't even opened his mouth and he stands in front of me and Aglio sitting there in silence on our chairs Ortica arrives with Nocciola Ortica's fuming they could all do with a couple of good slaps that's what I think and Nocciola remarks maybe they've become lesbians but Cotogno shakes his head I thought he was thinking about Valeriana and that he was afraid of how their relationship might end up but then I realized we all realized that this wasn't just about little personal affairs it was about a much bigger affair as we understood later it was about a trauma a big trauma a big rupture maybe bigger than all the other things we were doing and that changed us all later

31

To the left is a guard inside a bullet-proof glass booth and above this are the closed-circuit cameras covering the different sections of the courtyard all separated by solid gates very small sections no bigger than the cells above each section is a heavy iron grating at the end under a small concrete shelter a tap with a washbasin and a stand-up toilet dirty but still better than the stinking bucket now at last I can have a shit even if there's no privacy because a few yards away on the other side of the gate the guards are patrolling carrying their truncheons and there's the one in the booth and the closed-circuit cameras then from the wing of the prison that I can see from there voices reach me and I realize that they must be together in the cells up there they're not alone like me

I've never experienced solitude or at least I've never had a feeling of solitude and I had no idea that the fact of being made to be alone and not seeing anyone else could be a hard ugly and depressing thing they put you there deliberately to scare you to make you suffer an enforced solitude that you haven't chosen that they justify with the story that this way you won't mess up their enquiries and that you can reflect you can think about things it's hypocritical crap they put you there to scare you to intimidate you to unnerve you to make you suffer to give you a taste of their strength to make you feel bad without being able to do a thing about it you can only put up with it and if you make any show of rebellion the guards are there outside with their truncheons fingering them so as to let you know what to expect if you give them any trouble

no toilet paper and so I tear up my handkerchief and wipe myself with it I walk backwards and forwards here instead of four and a half paces there are nearly seven but at least there isn't the stink of the cells the guard with the truncheon comes up to the gate and he taps with the keys on the bars to indicate that time's up that it's time to go back inside three quarters of an hour it's not long and it felt even shorter then they made me take my exercise time early before the others so that I'd have it completely alone they lock the others up alone in a section too but they let them have their exercise all at the same time in two or three shifts

shortly after I go back to the cell the working prisoner brings me the watered down white coffee another day begins another day just like the first marked by the same things the guards' cell check and the working prisoner bringing you food and the guard coming by for the next day's shopping after lunch suddenly I heard a voice calling me from the next window it was a guy who was next door to me and whose face I never even saw I only heard his voice though when he started asking me questions asking me why I'd ended up in prison I hesitated I held back because I didn't trust him I thought it could be somebody they'd put there just to loosen my tongue

however the doubt subsided because he struck me as someone totally sincere he began by passing on useful information he told me he could see it was the first time I'd been in prison and so he saw it was important to tell me things to explain to me how things worked there because the more things you know the more you feel secure he told me not to worry he told me prison isn't like this this isn't normal prison because upstairs you can make pasta you can cook whatever you want they have all the books they want they're in cells with other people in short he explained how it was upstairs and then he also gave me some legal advice he told me that after the investigating judge's questioning I'd be able to have visits from my lawyer and my relatives too

and he told me that if I wasn't married and I wanted to see my girlfriend I could fill in a form saying we cohabited and how this was done and all these things and in fact none of the guards interfered to make us shut up to stop us talking and this really amazed me and then a few days later he also managed to pass me a book through the working prisoner who brought the food it was a pulp thriller sex and guns however this book was all written in French and I didn't know French and he was amazed that I didn't know French he said but how come you politicals are all teachers and you don't know French well you must know English then no I told him I don't know English either he was quiet for a minute he was really astonished that I didn't know any languages

