The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  The officer at the table stopped speaking to the warder of the van. He picked up his pen and called out:

  “Line up there, will you?” He was the reception clerk of the prison. He began perfunctorily to read out the particulars of each man’s sentence and to enter it in the register with the name and occupation and religion and the amount of money each had come in with.

  The dirty man was first and he had no money at all, not one red farthing. He was convicted of assault with violence, had no occupation and was due to serve three years’ hard labour. His name was Hicks. Arthur’s turn came next. Arthur had four pounds six shillings and tenpence halfpenny exactly. When the officer finished counting Arthur’s money he said sarcastically, addressing the neat pile of silver upon the notes:

  “This Cuthbert is well-off.”

  The two brothers and the down-at-heel clerk followed. They were all three of them conscientious objectors and the officer made a peevish remark under his breath, deploring the necessity for dealing with such swine.

  When he had finished the entries he rose and unlocked an inner door. He jerked a silent command with his thumb and they filed into a long room with small cells on either side. The officer said:

  “Strip.”

  They stripped. The quaker brothers were upset at being obliged to undress before the others. They shed their clothes slowly and timidly and before arriving actually at the buff they stood for a moment in their drawers shivering self-consciously. Hicks must have thought them funny. Stripped stark naked Hicks revealed an enormous unclean hairy body covered in parts with reddish pustules. Standing with his legs planted well apart he grinned and made a ribald gesture towards the quakers.

  “Come on, girls,” he said. “We’s all goin’ shrimpin’.”

  “Shut up, you,” the officer said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Hicks obsequiously. He walked over and stepped on to the scales.

  They were all weighed and measured. When that was over Hicks, who clearly knew the ropes, led the way across the concrete floor to the bath. The bath was half full of dirty tepid water with a slight scum on the surface and the bath itself was dirty.

  Arthur looked at Hicks who was already splashing his pustular body in the dirty bath. He turned to the officer and asked in a low voice:

  “Do I have to go into the bath?”

  The officer was gifted with a sense of humour. He said:

  “Yes, dear.” Then he added: “No talking.” Arthur got into the bath.

  After the dirty bath they were given their prison clothes. Arthur received a yellow flannel vest and pants, a pair of socks, and a very small khaki uniform stamped all over with black broad arrows. The trousers barely reached below his knees. As his eyes rested on the tight short tunic he thought dully, khaki at last.

  An inner door opened and the doctor came in. The doctor was a round, reddish-faced man with a number of small gold fillings in his front teeth. He entered briskly with his stethoscope already dangling from his ears and he used it rapidly. He took one swift blank look at each man, stood away from him, perfectly machine-like and impersonal. He ordered Arthur to say ninety-nine, gave him a few swift taps, and asked him if he had ever had venereal disease. Then he passed on. Arthur did not blame the doctor for being quick. He thought, if I were the doctor here I should probably be quick too. Arthur forced himself to be fair. He had sworn to himself to be calm. It was the only way, a quiet acceptance of the inevitable. He had thought it out carefully on the previous night. He saw that otherwise he might easily go mad.

  After the medical examination the bald officer went out with the doctor, leaving them in charge of a new warder who had silently come in and who now silently surveyed them. This warder was short and burly with a squat head and a forbidding way of holding himself. He had a short upper lip, very thin lips, and his broad deformed head seemed always to protrude, as in an attitude of watching. His name was Warder Collins.

  When he had finished his silent scrutiny Warder Collins in a leisurely fashion gave them each a number and a cell number. Arthur’s number was 115 and his cell number 273. Then Warder Collins unlocked a heavy iron gate. He said:

  “Step out now. March lively.”

  They stepped out, and under the dispassionate eye of Warder Collins they marched in line into the main body of the prison.

  The prison was built like a well, an enormous deep resounding well with cells all round, galleries of cells reaching in tiers to a great height. Every gallery was heavily barred so that the front of the combined galleries presented the appearance of an enormous cage. The air was cold and in spite of the smell of disinfectant had a cold earthy prison smell. The smell made Arthur shudder.

