12. It’s Us

According to the timetable for each day, the cell should be cleaned twice, morning and evening. However, once was enough everywhere, except in a punishment cell.

“Bags on the bunks!” and off we would go wielding a dustpan and brush, a sponge and floor cloth until it was time for inspection. No messing around.

But why was it necessary to clean up in a room where there was hardly any free floor space, and where each inmate took great care to ensure that none of his own rubbish was left lying around. Even one single hair could give rise to a major quarrel; that’s why there weren’t any messy slobs in the decent cells. Even so, a proper clean up every day – that’s what we’re expected to do.

The movements with the brush (not everyone is lucky enough to have a besom – they’re a rarity) are short and artistic. It strikes the floor with every down stroke, to shake off the dust, a bit like a tap dance. You must wash out the cloth several times until it stops making the water murky.

Today he was on duty, so that’s why he presented what he had been able to buy when the list of items for sale in the prison shop was last brought round: a dustpan and a floor cloth, stuff for cleaning, washing powder (add a pinch to the water when you’re washing the floor for a nice, fresh smell) and sponges. He had managed to buy all these goodies! That’s something that doesn’t happen often!

Ten minutes after he had started on the cleaning he was startled to see a little black row of muck on the floor. He had to fill up the new dustpan twice. Yesterday there had been another pile exactly like it. Despairing of ever finding out who was trailing all the dirt into the cell, he decided to ask:

“It’s already been cleared up! Where’s it all coming from?”

“Just take a look: it’s dust from the blankets and mattresses, little bits of plaster from the walls, whitewash from the ceiling. It’s us. We’re the ones slowly breaking the prison up.”

25. Humanitarian Aid

In the well-off cells there was bound to be a good supply of everything that someone who had nothing might want. Most often in that position were prisoners who were awaiting trial on Article 205 (petty theft), the ones who, God alone knows why, had stolen some kind of pathetic, useless stuff. The only clothes they had were what they stood up in, and all they had probably amounted to no more than a packet of cigarettes that someone had given them out of pity on their way to the cell. You have to remember that they too have to wash, shave and dress according to the time of year. That’s why things were taken from the reserve supply and handed over. Just like that. Old boots of hard leather, torn trousers, a sweater without sleeves (they had gone off to fulfil some other necessary purpose) – it was all carefully collected and kept.

The bloke who had just been brought into the cell clearly had no claim to any of the worn-out scraps of clothing that there were in the cell. It was immediately obvious that he hadn’t been in prison long – you could tell by the way his eyes darted nervously around the cell. Even so, he was carrying two newish-looking bags full of stuff. He had obviously received a parcel or two, he wasn’t short of clothing or food. All the same, he was new to the cell, and a cell has certain traditions to abide by, so they told him:

“You got pen and paper? Sit down and write a request for humanitarian aid. Go ahead and write!”

“But I don’t need anything!”

“You’ve got to think about other people! You’re entitled to it, so write and ask for it!”

“Yes, but maybe if there’s something that other people want, I can ask for it to be transferred to them.”

“Just sit and write. ‘In connection with the absence of funds…’”

“Here’s a model letter. Copy it out.”

The request for humanitarian aid was written, and that evening it flew out through the hatch. The waiting began.

“When are they going to bring it? Tomorrow?”

The cell burst out laughing. From 6 in the morning until 10 in the evening the days either flew past or stretched out endlessly. People came and went. The suspense became part of his life. It wore him out, but still he went on waiting for the humanitarian aid. It was a matter of principle. There was something nagging him at the back of his mind: they owed him something, but they hadn’t given it to him yet. And one day they started handing out things through the hatch: five disposable razors each, half a bar of soap and some unrolled toilet paper. It had come! He signed the receipt for himself and the three lads who hadn’t been able to wait any longer – they had been taken off to do their time in a penal colony. He asked the official on the other side of the door how long the razors and the other stuff were supposed to last. In reply he heard:

“To the end of your stretch.”

36. The Book

It was foggy that morning. Actually, it was always like that. There were twelve men in the cell, and eleven of them were smokers; the puffing used to begin immediately after the wake up call. They did it in pairs. By the time the sixth pair was finishing, the first two were ready to start emitting smoke again. The smoke wafted upwards, hovering just beneath the ceiling, waiting for the time when there would be some ventilation built into the walls. They also smoked in the evening, not so heavily, and not in silence, but while listening to or telling stories about how they ended up in prison, what they were in for, where they did their last stretch and who was in the cell with them, that sort of thing. The twelfth man in the cell, the non-smoker, usually said nothing, but once suddenly came out with: “Do you know the writer Ray Bradbury? The one who wrote Fahrenheit 451.” There were bellows of “We know” and even “We’ve read it”.

“So right then, books got burned there, all of them. So that books should be preserved, people learned them off by heart and recounted them to each other. Why don’t we do the same?”

“Is there a book you know by heart?”

“Not exactly. But I was in another cell before this one, and there was a bloke there who ordered a book, and I did too, then everyone stopped smoking.”

“Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking?”

“Well, no, it was a bit different. I can’t remember the cover exactly, but I read the book. And all the lads kept on recounting what it said every day. If you like, I can tell you.”

“OK, then. Spit it out.”

Bearing in mind that someone had already read Carr, he had to make up a new book ‘on the hoof’, an even better one, by adapting the old one a little. Unlike Carr, he could be free with his language and not be afraid of inventing bold scientific experiments and the fates of fictitious individuals.

He insisted that no one should stop smoking before he had finished his story, but then he tormented them for many days and hours with one single thought. Smoking is not a harmful habit; it is a drug addiction which is of absolutely no benefit whatsoever. One single thought in a thousand guises. If anyone wanted to argue, he would mercilessly give another hundred explanations. When he at last announced that he would finish his story on the next day, and they all could give up, they were ecstatic.