Dark Days

by D. Randall Blythe

  Nicotine is some heavy-duty shit. Think about that, kids, before you start smoking. Plus, it doesn’t even get you high. Why in the hell did I start smoking in the first place? I honestly don’t have a clue. But I had a very clear realization in that moment that I absolutely had to quit. Certainly not right then though—that cigarette was heaven in a cancerous tube, and even though I knew it was telling me a vicious lie, I enjoyed the hell out of that thing. I needed something to calm my nerves, and because I was a nicotine addict, it did—a nonsmoker would have thrown up all over their cuffs if they had hit that thing as hard as I was. Like everyone else living in a modern society, I was familiar with the terrible cancerous risk to my life smoking incurs (especially being in a touring band, as the health warnings on cigarette packs in many other countries resemble a horror movie), but my nicotine addiction made it somehow easy to ignore the truth, just as my addiction to alcohol enabled me to drink in the face of overwhelming evidence that I shouldn’t. I suppose it’s kind of ironic that the best cigarette I have ever smoked was the one that finally made me realize I needed to quit; then again, since that first one sitting outside Pankrác I have developed quite a fondness for cappuccino (a coffee drink I had previously always scorned as being for sissies) and have at least one a week. I always think fondly of the guard who drove me to prison as I drink it; so dude, if you ever read this—thank you for treating me like a human being. If we ever meet again, the cappuccino’s on me.

  After a while a guard called to us. We walked into the building, stopped in front of an office window, where my driver handed the clerk inside a plastic bag containing my belongings. Then we walked a few feet to a large holding pen on the other side of the office, the bars reaching from the floor to the ceiling, where my driver removed my cuffs and ushered me into the cage. He wished me luck and walked away, another guard shutting and locking the door of my cage. I stood there and took a look at my new surroundings.

  Inside, Pankrác was not nearly as maintained as its freshly scrubbed outside might lead one to believe—the building was obviously pretty old (at least by American standards). The ceilings were quite high, and not much light filtered in through the few opaque windows set on either side of a large hallway behind another set of bars and leading further into the building. The black and white checkered floor looked like it hadn’t seen a mop since before the fall of communism, and paint was peeling on some parts of the walls. Rust splotched the bars of my cage where God only knows how many layers of enamel had chipped away to the metal. The area I was in reminded me of an old city hall whose municipality had fallen on hard times—not only did they let the janitor go, but were unable to pay their entire electricity bill. It was large, musty, and very dim. I (foolishly) hoped my cell wouldn’t be as dingy as this intake area. I tried to read some of the graffiti scratched into what paint was left on the bars of my cage, but it was all in Czech, so I gave up and began doing pull ups from a section of crossbar.

  Almost immediately a window slid open in the wall of the office that made up part of my cage, and a guard yelled something at me in Czech, shaking his head in disapproval. Oh, well, I thought, So much for an early prison style-work out. I got down and the guard motioned me forward to the window. He handed me several sheets of paper printed in Czech and a pen, pointing to lines where I assumed he wanted my signature. I had absolutely no idea of what I was signing, so I asked him. He replied in Czech and pointed emphatically at the lines again. It didn’t seem like not throwing down a John Hancock was an option, so I scrawled a signature nothing like my own (I believe I signed it “Johnny Rotten”—sorry, Mr. Lydon), then he handed me seventeen sheets of paper stapled together with the word “instruction” typed in block letters at the top of the first page. Printed on both sides of the sheets of paper in well-translated English were the rights of an accused person who had been taken into custody, and the rules and regulations governing the prison. The guard shut the window and I perused the papers. There were rules for the amount of space each prisoner was allotted within a cell, what a prisoner was allowed to have in their cell, a seemingly endless list of security regulations, visitation and telephone policy—seemingly every aspect of prison existence was covered, and it seemed as if this was a very tightly run ship I had boarded, adhering to a precisely formulated and rather draconian plan.

