by Victor Serge
This first night’s cell is apparently nothing more than a lockup set aside for prisoners in transit. A windowless hole, ten feet deep and eight feet wide, somewhere down a corridor. During the day a pale light filters in through the dirty panes of the wire-mesh door. At night an electric bulb screwed into the ceiling gives off a dirty yellow light just strong enough to weary the eyes and aggravate insomnia. Along the wall, an old wooden bench, worn smooth by countless sleeping bodies. In the corner, a fairly clean toilet. Every quarter hour, the toilet flushes automatically, making a great racket. Every time I manage, despite the wearisome glow of the electric light which seeps through my closed eyelids, to doze off stretched out on the bench, my neck flat on the wood, my head thrown back—like a dead man, the racket of the toilet flushing drags me out of my torpor.
On the bench, etched in with pinpricks, I find inscriptions. There are more on the walls; they are everywhere, barely visible. You have to examine the walls very closely to make out these graffiti; but they are always the same, in every prison cell: only four or five themes, sex predominating. It is as if the throngs of men thrown together by prison needed only thirty words and a phallic symbol to express the essence of their suffering and their lives. At first glance, the cell is empty, silent, sepulchral. But after the first five minutes, every square inch of wall or floor has its tale of woe to tell. A thousand hushed voices fill it with their changeless, unremitting murmurs. You soon grow tired of listening, tired of the constant repetition of the same miseries.
Night. Even the city’s rumble seems to have stopped. Nothing. Nothing. Sleep is impossible. Yet this wakeful state has something in common with sleep and dreams, perhaps with hallucination as well. I am already in a sort of tomb. I can do nothing. I am nothing. I see, hear, and feel nothing. I only know that the next hour will be exactly like this one. The contrast between this vacant, empty prison time and the intense rhythm of normal life is so violent that it will take a long and painful period of adaptation to slow down the pulse of life, to deaden the will, to stifle, blot out, obliterate every unsettling image from my mind. The first days’ total disorientation. My inner life pursues its feverish course in a silence void of time.
Nerves strain with curiosity about tomorrow, with the feeling of being at the mercy of an anonymous, fearsome, many-faced enemy who must be resisted, deceived, defied, shown no weakness.
We climb a long spiral staircase. We are in one of the medieval towers of the Conciergerie, I discover. We: a bizarre company that has just been formed in the gray murk of a corridor. I catch a glimpse of a dozen terrified faces. Their clothes, unfastened and disheveled, hang loose. Wrists handcuffed. We climb ponderously, with guards preceding us, separating us, following us. The stairs are narrow. Clumsy feet stumble over the steps. A muffled “Goddamn.” I am led by a single plainclothesman, a nondescript blond fellow who doesn’t even seem to notice me. In earlier times they used to put their victims “to the question” on the rack in the cellars of this very tower. Today they apply Bertillon’s scientific system upstairs. This is the stairway of progress.
A kind of waiting room, fairly well lighted, furnished with benches divided into square compartments. A man is seated in each square. Immobility, silence, stares of various kinds: stupefied, curious, anxious, angry. Mostly stupefied. Every five minutes the squares empty and fill again. After hours in a cell, the narrow staircase, the grayness of the corridors and faces, these large, well-lighted rooms of the anthropometric service, with their wooden apparatus, are somewhat disconcerting. The clerk, attentive but with perfect professional indifference, measure the prisoner’s skull, foot, hand, forearm; note the scars and the tiniest marks on his body; examine and record the exact color of his eyes, the folds of his ear, the cut of his lips, the shape of his nose; gently take his fingerprints. I observe these automatons, noting that they are free men occupied in compiling an exact scientific description of the prisoner: me. They don’t notice me at all. They ignore me. For this man who, with three rapid, deft movements, stretches my forearm out on a kind of short measuring rod, I don’t exist. There is nothing in front of him but a forearm, so many inches long, bearing this or that peculiarity. Two numbers, ciphers to be entered, always in the same place, on a file card. Each day, the man enters these numbers several hundred times. He has neither the time nor the inclination to look at faces. But in the evening he probably enjoys looking at the picture of the Ménilmontant murderer in the Petit Parisien.