then that evening for the first time something happens that later I'll see happen dozens of times in gaol I hear the sound of an insistent voice from one of the cells it was maybe six or seven o'clock there's a voice raised I can't manage to make out the words however I can hear him calling the guard he goes on calling guard but obviously the guard doesn't come because the guy goes on calling insistently with an insistence that's unnerving and it's impossible for the guard not to hear because I can hear him walking up and down the voice is raised higher and higher and it becomes a shout followed by insults then this guy in the cell starts beating against the door probably using his feet because it makes a loud noise against the metal that reverberates in the corridor

the guy screams hammers curses and calls out maybe he's ill he calls the guard maybe because he's ill I'm shaken and uncertain whether to do anything I can hear no other sound but the noise he's making and I sense that everyone else must have stopped talking because I can hear no other voices no other sounds from the other cells I'm uncertain my first thought is that I ought to start hammering too because if he's calling with such insistence there must be a good reason I'm surprised nobody else is doing it while I'm still hesitating about whether to start hammering on the metal door too I hear a rapid shuffling in the corridor feet running fast a lot of feet like a group of people running along the corridor it's easy to picture them because the corridor is empty and every sound reverberates amplified

then the shuffling stops a few cells past mine and I can hear the door opening this guy's screaming even more but now the screams are different they are like screams of fear but I still don't understand what he's saying then I can hear confused sounds piercing screams of pain and it suddenly dawns on me that they're beating him up now along with the voice that's screaming louder and louder I can hear other voices and muffled blows against the wall as if they were bashing him against the wall they're beating him up there's no mistake the thing goes on for a long time or at least it seems to me that it goes on for a long time because every one of those sounds I hear makes me think they're still beating him they haven't stopped beating him and there are a lot of them beating him and I picture a bunch of guards hitting somebody inside that hole hitting one another so as to get at him there inside that cramped space

then the sounds and the blows stop suddenly I can hear the clear sound of voices two or three people in conversation and a continuous moaning then the gate and the door closing with a heavy clang that reverberates through the corridor then nothing else for a minute or two then metallic sounds it's the spy-holes being opened briefly and then banged shut they're going round the cells and opening the spy-holes I hear the one next to mine then mine is opened too I'm beside the gate beside the spy-hole I've been there standing still from the first moment I hesitated whether to beat against the metal door as well or not I've been there standing still waiting

the spy-hole is lowered a face a young dark face with eyes staring wildly that at first I think is the sergeant of the guard but it's not the sergeant it's someone else also dark skinned and with dark eyes but younger his face covered in sweat he looks inside for a second disturbed excited by the violence he looks me straight in the eyes for a moment his eyes wild then immediately slams the spy-hole shut a feeling of hatred wells up as the blood goes to my head the feeling wells up a feeling I'd never had before a feeling of hatred an extremely violent desire to kill wanting to kill him right then and there something unknown to me which was a very violent desire wanting to crush wanting to smash that face wanting to murder

I felt ill then at once I also felt low like a feeling of weariness like a great depressing weariness that made it hard to stand up any longer that made my legs weak I stretched out on the bed the graffiti get all jumbled together a web of indecipherable signs confused with the stains of dampness with the blistered crumbling plaster the cracks in the floor with the bright light that hurts my eyes I roll on to my side with my face towards the wall and straight in front of me are the brown stains those specks and splatters on the damp yellowing plaster and now I no longer have any doubts about what they are about what made all those stains now I know what that colour is those brown stains splashed all over the walls of the cell

32

In the isolation cells people often just can't stand it and so they injure themselves because once you've been shoved in there alone inside that hole injuring yourself giving yourself injuries becomes the only weapon you have to attract attention to yourself to protest against the long term of isolation so as to get the judge to carry out the interrogation some people manage to get razor blades and cut themselves with them some swallow bits of glass bits of iron some break their own fingers and things like that the forms self-injury takes are varied and inventive everyone has to make do with what he has or what he can manage to get hold of some bang their heads against the wall it seems incredible but there was even someone who took a run at the wall and smashed his head against it splitting his head because it's the only way some injure themselves because they're depressed or also often just to get treatment if they're ill and they're not being treated