  Warder Collins showed Arthur to Cell 273. It was in the third gallery. Arthur went into Cell 273. The cell was six feet by thirteen feet and extremely high. The walls were of brick painted a yellowish brown on the lower half and whitewashed on the upper. High up on one wall was a very small heavily barred window which was scarcely a window at all. Very little light came through even on bright sunny days. An armoured electric globe, operated from outside, gave a dim glow to the cell. The floor of the cell was of cement and on the cement floor stood an enamel jug and a utensil. The stench of hundreds of these utensils made the prison smell.

  The bed was a board six feet long by two and a half feet broad with a blanket but no mattress. Above the bed was a ledge with an enamel mug, a plate and spoon and a tin knife. A slate and pencil were hung up above the ledge and propped up invitingly under the slate stood a small Bible.

  Arthur turned from his inspection to find Warder Collins standing by the door, as if waiting for Arthur’s opinion of the cell. His lip was a little drawn back and his head thrust forward. When he saw that Arthur had nothing to say he swung round without a word and padded silently away.

  As the door clanged, a heavy door with a small barred peep-hole, Arthur sat down on the edge of the board that was his bed. He was in prison. This was a prison cell and he was in the prison cell. He was not Arthur Barras now. He was number 115.

  In spite of his resolution a cold dismay broke over him: it was worse, far worse than he had expected. Outside it was easy to talk glibly of prison when you had no idea what prison was like, but inside it was not so easy. Prison was a horrible place. He gazed round the small, dim shut-in cell. No, it was not going to be so easy after all.

  At seven o’clock supper was served. This was an extra supper, a special supper for newcomers consisting of a bowl of watery porridge. Though it nauseated him, Arthur forced himself to eat the porridge. He ate standing and when he had finished he sat down again on the edge of his bed. He knew it was fatal to think. Yet he had nothing else to do. He could not see to read the Bible and there was nothing in particular he wished to write upon the slate.

  He thought, why am I here? He was here because he refused to kill, because he refused to go out and lunge a bayonet into the body of another man in a desolate stretch of mud in France. It was not because he had committed murder that he was here but because he had refused to commit murder.

  It was queer, it was quite amusing, but the more he thought of it the less amusing it became. Soon the sweating of his palms, the physical evidence of his neurosis, began. The sweat poured out of his palms until he thought it would never cease.

  All at once, as he sat there, a sudden sound, a sort of howling, made him start. It came from the bottom of the prison well, the lowest gallery of all, from the solitary confinement cells, a brute noise, perfectly inhuman and uncontrolled. Arthur jumped up. His nerves quivered in sympathy, like the strings of a violin, to that horrible howling. He listened tensely. The howling rose to an unbearable crescendo. Then it stopped suddenly. It was shut off with an almost violent abruptness. The succeeding silence hummed with conjectures as to how the howling had been stopped.

  Arthur began to pace up and down his cell. He paced quickly and gradually increased his pace. He kept waiting for the howling to begin again but it did not. He
was almost running up and down the concrete floor of his cell when suddenly a bell clanged and the lights went out.

  He stood stock still in the centre of his cell, then slowly he took off his arrow-stamped khaki in the darkness and lay down on the board bed. He could not sleep. He argued with himself that he could not expect to sleep, that he would in time get used to the hardness of his board. But meanwhile a great kaleidoscope of bitter thought whirled and flashed within his brain, like an enormous wheel whirling and swelling until it filled the cell. Faces and scenes whirled within the whirling wheel. His father, Hetty, Ramage, the Tribunal, the Neptune, the dead men in the Neptune, men stretched upon battlefields with dead protesting eyes, all mingled and whirling, faster, faster, whirling in the bitter wheel. He clung with sweating hands to the edge of his board supporting himself against this chaos, while the night passed.