After these silent manipulations, the measured subject lands in front of the photographer’s lens. The same indifferent hands raise the subject’s chin, place the back of his skull against a metal stanchion, hang a plate bearing a number on his chest. A violent flash of light startles him as the camera operator releases the shutter. A gallery of lost souls. There are only two or three varieties of expression: animal passivity, confusion, humiliation—each modified by anger, despair, defiance, or taciturn sullenness, depending on the case. Experienced prisoners have explained to me the way, to fight the camera, to fool it. Some men stubbornly close their eyes, make faces, screw up their features. These are soon made to submit; and not by friendly persuasion … The clever ones know how to distort their features in advance, how to put on an abnormal expression, make it seem calm and natural, hold it as long as necessary. The stiffness of the pose, the fixed stare of the eyes, the dishevelment of the clothes, all add to the effect: the image they leave on the photographer’s plate differs enough from their normal appearance to deceive an unpracticed eye.
An enormous hall, lofty, gray, cold, with a vaulted ceiling reminiscent of a monastery except for the tiled corridors, the heavy padlocked doors, the bars, the grilled windows, the mournful comings and goings in silence— a silence broken by calls, sharp orders, and the murmured confidences of frightened voices. There are a handful of us here, walking clumsily in shoes without laces. We come to rest on a broad oak bench polished by countless daily contacts, as everything here is polished, nearly black from the touch of flesh, clothes, and grime. A pale, gray light falls from the window above us; we sit in the dimness like wood lice under a rock. Each man thinks of his own troubles. Each observes the dismal movement of this room with weary curiosity. Each whispers a confidence, a question, a word of advice, or a complaint to his neighbor. There are four of us: an older man of about fifty with the poise and bearing of an officer or casino gambler—Rumanian or Greek—a handsome black mustache, and pomaded hair. He wears a fashionable overcoat of the very best cut. Lack of sleep has puffed up his big, dark, expressionless eyes. Now that he no longer has a collar or tie under his blue-black chin, he reminds me of one of those flashy, big-time adventurers whose police photographs are always published in the papers when there is a big financial scandal. He holds his derby politely on his knee. I notice his gnarled, hairy hands; their well-manicured nails are grimy after a single night in the lockup … There is also a poor, bedraggled wretch slouching in the corner, feeble and pasty-faced, so crushed he seems ill. His mustache, stiff and sporty only yesterday, droops, half-eaten and frayed by nervous fingers. The last traces of a vulgar elegance are fading from his sorry figure … And a twenty-year-old guttersnipe with a cap and the prognathic jowls of a Spanish Bourbon … The fourth: myself.
The guttersnipe tells us:
“Me, I’m done for! Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn …”
Under his breath he reels off his monotonous litany of swear words. I already know all I need to know about him: He is twenty-one years old and has had seven convictions (“all small-time stuff! but goddamn, goddamn … I’ll get life …”). This time, even though he was picked up for a minor offense only, he’ll get at least a year and a day, plus recommitment for being a repeater: in other words, hard labor for life. He picks over the linings of his pockets attentively, looking for flakes of tobacco to suck on.
“You know, that makes two days without one … Ah, shit!”
There are four of us. Others like us, forty or four hundred of them, are filing ri
ght now through the corridors, rooms, and offices of this building. The prison machine sweeps these bits of human flotsam along from one compartment to another. We watch the parade of prostitutes arrested last night by the vice squad. Inmates for only a day, we are not yet aware of how miraculous the most ordinary female shape can seem. The men usually laugh when this grotesque, ill-assorted company goes by. Every woman you have ever passed in the street seems to be there, every type, every age. A stout, fussy lady becomes indignant: It’s really not her turn, they pick her up too often, they have it in for her. Hardened hustlers go by, indifferent, their hands in their apron pockets. Some of them giggle. Young, modest women also file by, crestfallen, bedraggled, choking back the tears. A nice working girl, a secretary in a raincoat, a streetwalker from Les Halles, seething with rage, her wrists held by a city cop. It’s a deluge—the same deluge every night, every morning at the same time—hundreds of them. A smell of cheap perfume and dirty underwear thickens the air. I notice a well-dressed woman carefully holding a pretty feathered hat in both hands, wrapped up in a blouse. Her bust is ample; she fills out the necessary papers decisively. That’s life, eh! Once every two weeks or every month you have to go through this: It’s just part of the business.
