He talked to get himself high on power, on crude words and graphic images.
At length he stood up, and with the short steps of a fat man shuffled to the door.
“I want it nice and qui-et,” he said. “Do you understand?”
He slammed the door behind him. The key turned in the lock.
“Hi there,” said Hal. “How was the holiday?”
“Had a great time, thanks.”
Frank eyed his companion.
“My word,” he said, “you must have been by the sea—you look a picture of health.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do, yes. Seems to me your spell in the hole was never going to put you on the sick list. The truth is it was all a fit-up to give you a breather. You were starting to have enough of it here, weren’t you?”
Hal faced up to Frank.
“You’re not going to start up on that again, are you?” said Hal sadly.
The sad note surprised Frank.
“Look at the daylight,” said Hal.
“What are you up to now?”
He turned his head mechanically towards where Hal had pointed: the high window.
“Your eyes are normal,” muttered Hal.
“What do you mean, normal?”
“Are they normal?”
“What would you expect them to be? Crossed?”
“No, sensitive to light. When you’ve been in a black slammer for a week, your peepers get used to the dark. And afterwards… Here, have a look at mine…”
He turned and faced the light. His eyes blinked. The brightness made them water.
“You keep coming up with these dopey ideas!” sighed Frank as he stretched out on his bed. “Oh yes, Hal, I was in the slammer, all right!… With those stinking rats…”
He held up his right foot. A slice of the sole of the sandal was missing and the braided rope was frayed.
“They even tried to eat me! I really thought I’d leave my hide in that devil’s hellhole!”
Hal stared at the rope-soled sandal and nodded.
“Right,” he said. “I see… You’d think we’d been transported back a century… Cells full of rats! Now isn’t that something? And here we are, in the middle of the twentieth century!”
“Oh, you and your centuries,” said Frank.
“It’s the same with the way the screws beat us up… I’m not kidding!”
“Get away! There have always been men who beat up other men and there always will be… Anyway, seeing screws beat up prisoners is no worse than seeing prisoners trying to brain each other at every opportunity!”
Hal did not respond.
“What?”
“Don’t you think so?” persisted Frank.
“Sure,” said Hal. “That’s what I think. And I even wonder…”
“…what I think about you, right?… Maybe I’ve got you all wrong…”
Frank watched the slow progress of a cockroach over the wall. It scuttled across a bare patch at high speed. Then suddenly it swooped down onto Dumbo’s mattress.
“That’s something else that I’m wondering,” Frank admitted. “We got this idea into our heads from day one… And now it’s grown into some sort of disease that’s spreading and eating us up!”
He knelt down next to Hal’s cot and asked in a crushed voice:
“Tell me, Hal: you’re not a cop, are you?”
“Of course not,” said Hal. “Because the cop here is you!”
Frank whined: “Not again! You just said…”
“Fair enough… I’m sorry.”
“Even if I was one…” stammered Frank. “Let’s have this out, Hal… Even if I was a cop… Even if I was… maybe we could still get on, since we have to put up with the same hardships and the same humiliations.”
“You’re right,” agreed Hal. “Listen, let’s go through the motions: let’s shake hands!”
They looked each other in the eye for some time. They weren’t sure, still fighting with a last glimmer of hate and also against the fear of looking ridiculous. Then their fingers touched and they shook hands.
“Even if you are a cop, Hal,” muttered Frank.
“Even if you’re one,” sighed Hal.
6
The Bull was the first to notice that an alteration had come about in the relations between the two men. He was a limited, rough sort of man, but he was streetwise, and that made up for what he lacked in intelligence. Fifteen years of service in a prison had taught him the rudiments of psychology, which enabled him to follow the changing states of mind of his “customers”.
“Hey, you two!” he exclaimed on the day following the “declaration of peace” signed by Hal and Frank. “You’re both behaving as if you’re as pally as pigs in muck. Only goes to show that my method works! Rules are like music: you apply the first with a rod and strike up the second with a baton!”
The most unpleasant thing about this man was the soapy laugh which punctuated his witticisms. It stung, it sidled into you like a woodlouse and defiled something you couldn’t put a name to.
“Only a fortnight now before the execution…” the fat man said, as if he were talking to himself. “Anyway, it’ll make a nice change… And I’ll tell you the best bit: the formal rites will be taking place on the same day as the local fete and gala in town. On our programme: Losing your Head… Short Back and Sides… The Flashing Blade… Parade with Band… Merry-go-round and Grand Ball. Have you noticed how balls on posters are always ‘grand’?”
He laughed more uproariously than usual. It was a laugh which started in his belly and climbed up his entire body in concentric quakings.
He winked.
“Charlie Chop!…” he guffawed. “A real treat for the tender-hearted… Some invention, eh? And such drama!”
He left abruptly as he always did. He would talk and talk and then suddenly drop the subject and cancel the rest of his lecture.
“Bull!” grunted Hal. “The name suits him to a T!”
