Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Itale listened with interest but no particular emotion. Six days or six months, there was nothing he could do about it, and probably, as Forost implied, it was just as well that he could not. He thought of his escapade in Solariy and the house arrest that had been his punishment. This was not all that much worse. He lay back on the bench, his shoes for a pillow, looking up at the single window set high in the high wall, and sang under his breath, “All the best Governments, Have replaced Common Sense, With Von Müller, and Haller, and Gentz…”

  “Go on,” said Forost, who was paring his nails with Itale’s penknife. “Give us a concert.”

  “What would you like?—‘Beyond this darkness is the light, O Liberty, of thine eternal day!…’” Forost grinned, Isaber looked scared. He was still depressed, brooding miserably most of the time.

  “What do they sing where you come from?”

  “Not jail songs. What do you sing here?” He began the song he had heard at Esten, “In Rakava, beneath the high walls,” knowing only the first line; Forost picked it up in a sweet tenor. “That’s no jail song, that’s an old song,” he said when he had sung it, and he began a monotonous and obscene ballad to which Itale listened, grateful for any entertainment. He liked Forost for never complaining. When Forost was released and left them with a jaunty bow and a “Goodbye, good luck, Robespierre, don’t cry for me, Sonny!”—Itale was sorry to see him go. At this point cheerful degradation was worth more to him than noble gloom. He did not hold against Forost his flat refusal to try and smuggle out a message to Itale’s friends; Forost had no reason to take risks, no hope of profit from the game Itale was playing.

  Still, the isolation worried him, the not being able to write to any one of his friends, his family, “I’m here, I’m all right.”

  Isaber, sensing his low spirits, fell into one of his fits of apathetic, self-accusing despair.

  An hour passed in total silence. Itale fell asleep, and slept an hour or more. When he woke, Isaber was sitting in the same position, brooding. Itale felt a spasm of hatred, of loathing for him, which terrified m by its intensity. He turned away, as well as one could turn away from another person in the featureless room, and began to whistle the tune of a Mozart rondo Luisa had used to play. He stood up. “I have to do something, I have to move,” he said. “I need exercise. Can we get up to that window? See if you can stand on my shoulders. Come on!” So the guard bringing their evening soup and bread found Isaber balanced on Itale’s shoulders, clinging to the bars of the window, describing the view. “Stop that! Stop them! Guards!” the soldier, a big Swabian, shouted, startling Isaber so that he fell rather than jumped down. Itale began to laugh. “You cannot escape—you must not do that—it’s forbidden!” the guard roared. Isaber too began to laugh.

  “Escape? Are we three inches wide?” Itale said. The Swabian, embarrassed, motioned away the other guard that had come at his call. “It’s forbidden, gentlemen, I’m sorry, forbidden, no climbing!”

  Itale stifled his laughter, Isaber snickered, both of them exhilarated by the physical exertion and by the guard’s discomfiture. After that they took turns daily on each other’s shoulders to look out at the jumbled view of rooftops and the winter sky. Itale’s turns were short, as Isaber could not long support his hundred and fifty pounds. The boy’s health was shaky; an orphan, born in the waterfront slums, fed by parish charity and housed by luck, he had not had a good start in life. The flour soup they got gave him colic, and racking headaches kept him wakeful in the night.

  One such night, their eighteenth in the cell, both were awake. As the almost jovial serenity, the acceptant mood of the first days wore away, as he began to suffer from the frustration of all physical and mental energies, Itale had become as if in compensation more patient with Isaber’s lassitude. Compunction and compassion were strong in him this night, and when he heard Isaber move and sigh, he sat up and asked, “Headache?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if we talk a minute?”

  Isaber propped himself up on his elbow. It was never fully dark in the tower cell, or fully light. Itale saw him only as a dim shape.

  “I wanted to say that I’m sorry I got you into this. All of this. I have meddled with your life. I had no right. At first it made this harder for me—realising that I’d pulled you in after me, that it was my fault—But what I wanted to say now is that all the same I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know how I’d get through this without you. Without your friendship. That is what it comes down to.”