Actually, the police are only “doing their job,” that is, hauling in a specified number of girls each night; and since they are human, they tend to take those with unfamiliar faces or the ones who refuse to do them favors. They also hunt out the nonprofessionals; for every new registration places another creature under the power of men whose law is absolute on the sidewalks of doubtful streets.
The formalities go on and on. How many printed forms are inscribed with our surnames, Christian names, descriptions! From window to window, the same surly prison-rat faces question us without seeing us. Our height is measured; huge green books, so big that two hands are needed to manage them, are opened to register each wretch. Sign here! The indifferent wretch signs.
The hybrid of bureaucratic scribbler and turnkey, who works at desk jobs here, is a singularly monotonous breed; they are all thick-set, their bodies grown fat from sitting and lack of exercise. Two types of faces: one ruddy, wine-soaked; the other livid and bloated, stamped by the murky grayness of the prison bureau. Their eyes have grown dim with the horrid dullness that emanates from the forms, receipts, registers and filing cabinets, where the same inanely bureaucratic descriptions of hopeless victims and miserable wretches pile up ad infinitum. Vegetative brutes, old police-station scribblers, registrars from provincial prisons transferred to Paris through favoritism. Their faded uniforms, greasy at the collar, shiny at the elbow, have lost all definite color and shape. A musty odor of wine-soaked breath, cold tobacco smoke, old clothes, ink, dust, and yellowed paper clings to these men; they emerge from their total indifference—and then just barely—only to insult or to make a clumsy, stupid joke at the expense of a man whose misery they have just recorded. Some poor old devil murmurs his ridiculous name to them in a whisper:
“Lecornu, Alcide-Marie!”
Three low guffaws follow, three piglike grunts. A winy voice drawls:
“Well! I hope you earned your horns, Mr. Cuckold!” But most often the registrars’ silence falls on the prisoner like a first layer of dust.
From window to window, from measurement to search, from search to shower, from shower to compartment, we move on. I think of grains of sand sifting through a complicated, extremely dirty sieve, and falling deeper with every instant into sordid obscurity. They already searched us when we were first arrested; there is nothing more they can take, it seems, except perhaps that pin, that cigarette butt, that tiny pencil stub, even that gold piece which experienced prisoners know how to carry past any obstacle.
The ceremony is repeated, nonetheless, and in a slightly more odious form. Two or three hulking guards strut out in front of a line of naked men. “Open your mouth! Bend over! … More … Lower, dammit, you jerk, lower! … Legs apart … Come on … Next man forward!” A fat thumb prods the inside of a suspicious jaw. A guard with a crumpled képi inspects the rear end of a tough-looking mug who has been put over the bar; the bar is designed to make you bend over in such a manner that any object hidden in the anus is supposed to be revealed …
The grimy gang of new arrivals rushes toward the showers—a gallop of bare feet smacking on the tiles of the wide corridor. The first ones in run into the last of the group coming out, cleansed and ridiculous. Their physiques are grotesque: Men dredged up and thrown together by the accident of their misfortune are usually misshapen and ugly in the nude, deformed by their misery. They gesticulate, shiver, struggle with heaps of clothes. While they were in the shower, the clothes they had been wearing were sent through the steam press: an instantaneous disinfecting from which—pulverized under the enormous pressure— they emerge like rags, honeycombed with wrinkles that can almost never be removed. I catch only a quick glimpse of them getting dressed: a grotesque scene. We are herded forward, hustled, bullied by shouts of “Come on, faster, get a move on! Hurry, goddamn it! Hurry!” The machine works so fast that now we are already lined up in the hot, sticky wooden tubs. A shower of nearly boiling water; the slimy black soap sticks to the skin. “Out! Get a move on! Hurry up!” Another gallop of bare feet smacks down the corridor.