  At half-past five in the morning when it was still dark the prison bell rang. Arthur got up. He washed, dressed, folded his blanket and cleaned up the cell. He had barely finished when the key turned in the lock. The sound of the key turning in the lock of his cell was peculiar, a rasping squeak like two raw metals forced across each other unwillingly. It was a sound which grated into the marrow of the bones. Warder Collins threw some mail bags into the cell. He said:

  “Stitch these.” The he slammed the door shut.

  Arthur picked up the mail bags, coarse pieces of whitey-brown sacking. He did not know how to stitch them. He laid the bags down again. He sat staring at the shaped canvas bags until seven when the key sounded and his breakfast was handed in. The breakfast consisted of watery porridge and a chunk of brown bread.

  After breakfast Warder Collins thrust his squat head round the door. He took a good look at the unsewn mail bags, then he looked at Arthur in a curious fashion. But he made no comment. He merely said, rather softly:

  “Step out for exercise.”

  Exercise took place in the prison yard. The yard was a square of greasy asphalt with enormous high walls and a raised platform at one end. On the platform a warder stood watching the circle of men as they shuffled round. He watched the men’s lips to see that they did not talk. From time to time he shouted: “No talking”; the old lags were such experts they could talk to one another without moving their lips.

  In the middle of the yard was a lavatory, a circular band of metal supported on low pillars. As the men circled the yard they held up their hands to the warder asking permission to go to the lavatory. When they went to the lavatory their heads were seen above the metal band and their legs below. It was considered a great treat to be allowed to sit a long time in the lavatory, a privilege which the warder allowed only to his favourites.

  Arthur shuffled round with the others. In the pale light of the early morning the circle of shuffling men was incomprehensible to reason, it became grotesque, like a circus of the insane. The faces of the men were debased, brooding, sullen, hopeless. Their bodies had the prison stench, their arms hung inhumanly.

  Two places in front of him he made out Hicks who leered at him in recognition across his shoulder.

  “D’y like a fag, sissy?” asked Hicks, making the words come back from the corner of his mouth.

  “No talking,” shouted Warder Hall from his platform. “You, No. 514, no talking, there!”

  Round and round, circling, circling, like the wheel in Arthur’s brain, circling round the obscene focus of the lavatory. Warder Hall was the ring master, his voice cracked like a whip.

  “No talking. No talking.” The crazy merry-go-round of exercise.

  At nine they went into the shop, a long bare workroom where the mail bags were stitched. Arthur was given more mail bags. Warder Beeby, the shop inspector, gave Arthur the mail bags, and observing his rawness, as he handed out the canvas he bent over and explained:

  “See here, stupid, you rope them like this.” He pushed the big needle through two folds of the thick canvas, indicating, good-naturedly, the manner in which the stitches should be made. And he added, with not unfriendly irony: “If you rope a nice lot of mail bags you get cocoa at night. See, stupid? A nice hot bowl of oko!”

  The kindness in Warder Beeby’s voice put a new heart into Arthur. He began to rope the mail bags. About a hundred men were roping mail bags. The man next to Arthur was old and grey-whiskered and he roped skilfully and quickly, making sure of his cocoa. Every time he threw down a mail bag he scratched himself under his armpit and threw a furtive look at Arthur. But he did not talk. If he talked he would lose his cocoa.

  At twelve o’clock the bell rang again. They stopped work in the shop and filed back to the cells for dinner. The key sounded in Arthur’s cell. Dinner was skilly and bread and rancid margarine. After dinner Warder Collins slid back the peep-hole. His eye, seen through the peep-hole, seemed sinister and large. He said:

  “You don’t come here to do nothing. Get on with these mail bags.”

  Arthur got on with the mail bags. His hands were sore from pushing the heavy needle through the canvas and a blister had risen on his thumb. He worked in a reflex manner. He did not know what he was doing or why he was doing it; already his actions had become automatic, on and on, roping the mail bags. Once again the key sounded. Warder Collins came in with the supper, watery porridge and a chunk of bread. When he entered the cell he looked at the mail bags, then he looked at Arthur and his short upper lip drew back from his teeth. There was no doubt about it, for some reason Warder Collins had a down on Arthur. But he was in no hurry, he had a great many months in which to work and from long experience he knew how much more pleasure he got out of it by taking time. He merely said, reflectively:

  “Haven’t you done no more nor that? We can’t have no scrim-shankin’ here.”

