by Ian Patrick
The injured man raised his head and looked across. He saw two men in the cell opposite. He made eye contact with Thabethe, and immediately went silent. These were the eyes of an evil man, he thought, while shuddering in response to each of the agonising spasms from his hands. This was what he imagined the devil to look like. The eyes were like… what were they like? They were eyes that were not human. Red veins against a dirty yellow that was supposed to be where the whites of the eyes were. Eyes bigger than most eyes he had ever seen. And black in the centre. Big black holes in the centre. Holes that were like… nothing. Empty black holes. Staring at him.
‘What are you saying?’ The man spoke to Thabethe in Zulu, and Thabethe responded fluently in kind, although he had often said to strangers that isiZulu was not his mother tongue.
‘Listen to me. Quietly. They’ll come and take you to the hospital room, just down there. Maybe tonight, maybe in the morning, early. They’ll come for you. You want to get out of this place? We can help you get out.’
The man was immediately on his guard. Through the searing pain he thought of stories he had heard of prisoners like this playing the newcomer, taking advantage of the naive new inmates and ripping them off. But he was in too much pain to entertain a dialogue with this man with the strange eyes. Whatever they had injected into him was beginning to take hold. He felt himself drifting. He knew that whatever they had pumped into his bloodstream was designed to put him down and out. He could feel the room spinning.
Before he passed out he registered some of what the man with the eyes was telling him. Be careful of the warder and the guards. They use electric shocks on the prisoners in here. They drug the prisoners. Some prisoners have died. No guard has ever been arrested for the murder of a prisoner. We have to get out, or we’ll die in this place. When the builders finish the construction work outside in the new sector they’ll take us back to the crowded cells. We’ll have no chance there…
And he half-registered some other strange things the man with the eyes was saying, about bicycles. No. Not bicycles. What had the man with the fixed stare said to him? Not bicycles…wheelchairs. There were three wheelchairs in the room where they fixed up the prisoners who were hurt. One of the wheelchairs in there was broken. It had been there for weeks.
There is also a spoke wrench on the windowsill.
The man was asleep.
Thabethe stared at him. He wondered how much information he had got through to the wounded prisoner before he had faded. By the time the man passed out Thabethe had whispered to him across the corridor that the nursing room was the only place where there was no guard on duty. The nurse would clean him up, inject him, do whatever they did, but would go in and out of the room doing her business and leave him alone. In and out. She would leave him all alone in the room for minutes at a time. There was a chance, while she was out. He could get things from inside that room while the nurse was out.
Come back with one spoke, Thabethe had said to him. One spoke from the broken wheelchair. One spoke was all that was needed. Put it down your trouser-leg. Try and stick it there with sticking plaster or something. Get that one spoke for me and I’ll get you and me, and this man here, all three of us, out of this place…
What were the chances? Thabethe wondered whether this new guy was up to it. His hands were smashed. Maybe the fight had gone out of him.
‘You think he’ll do it, Mgwazeni?’
‘Eish! I’m thinking maybe he’s too messed up, Skhura. We have to see.’
Thabethe nodded in agreement with his cell-mate.
Nothing to do but wait.
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