Roll call again. Each one of these ritual operations begins with a roll call. Nonetheless, I find myself interested each time by the different tone of the voices answering, “Here”: stifled by physical fear; hurried with that special haste of the bashful, who are somehow always a little late; low, lingering, coming out almost reluctantly; nonchalant, among the old-timers. After roll call we file, two at a time, into rather well-lit compartments along a wide corridor. A little light is good for the eyes. We have at least an hour to wait: rest (which turns to boredom in a quarter of an hour; our inner agitation will only calm itself after a long time) and vacant time. My companion in this cage is my neighbor from the lineup: the poor wretch with drooping mustaches who now looks like a castaway. He cheered up momentarily when he saw our Rumanian-officer-financier-adventurer coupled with a fidgety little fag. Alone together, we can talk in whispers. After all, it makes a comfortable noise.
“Things going badly?” I ask.
He answers with a meaningful glance and a nod.
“What a lousy break. I got nabbed in the Galeries Lafayette. I was warned: It shouldn’t have happened to me. You see there’s a store dick there, a real bastard … He had me spotted right away … Oh, boy, now I’m in for it …”
He is still wearing the cause of his good or bad fortune—the tool of his trade—an ordinary beige overcoat. But this overcoat is full of false pockets and false linings. Hands in pockets, he looks like a gentleman walking through the crowd, brushing against the counter of the store; in reality, his hands, free within the folds of the open garment, are operating with great dexterity. Booty drops into the lining. If this professional overcoat passes unnoticed, my companion of the moment will get off with a few months in prison. If not:
“I’m in for it. Up for recommitment.”
You are up for recommitment after three convictions for theft; the amount of the theft itself doesn’t matter in the least. Three times a hundred sous—these things happen—can mean an “additional” life sentence for a twenty-year-old, three-time loser …
The cell door has finally closed on me. The bolts have been drawn, the Judas shut. I’m on the ground floor. My cell has two large, semicircular barred windows with panes of frosted glass. It is large and dirty. A low column divides it into two unequal parts. Three gray straw mattresses on crude cots—gray with filth, spattered with all sorts of stains, stinking of dust, old straw, sleeping animality—make up the furniture. Bolted to the wall, there is a little oak table; the wood is an oily brown and covered with inscriptions. On the table, an earthenware jug and a “quarter”—a tin drinking cup—that holds a quarter of a liter. The mattresses and the drinking cup are apparently never cleaned. After the first
hour, I wanted a drink. I was clumsy enough to shake the jug, and a greenish slime rose to the surface where wisps of straw, odd leaves, hair, bits of thread, and a broken match were floating. Before quenching your thirst, simple prudence advises allowing this “brew”—which is changed every day—to settle to the bottom. I am already used to the graffiti. They will interest me only later on, during the months of isolation, when every sign in the cell will become a life-giving word for my brain in its struggle against stupor and madness. The only thing I find here, at first glance, is the name of a wayward comrade, a murderer and thief—a man overboard. When mountain climbers scale the highest peaks, they tie themselves together with a stout rope; thus, if one should happen to fall, he may drag his companions down with him into the abyss. Among us—rebels and revolutionaries, so different from one another, ill-assorted idealists, bohemians, adventurers, cranks, proletarians, bandits—blind solidarity, knowing only comrades, plays the role of that life-saving or ill-fated rope. We too, are conscious of striving obstinately to climb upward. But for us the peak, more dreamed of than glimpsed, is inaccessible, and a fall is always fatal.
Par les airs sidéraux
Monte en plein ciel, droite comme un héros,
La claire tour qui sur les flots domine…2