  “I’d rather be here with you than free if you were here,” the boy said, urgently, with relief.

  “I’d rather we were both anywhere else. But as it is…”

  That was all they said. Isaber soon slept. It was cold in the deep room; the first heavy snow had fallen that day on the city outside their narrow window. Itale huddled under the thin blanket, wearing his coat, and when he finally got to sleep he dreamed vividly. Most of his dreams these eighteen nights had been of open places, familiar faces and voices, the mountains. This dream began in horror. He was in the tower cell trying to wash his hands, which were dirty, as were the walls and floor, with a sort of soot or black, charry grease. The wash basin was filled with acid, printer’s acid, such as they used in the shop where Novesma Verba was printed. “It’ll wash it off,” Forost said.—“I can’t use this,” he explained, “this is printer’s acid.”—“It’s not acid,” Amadey Estenskar told him with a sneer, “look there, it’s not eating away the basin, what are you afraid of?” But from the lip of the basin a fine yellowish smoke was rising; the metal disintegrated, the smoking acid ran out over the table and over his hands, eating tracks in them like worm-tracks in wood, painlessly. Then he was kneeling down staring into a pool of water, into which the disintegrated pieces of the basin had fallen. His arms were bare, plunged up above the elbow in the cold, dark green water which was slowly rising. The dim, clear surface came nearer and nearer his eyes. He looked up with a great effort. The water stretched on, quiet and deep, shining darkly, a lake. Above it and reflected on its surface was one immense shadow of a mountain, the Hunter. The reflection reached close to his eyes. Behind it, in the water and in the air, was nothing: the vast, pale, empty gulf of the sky after sunset.

  He woke; he was shivering; the pale light of snow was reflected on the high ceiling.

  One of the guards told them that day that they were to stand trial the following day, Isaber in the morning and Itale in the afternoon. Isaber’s spirits went up, this time, while Itale’s went down. If Forost had known what he was talking about, the later their trial came the better. He kept his misgivings to himself, and sent Isaber off next morning with the guards, trying to believe or at least to act as if he believed that everything would be well.

  Isaber returned before noon. “Released!” he shouted before the guard had got the door unlocked. “Released!” A rush of unexpected, overwhelming relief, joy, hope welled up in Itale, he hugged Isaber, his eyes filled up with tears—“You’re free, then? you’re free?”

  “I’m to be out of Rakava tonight and out of the Polana by Wednesday noon. Do they think I’m likely to stay, the fools?” He laughed a long, shaky, triumphant laugh. Itale hugged him again, jubilant, laughing.

  “I didn’t really hope—Thank God, thank God! But what are you back here for?”

  “I asked to come back till you’re through. They agreed, they’re not as bad as I thought they’d be—Let me tell you about the trial.” He did so, excitedly and not very coherently. As they talked Itale’s mind began to recover from the shock of hope.

  “A defense attorney who’s never even talked to us,” Isaber said, “it’s a farce, what kind of justice is that?”

  “Imperial justice,” Itale said. “What did he say, Agostin? Anything?”

  “Oh, he talked about my youth and inexperience, a lot of rigmarole,—nothing important.” He became uneasy, he was suppressing something the attorney had said, probably a plea that Isaber had been led astr
ay by older men. Isaber’s mind was quick at apprehension, and he knew that Itale had picked up his omission; after that they were ill at ease with each other, pretending confidence. Yet Isaber had been released, set free, his trial a mere formality; it did not matter what the attorneys said or did not say.

  When the Swabian came to take Itale to the courtroom Isaber came with them. He was barred from entering the court and they did not even shake hands in the hallway outside the courtroom, as Itale was hurried on by a second guard.

  In the courtroom the defense, a tall, sad-eyed lawyer on state pay, consulted with Itale for five minutes. “It’s all about these papers, you see. These articles you wrote. We’ll admit that you wrote them.”

  “I signed them. Of course I wrote them.”