Frank shook his head.
“You’ve got to try to understand him,” he said. “But he said it himself: he don’t get many nice changes! But tell me, Hal, people who go to a circus to see the human cannonball, why do they do it? They fork out 500 francs for the dubious hope of seeing a man get himself killed, that’s why! In here, there’s no charge and there’s never any doubt about the result, so you can imagine…”
“In here,” sighed Hal. “The word’s like a splinter I’ve got stuck in my finger… Here! In here!”
“Too damn right,” agreed Frank. “And that’s more than enough pain to be going on with, thank you very much!”
“Every time I say it or think of the words, the other ones come into my mind too.”
“The other what?”
“The other words, the ones that mean the opposite: out there! Right?”
“Out there!” murmured Frank dreamily.
“Yes!” said Hal, his eyes ablaze. “Out there! Where there’s air and plants and animals!… People piling into cinemas or going home to make love! Don’t you ever think about that, about two people getting it on with each other? A bed! A woman, with the salt taste of her mouth… the smell of her!…”
Frank leapt off his cot and grabbed the bars of his cell with both hands.
“Stop it,” he said dully. “Keep your trap shut! You’re not doing us any favours! When you’re rotting in a jail like this, you shouldn’t talk about such stuff.”
“You’re right,” agreed Hal. “Rotting’s the word… damn right it is! And this is just the start of it. There’ll be days and days…”
“Years, Hal!”
“Worse: hours. It’s the hours that get you down the most.”
Frank held his face so hard against the bars that they left white marks on his cheeks.
“I’ve had a bellyful of it,” he said.
He’d spoken matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. It was an admission, an admission of infinitely human frailty.
“Never mind,” murmured Hal. “Maybe we’ll get used to it…”
“You wish! You can’t get used to something you can’t take any more! You can’t get used to this greyness everywhere, to the walls, to the hours which never stop dripping onto our heads, one after another… Take the guy in the condemned cell waiting for the executioner to come for him… At least he can concentrate on one specific thing… He still has hope, a wonderful hope: he’s hoping that he’ll live… But me…”
He let himself slide down onto the floor until he was sitting on his heels. He rested his head on his knees.
“I’m alone, with a past which is dying inside me like some plant that nobody waters any more!”
After a moment, he looked up. There was a hard gleam in his eyes and his jaw was slack.
“I tell you, Hal. I’d gladly swap places with that guy…”
“What guy, Frank?”
“The one they’re going to shorten… Dying’s as good as a rest, right?… One jolt and it’s ‘Good night all!’ The earth drops away under you, like you’re a red balloon and someone has let go of the string.”
Hal shook his head.
“Wonder of wonders!” he said. “Infinity on every floor!”
“Hal!” cried Frank in a voice full of anguish.
“Yes?”
“What if you’re not a cop after all?”
“Oh, not that again! No one knows better than you that if there’s a cop here, it’s not me!”
But Frank took no notice.
“Hal, we could try something…”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Hal.
“Don’t you see?”
They stared at each other. Hal got up, and went and looked out through the bars. Lowering his voice, he said:
“I can see very well… And if I didn’t think you really were a—”
“Leave it!”
“…I’d have suggested it long ago.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“No!”
“Look, I really need to try something impossible.”
“Me too,” said Hal. “Do you reckon there’ve been guys who’ve escaped from here?”
“I don’t even want to think about it. Other guys don’t matter!”
They both lay face down on their cots and remained for some time without speaking. The idea which had just hatched in their heads was enough to occupy their minds. They closed their eyes, oblivious to the presence of their dumb cellmate, whose hole-in-the-corner existence did not interfere with their thoughts. The distant roar of the sea did not trouble them either. They were lost in their fanciful dreams and nothing mattered to them except their wild scheme.
“We’ll be running a big risk,” said Hal.
“Getting hit by bullets as we get away… or hunted down by dogs… or by men!… Any one of them would be painful… But, the hell with it, why should that bother us?”
“Right!” said Hal. “Too damn right!”
Then they returned to their idle musings. Suddenly, Hal exclaimed:
“I got an idea!”
“What idea?”
“At least for the date of… of the caper!”
“Caper’s the word for it!”
“We do it on the day they execute that guy…”
“Why?”
Hal beamed, looking very pleased with himself.
“Try this for size, man. The Bull said the execution is going to be held on some local holiday. From early morning there’ll be a lot of coming and going in this place, right? Since it’s a pretty depressing sight, the screws will be trying to keep their spirits up. The ones that are off duty will be out making the most of the fair, the rest will have a drink or two… In other words, the routine will be different: are you with me?”
Frank nodded.
“Yes, that’s pretty smart thinking. And now I’m going to tell you who is going to open the cell door for us.”
“Who?”
“The Bull,” said Frank mysteriously.
“Have you included miracles in our marriage settlement?”
Frank shook his head.