  Within a few short days I would discover that this list of rules, regulations, and rights was the single biggest pile of horseshit I had ever read in my life. Pankrác had plenty of rules and regulations all right, but they bore only a passing resemblance to the printed pack of lies in my hands. As for the “rights” of prisoners? Sitting at my desk now and reading paragraph 2 of Section 29, “Satisfaction of Cultural Needs” (“A convict shall be allowed to make a choice of books from the library selection according to his/her interests, spiritual needs and denomination”), I have to smile. Paragraph two of Section 31, “Purchase of Food and Personal Items” (“Prices in the prison shop shall not exceed the price level that is common in a municipality in the area in which the prison is located”) actually wrenches a snort of amusement from me. By the time I get to the second paragraph of Section 36, “Convicts’ Management Programs and Employment of Convicts” (“Convicts’ management programs are divided into the following types: a—work activities, b—training activities, c—special education activities, d-activities of interest, and e—people skills), I’m actually laughing out loud. But my favorite, the one that almost has me rolling on the floor and peeing my boxers with glee, is Section 35, “Protection of Convicts against Illegitimate Violence and against Humiliation of Human Dignity”—oh, this section is the richest!

  There are short instructions for prisoners who have been the victim of illegitimate violence or had their human dignity humiliated at the hands of a prison employee (naturally, just report it to a different prison employee and the prison director will take care of it right away, no problem!), but most of it seems directed toward safeguarding prisoners against “illegitimate violence” (man, I just love that terminology) or degradation of their human rights at the hands of other prisoners. During my time in Pankrác, I swiftly came to realize that I didn’t really need to watch out for other prisoners hell-bent on humiliating my human dignity. Yes, I was locked up with junkies, rapists, murderers, thieves, con men, and tax evaders; but not a single one of them ever tried to make me feel lesser than myself; in fact many helped me out the best they could, especially when I first got there and didn’t know what in the hell was going on. I can’t say the same for a few guards. And yes, prison is full of dangerous people, people who can and will hurt you very badly if you act foolishly or get caught up in some shady business. It happens, and it has happened in Pankrác. But I never witnessed so much as a pushing match between inmates in Pankrác, nor saw any prisoners who looked like they had been beat up—by another prisoner. But what do you do when the guards let the police come in from the outside to use helpless prisoners as punching bags for absolutely no reason at all? I did see the end result of that, and it wasn’t pretty. I guess police violence isn’t considered “illegitimate violence” in Pankrác. I tried to stay aware of every single person around me at all times, but a few of the guards (not all of them) got special attention.

  Soon a large guard emerged from the gate leading deeper into the prison, unlocked the door to my cage, and led me out through the gate he had come from. After he had relocked the gate, he motioned for me to keep my hands behind my back as if I were cuffed. I followed him silently down the gloomy hallway until we stopped and went into an equally gloomy nurse’s office. There I had my height measured, weighed, and blood pressure checked with one of those old-school manual pump bulb inflated arm cuffs, the ancient and emotionless nurse typing the results at the speed of molasses by single finger pecking into an equally antiquated PC. After what seemed like an eternity, we left the nurse’s office, went through yet another gate that had to be unlocked and then relocked, then walked into a bright, naturally lit inter
section of hallways. There were a few groups of prisoners passing through the area, escorted by guards and walking with their hands behind their backs like me. Some of them glanced at me briefly without much interest. We were about to turn right and head up a broad set of stairs when a young prisoner with a freshly shaved head noticed me. He stopped dead in his tracks, the inmate behind him bumping into him as his eyes immediately lit up, his face breaking out into a wide, excited, and uncontrollable smile. I know this expression all too well, as I see it with some regularity when I am in public. Sometimes, my wife, friends, or family members will recognize it on people’s faces well before I do. It is the look some hard-core fans of my band, even ones in my hometown, will get when they run into me at the grocer’s, book store, or coffee shop; the look that precedes them inevitably saying “Randy? Oh my God, it is you! I can’t believe this! What in the hell are you doing here?”