  “Yes. Then you spoke to a workmen’s meeting on the seventh, and again—a different group—on the twentieth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll just admit that, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court; the charge is activity prejudicial to—”

  “I know the charge. What can I expect from the mercy of the court?”

  “Don’t ask to speak,” the lawyer said, looking down at the papers and scratching his lined, ill-shaven cheek. “Believe me, Mr Sorde. Don’t try to defend yourself.”

  Itale knew he was right.

  Prosecution and defense took about a quarter of an hour. The three judges conferred and talked with one another most of that time. When the two lawyers had finished reading their case the judge on the left asked something of a clerk, took up a sheet of paper, and read in a loud voice, “On this evidence and the defendant’s confessions and on the recommendation of the Chief of the National Police in Krasnoy, under Article 15 of the law of June 18, 1819, this court judges the defendant Itale Sorde guilty of the crime of inciting and participating in activities prejudicial to the public order, peace, and safety, and sentences him to five years imprisonment without labor, the sentence to be effective without delay.” He laid the paper down and spoke again to the clerk. Itale sat waiting, he thought the judge was going to speak again, say something else. The lawyer for the defense, sitting beside him, muttered something, shaking his head. There was a scraping of chairs. The judges got up and left, two of them still deep in talk. The guards who had brought Itale into the courtroom reappeared, jerky and wooden like figures that appear across a clock-face at the hour. “Get up, sir,” one of them was saying; Itale realised he had said it before. He got up. He looked for the lawyer for the defense to ask him what was happening, but the lawyer was gone, none of the courtroom officials was left but the clerk, still writing, under the judges’ long desk. “Come on,” the guard said, and in front of one guard and behind the other he left the courtroom, went down a hall, and outside for the first time in three weeks—into a snowy yard, where the frozen wind, the east wind of the Polana, cut his breath off short. His eyes watered in the cold, he looked up in bewilderment. They were between two enormous black buildings, crossing a courtyard with an iron fence. Itale stopped. “Let me see Isaber,” he said. He heard his voice thin as a boy’s in the wind.

  “What’s that?”

  “My friend, Isaber—he was tried this morning—”

  “Not now, sir. Where’s he to go, Tomas?”

  “Ask Ganey,” said the guard behind.

  “He’s specially recommended,” the first guard said doubtfully.

  “Yes, specially recommended. Ask Ganey. Here, watch your step!” Itale, turning, had slipped on the ice; the guard’s grab at his arm off-balanced him, and once more he went down hard on hands and knees on the stones of Rakava. He scrambled to his feet and the guards led him into St Lazar walking blindly with his head back, very erect. His head rang and there was a taste of blood in his mouth.

  When he became clearly aware of the world again he found himself in a small, dark, cold room. Light came in faintly through a grating high up in the door. The ceiling was high. He was standing up; he had been measuring the length and width of the room in paces, he realised. It was four paces by three. There was a sleeping-bench long enough for one person, and under it an earthenware basin covered with a shingle. It was cold, the damp heavy cold of a cave or cellar, but the air was close. Down the corridor outside the door a baby was crying, a thin, angry, ceaseless squall; he kept thinking that it was the baby he had heard crying when he climbed the stairs the night he was arrested. That was stupid, it could not be the same baby. He went to the door and tried to look out, but could see nothing but the wall of the passage opposite. He stood there a long time. He did not want to sit down. If he sat down it would seem that he was going to stay here.

  A guard came and unlocked the door, not a soldier but a civilian prison guard, a big old man taller than Itale, with a square grey face. He asked Itale to change clothes.

  “I don’t want these,” Itale said, looking at the heap of grey clothing the guard had put down on the bench.

  “Regulations, sir. You can keep your coat.”

  “I don’t want this stuff,” Itale repeated. He heard his voice shake. He was ashamed. “I want—” he began to cover his confusion, and stopped.

  “They’ll keep your things for you, sealed up. It’s regulations,” the guard said. Like Arassy he had the coercive yet reassuring manner of a good servant, so that Itale obeyed him, beginning to unbutton his shirt, since he was expected to change his clothes.