“It’s no miracle, Hal. Have you noticed how he likes dropping in here for a chat? He’s fond of the sound of his own voice… We’ll keep an eye out for him… When he comes anywhere near, we’ll pretend we’re having an argument. He’ll be in here like a flash! You can count on him. And once he’s here…”
“We jump him!” Hal said callously.
“We’ll punch his lights out permanent!”
“That’s what I mean by jumping him!”
“We’ll take his keys!” said Frank.
“Yes… and his piece!”
They continued discussing their plan for the rest of that day and, when night came, they were still sitting side by side on the same bed, whispering vague thoughts to each other.
They were still there when the Bull took them by surprise. His pasty face appeared suddenly through the bars.
“Aha!… Still chatting, are we, in this neck of the woods? No, no, Nanette! You’ll have to button it, boys! It’s time! The time when the imagination does what the temperature of the sick does: it rises! It’s like the air is full of girls! It’s not good for the health! So you’d best lie on your bellies and think about something else!… Something depressing. Like life, for example!”
He broke off to spit the flower he was chewing into the middle of the cell, as was his wont.
“Myself, I’m off to my bed. My old lady’s already there, ready and waiting. Oh, if you only knew my Suzanne! A pair of buttocks on her like a mare!”
He gave a chortle of delight.
Hal cleared his throat. He was about to come out with something insulting, but Frank squeezed his arm hard to shut him up.
“Did you want to say something?” asked the Bull in his sugary voice, for he hadn’t missed Hal’s reaction.
Hal shook his head.
“Nothing, chief!”
“Good… I like men who can keep their mouths sewn up! Right, I’ll say goodnight, then!”
The scuffing sound of shoes and he was gone.
“See?” said Hal. “Perhaps the thing I like best about our plan is that it starts with that bastard getting bumped off!”
He picked up the faded rose the big man had spat out.
“Since he likes flowers, we’ll make sure that’s what he’s going to get,” he murmured.
PART II
Beauty
7
The two weeks that followed were almost as happy as the time leading up to the day when people go off on holiday.
Making plans for their escape generated a kind of infectious high spirits. Instead of being apprehensive, tense and on edge, Hal and Frank felt agreeably excited. It was good that the thing had been decided.
They were now swept up on the wings of bright hopes. Of course, it would end with a death, but that hardly mattered. After all, wasn’t the most important thing to stay focused on an idea? They had grabbed it as they would a battering ram—and in fact their idea was itself a battering ram, with which they would try to smash down the gates…
For example, the night before the eagerly awaited fourteenth day, neither of them could sleep. They were restless and kept their ears open. There were vague noises in the prison, noises that were very sinister when the mind imagined what they might be.
The death cells were located at the other end of the building. But when night began to turn grey, the comings and goings in that part of the prison could be clearly heard by the two prisoners.
They got up at frequent intervals for a drink of water. At a given moment, not far away, a man who was soon to die was being woken up.
They did not speak. Seeing them stir, the mute sat up in his cot and looked at them questioningly.
Frank raised the side of one hand to his throat and with the other gestured vaguely towards a point beyond the walls. The mute understood and his eyes clouded with sudden fear.
Hal splashed wa
ter on his face to wake himself up.
“The lousiest part of it,” he said, “is that they turf the guy out of bed so they can chop his head off. Why don’t they do it in the afternoon?… Or better, why not the evening?… When everybody’s had it all up to here?… Seems to me it wouldn’t be such a big deal…”
“Too right,” murmured Frank. “But it would stop the lawyers droning on and on!”
Just before the “great moment” arrived, the prison shook with the noise made by prisoners as they rapped on the pipes to give the news: Pardon refused! Poligny for the chop!
Uproar raged throughout the building. Prisoners gave each other a leg-up so that they could reach the high window in their cells.
Since the windows were angled upwards they could see nothing of what went on in the courtyard. But at least they could hurl abuse into the cold dawn air and they made the most of the opportunity.
“Come on, Poligny! Death to cops!”
Hal and Frank listened intently.
“Think the guy can hear?” asked Hal.
“I don’t know. He must be deaf if he can’t, no?”
“Absolutely.”
Eventually calm was restored and the prison settled back into its usual state of torpor. But there was still a sense of unease in the air. Something had happened. Something ugly.
Several hours went by. Snatches of music were heard. The fun of the fair was starting.
“Maybe we could make a start with our own party,” said Frank.
“Agreed.”
“Any regrets?”
“You don’t have regrets in advance. Regrets, as the word suggests—”
“That’s enough of your evening classes,” growled Frank. “This isn’t the time. Now, have you got everything clear?”
“Everything.”
Even so, Frank went over it again:
“We start yelling at each other the minute we spot the Bull. He walks in…”
“We hope…”
“He’ll come in all right.”
“If you say so…”
“Then I grab his hands and you get him round the neck to stop him yelling his head off…”
“Got it…”
“And squeeze hard—give it all you’ve got!”
The Wicked Go to Hell Page 4