  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m buying groceries or getting gas for my truck or going to see a movie or whatever activity is appropriate for my current surroundings—that is, the same exact thing the fan is doing; especially in Richmond, Va, since I happen to live there. And that’s usually my standard reply (although in the grocery store I’m always tempted to say, “Well, you gotta promise me you won’t tell anyone, but lamb of god is playing a secret show in the produce section. Aisle three, eight o’clock sharp—be there, but keep it to yourself!”), but as the young man resisted the urge to come over to me, threw me the horns, then walked away whispering to the men in his group, I had a feeling he already knew why I was there. Several of the men glanced back at me again, staring openly this time. I supposed the news of my arrival in prison would soon be making its way through the grapevine. This didn’t exactly thrill me, as I wanted to maintain as low of a profile as possible, since my arrest was front-page news in the Czech Republic and I didn’t know if the inmates believed whatever was being printed about me in the papers. The option of operating completely under the prison population’s radar had just been shot down right in front of me, but instead of getting upset, I quickly (and truthfully) told myself that harboring that hope had been ridiculous and destined for failure from the start. My story was too big, and since every prison is one gigantic rumor factory, I might as well accept my unfortunate notoriety, keep both eyes open for trouble, and wait to see how it would affect my period of incarceration.

  The guard motioned for me to precede him up the steps to yet another locked gate. Pankrác Prison is not a group of white painted buildings and a concrete yard surrounded by razor wire-topped walls. It is an endless and bewildering procession of right angle turns, separated every fifteen or twenty meters by heavy grids of floor to ceiling solid steel bars and thick sliding bolts. With every turn of a guard’s key, each corridor walked through, every corner turned, a person moves further and further away from the pieces that once defined their life, and deeper and deeper into the ancient belly of their new existence. It is a grim and filthy collage of unhappiness; constructed of iron rodded barriers of finality, and the collective claustrophobic despair of the men and women locked behind them. In the month that I was there, I would fight daily a relentless war to prevent this physical prison from becoming a mental one. If I think about it long and hard enough, the memories begin to overtake me, and I have to fight again to not be overwhelmed by them. The awake, aware human being realizes that this moment is what needs taking care of. Sitting shiva in the dark days of the past is not the act of mourning for lost time or happiness; it is willfully murdering the only chance we ever have to be happy—right now. That is easy to write, but much harder for all of us to actually do. It definitely is for me at times, so now, as I did then, I must just push forward down the next corridor before me and see what comes next.

  I walked down a short and low drop-ceilinged hallway (the first I had seen in Pankra), and through a flimsy wood veneer door into a more modern room (and by modern, I mean a circa 1970s orange carpeted, faux-pine paneled, construction company foreman’s office, complete with a rickety metal fan and scratched-up formica-topped desk adorned with a chipped coffee cup and an overflowing heavy glass ashtray). There were hefty aluminum rods running the length of each wall, with hundreds of wire coat hangers hung with burlap sack covered clothes filling their lengths. It looked like the world’s biggest and most depressing walk-in closet. A trusty got up from behind the desk and told me in a halting mixture of Czech and English to take off all my clothes. I stripped naked in front of the guard and trusty, who took my clothes except for my baseball hat, socks, boxers and shoes (he did remove the laces though), draped them on a hanger, then covered them with a burlap sack and hung them on one of the rods. He handed me a faded pair of purple sweat pants about three inches too short for my legs and a threadbare tan v-necked t-shirt, which I put on. I signed another paper that I assumed was for my clothes, then the guard and I made our way back to the staircase we had walked up, and then proceeded to go down many flights of stairs until they narrowed and ended in a solid steel door. We had reached the end of the line, and I correctly assumed that we had to be in the basement of the prison. The guard unlocked the door, and we faced another gate. The guard called out, and another scowling prison guard with a remarkable resemblance to Tom Selleck (if Tom Selleck were skinnier and had a 1980s-almost-but-not-quite-new-wave spiked-topped haircut) stepped out of an office door and unlocked the gate. The guard who had escorted me down handed Tom Selleck, who gave me a grumpy once-over, some paperwork, then left. Tom pointed to a bench outside his office where I sat, and called out down the hall.