  “I want something to write with,” he said.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Paper, ink, something to write with.”

  “Have to request that of the governor of the prison, sir. You’re specially recommended.” Like the other guards he said these two words in a respectful, portentous tone. His voice was rather loud and flat, he was probably somewhat deaf. Itale noticed this, he identified the grey material of the prison shirt and trousers as the rewoven stuff they called “shoddy” in the mills here, he noticed and thought vividly and quickly but none of it hung together; he did not understand. “That baby, crying,” he said, “why is there a baby here?”

  “Born here, sir. The mother’s in one of these solitaries like your honor, she’ll be sent back to the ward soon.” The guard gathered up Itale’s things, handing him back his waistcoat. “Keep that if you like, sir, for the warmth,” he said. He was respectful and kindly, he went out and locked the high door behind him.

  The prison clothes were loose and rough, without much warmth; he put on the waistcoat and his plum-colored coat, which was creased and somewhat grimy after the three weeks in the tower cell, but warm; and the silken sleeve-lining touching his hand as he put it on gave him a moment of pure comfort.

  He sat down again.

  He had been in the tower for three weeks, twenty-one days, that was over now. The judge had said something, he had said something about five years, but that did not mean five years in prison. That was impossible. Five years, after all, that was a very long time, he would be thirty at the end of it. Three weeks had gone on and on, three weeks was enough. This was December. Then January; then February—He succeeded in stopping himself from reciting the twelve months. The guard brought soup, the same flour soup, he ate it, the bowl was taken away, after a time the light in the corridor was put out and in the cell it was totally black, for a while, until the eye learned to see the faintest hint of form, the dull stone echo of some distant lamp, and to cling to that. The night passed and did not pass. Sometimes his mind worked fast, excitedly, and sometimes it did not work at all. His heart pounded and pounded, paused, pounded; he tried to count minutes by his heartbeat. He was afraid he was going mad. In this darkness without event swollen with empty time to come the hot sting of the vermin that swarmed in the bench-matting was welcome, it was life.

  He was worn out by that night when the day came, and dozed all morning, laying contentedly enough on the bench. In the afternoon a pair of guards came and took him out to a courtyard for exercise. It was a small inner courtyard, forty or fifty feet square. The snow
had been trodden into a firm greyish-black floor, holed and stained yellow with urine against the walls. The two guards watched five prisoners, who were not permitted to speak to one another. One of them was taking his exercise methodically, trotting round and round the court, pumping his arms; his legs moved oddly, in short steps. Itale knew that that was the right thing to do but he could not make himself do it; his legs were shaky. He must get control of himself. He must try to keep himself fit. He would plan how to use this time in the open air, and also try to exercise himself in the cell. To plan the time, and measure it out, and use it, that was the thing to do. Right now, even if it was very difficult, he should walk once around this courtyard, and breathe the clean air as deep as he could. He started out. One of the guards stopped him as he came by, a thin, red-faced man. “Was that the fellow stood trial with you that hopped?” His dialect was heavy and he was missing most of his teeth; Itale was not sure he had understood the words.

  “Isabey?” the guard said.

  “Isaber—What about him?”

  “Was he crazy? He had a release, didn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did he want to do that for? Jesus, what a thing to do, eighty feet down, was he crazy?”

  “Shut up, Anto,” the other guard said with a chopping gesture, and Itale walked away from them. He longed to kneel down and put his hands into the snow, get his hands and wrists cold, ice-cold, but the stuff was hard-crusted and dirty. The guards called the prisoners; he came last, feeling the others looking at him, unable to look at them. He was locked into the cell. He lay there on the bench. He did not think of Isaber, but of Estenskar, of one of the days they had gone shooting in the woods of Esten; he could see how Amadey had looked and hear the tone of his voice so clearly that he said his name aloud, very softly, but the sound of his voice frightened him. He put his head into his folded arms and lay still. The color and smell and feel of his coat was familiar, he held onto the double thickness at the cuff, seeking reassurance.