  “I’m not used to it,” Arthur answered. Unconsciously he made his tone propitiating as if he realised the importance of being on the right side of Warder Collins. He raised his eyes, tired with close work, and it seemed as if Warder Collins had become enlarged. His head especially, his broad deformed head was fantastically enlarged and menacing. Arthur had to shade his eyes to look at Warder Collins.

  “You better bloody well hurry up and get used to it.” Though he spoke ever so gently, Warder Collins brought his deformed head a little nearer. “Don’t think you’ve dodged out of the army to have a cushy job here. Get on with the bags till you hear the bell.”

  Arthur got on with the bags until he heard the bell. He heard the bell at eight o’clock. The clanging of the bell filled the deep well of the prison with a great volume of sound, and Arthur knew that he had all night before him in which to be alone.

  He sat on the edge of his board staring at the broad black arrows stamped on his khaki trousers and he started to trace the pattern of the arrows with his forefinger. Why did he have the arrows stamped upon him? He was covered with arrows; his entire body, enwrapped in a daze, in a blind stupor, was pierced by flights and flights of broad black arrows. He had a queer sense of having ceased to exist, a sense of spiritual annihilation. These arrows had killed him.

  At nine o’clock the lights went out and after sitting stupidly for a minute in the darkness he fell back, dressed as he was, upon the board as though he had been stunned. He slept.

  But he did not sleep long. Soon after midnight he was awakened by the howling which had disturbed him on the night before. But this time the howling went on and on, as if forgotten. It was wild and altogether lost. Arthur sprang up from the bed in the darkness. His sleep had recreated him. He was alive again, horribly and painfully alive, and he could not stand the howling nor the darkness nor the solitude. He lifted up his voice and shouted.

  “Stop it, stop it, for God’s sake stop it,” and he began to pound the door of his cell with his closed fists. He shouted and pounded in a frenzy and in a minute he heard others shouting and pounding too. From the dark catacombs of the gallery rose a great sound of shouting and pounding. But no one took any notice and the great sound of shouting and pounding fell away grad
ually into the darkness and the silence.

  Arthur stood for a moment with his cheek pressed against the cold shut grating of the door, his chest heaving, his arms outstretched. Then he tore himself away and began to pace the floor of his cell. There was no space in which to move yet he had to keep moving, it was impossible for him to be still. His hands remained clenched and he seemed to have no power to unclench his body. From time to time he flung himself upon the board but it was no use, the torment of his nerves would not let him alone. Only the pacing relieved him. He had to go on pacing.

  He was still pacing when the key sounded. The sound of the key opened another day. He jumped at the sound, then he stood in the centre of his cell facing Warder Collins. He panted:

  “I couldn’t sleep for that howling. I couldn’t sleep for it.”

  “What a shame,” sneered Warder Collins.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. What is that howling?”

  “No talking!”

  “What is that howling? What is it?”

  “No talking I tell you. It’s a bloke gone mad if you want to know, he’s under observation for mental. Shut up. No talking!” And Warder Collins went out.

  Arthur pressed his brow into his hands, striving with all his force to control himself. His head drooped, his legs seemed incapable of supporting his body. He felt mortally ill. He could not eat the skilly which Warder Collins had left for him in the usual earthenware bowl. The smell of the skilly sickened him to death. He sat down on the board bed. He could not eat the skilly.

  Suddenly the key sounded. Warder Collins came in and looked at Arthur and drew back his lip. He said:

  “Why don’t you eat your breakfast?”

  Arthur looked at him dully.

  “I can’t.”

  “Stand up when I address you.”

  Arthur stood up.

  “Eat your breakfast!”

  “I can’t.”

  Collins’s lip came back, very thin and blue.