  A younger guard, standing a good five inches shorter than me arrived. He had a medium build, dirty blond hair, a fake-looking tan, and gleaming white teeth that shined as he looked at me and smiled, listening to Tom Selleck giving him instructions. For some reason, I immediately distrusted this sporty-looking young guard—he reminded me of the popular rich kids from high school who used to love to publicly humiliate other students whose parents didn’t have the kind of money theirs did, as their lack of brand-name clothes made clear to any who saw them.

  Bradley. He looked like a Bradley to me (no offense to any Bradleys reading this—I actually have a few friends named Bradley and they are all awesome guys, but this dude was, I’m sorry to say, a serious disgrace to Bradleys everywhere). I decided I would do well to keep my eye on him—there was something about Bradley that led me to believe we wouldn’t get along, and he didn’t take long to confirm my hunch. Bradley would soon prove to be my least favorite guard in all of Pankrác—I would say that he was the bane of my existence there, but Bradley was too transparent and predictable in his crappiness for me to take his attempts to upset me seriously after a while. He sure as hell tried his best, though.

  Bradley and I walked down the hall a few feet and stopped in front of an open cell door. He leaned his head in and hollered in Czech to a shaved bald trusty in his thirties, who quickly took off his headphones and hurried up off his bed a little too quickly (kiss ass), gave me a creepy grin, and went into a closet area beside his cell, emerging with a bundle of items wrapped up in a wool blanket which he handed me. I didn’t like the look of the trusty either—he looked like a pedophile to me, a more unsavory version of Uncle Fester from the Addam’s Family. I tucked my large bundle under my arm and followed Bradley down the hall. There were solid metal doors on either side of the hallway with numbers painted on them, and we came to a stop in front of 505. Bradley unlocked the door.

  “So is this where I’ll be staying?” I asked him.

  “Yes. For a long time. Maybe a month, maybe longer,” he said, smiling at me. Bradley obviously loved this part of his job. He yanked on the door, opening it wide.

  “Welcome to your new friend,” Bradley said, sweeping his arm upwards and into the room in a grand gesture, as if he were the concierge of a luxury hotel, showing me to the finest suite in the building. “He,” he said, pausing for effect, “is a mongoloid,” then slammed the door shut behind me as I w
alked into the cell. I heard keys turning and bolts sliding into their chambers. I was home.

  The man before me rubbed his eyes as he got up from his rickety looking metal frame bed. He was a brown skinned fellow with Asiatic features defining his pleasant face, of slightly less than average height, and certainly above average weight for a man of his stature—he had to be well over two hundred pounds, and it wasn’t a “firm” two hundred plus he was carrying around. He looked sort of like a Chinese version of the Pillsbury Doughboy, if the doughboy had grown up on a beach in Hawaii working on his tan. We stood there staring at each other. I gave him a smile, and he smiled back. So far, so good. And despite Bradley’s dramatic pronouncement, my cellmate didn’t appear to be “a mongoloid,” as people with Down Syndrome were sometimes referred to during my youth.

  “What’s up, dude? I’m Randy. How ya doing?” I asked, trying a little conversational English to test the ol’ linguistic waters in cell 505. The man just stared at me. I went a little more formal.

  “Hello, my good man. This place is really something, eh?” I said. He continued to stare, not with malice, but there was incomprehension written on his brown face.

  “Bonjour, mon ami. Parlez vous francais?” I asked, hoping that what little I remembered from Madame Degnan’s first period high school French class might come in handy. This actually drew a scowl—he obviously wasn’t a francophile. I greeted him in Japanese, and I thought I saw a small glimmer of recognition in his dark eyes, but still he remained silent. This was just as well, as my Japanese is horrible at best. Spanish? No reply. I ran through most of the greetings I know from traveling around the world, even throwing in a little Jamaican patois just for the fun of it, but the man didn’t utter a word. Maybe he was mute?