Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  “Dude, I’m really sorry about the way I smell right now. I don’t have any clean clothes and they only let us shower twice a week in that shitty prison. Normally, I’m a pretty clean person, but being in Pankrác isn’t exactly like going to a Swiss spa,” I said.

  “Do not worry—you don’t smell that bad,” he said kindly. “We have to deal with much, much worse; mentally ill homeless people and drug addicts who really stink. You are fine.”

  After about an hour of driving, we reached the city where my appointment had been scheduled (I believe it was a town named Pardubice, but I cannot be certain), and soon we were pulling into the parking lot of a nondescript office complex. Next to the offices was a funereal home, which shared the parking lot. Someone popular must have been getting planted that day, as a very large number of mourners were exiting the building right as we pulled up. They were dressed mostly in the traditional black, and weeping women dabbed their eyes with tissues as they passed slowly by mere feet outside my window. I was relieved when we continued past the funeral home and around the corner of the office complex, out of the mourners’ view—I didn’t know if they would be putting me in cuffs again to see the doctor, and I didn’t want to frighten or upset these obviously saddened people any further. It was a strange thing to be out in public yet still a prisoner, escorted by three burly and openly armed policemen. I felt as if everyone who saw me might recognize me as the evil American, as my face had certainly been on the front page of the news, and videos of me in court had been shown on Czech national television. I was grateful when we got out of the car to go into the office, Charlie made no motion to cuff me again, because it was evident that this was just a regular doctor’s office, and I could spot a few patients waiting to be seen in the small waiting room up front. It would have made me feel pretty awkward to sit next to the mother waiting there with her pre-teen daughter had I been in cuffs. As it was, I was self-conscious enough already; I was in dirty clothes, I was unshaven, and I stunk pretty badly. None of the people in the waiting room seemed to notice though as Charlie talked to the receptionist, who shortly opened a door and ushered us down a back hallway and into a large examination room to meet the doctor.

  The doctor introduced himself with a smile; he spoke perfect colloquial English and didn’t seem disconcerted at all by the fact that I was in his office with three cops, a man under armed guard and charged with killing another human being. The doctor and one of his nurses administered the same basic battery of tests I have been taking off and on since I was in the second grade, when I first got glasses. The doctor was quite friendly as well, and we chatted about various things while I took the tests; it was very nice for me to speak in my native tongue with a person who had not a trace of awkwardness in their speech. Except for the police presence, I could have been in any optometrist’s office back at home, getting a regular old eye exam. The doctor even scolded me for smoking, asking how many packs a day I smoked; when I told him one, he laughed and said, “So that means two. You should really quit, you know.” I realized that the day’s trip—the coffee, the conversation, seeing a bit of nature, even the vision tests—had made me feel more like a regular human being than I had in quite sometime.

  After the tests were done, the doctor wished me good luck, and we got back into the car for the ride back to Pankrác. Charlie let me smoke before we left the parking lot, and again during a brief roadside stop for the driver to take a leak in one of the sunflower fields. He told me he would try to convince the people at the prison to let me keep the pack of cigarettes he had bought me, but it was unlikely that they would (and once we were back in Pankrác, he did try—no dice). As we neared Pankrác, the song “One” by the heavy metal band Metallica came on the radio, and I asked the driver to turn it up, which he did. “One” was the first song by Metallica to crack the Top 40 charts and garner them a bit of mainstream acclaim, winning the first Grammy ever given for best metal performance. It is a fantastic song, but much like “Stairway to Heaven” or “Free Bird,” it had been played to death by commercial radio for over twenty years by that point, and just like those songs when I listen to Zeppelin or Skynyrd, I normally skip the track when I crank some Metallica. But on this day, I had never been happier to hear the opening samples of machine guitar and mortar fire, Kirk Hammett’s crystal clear guitar intro, and James Hetfield’s rich voice singing the opening lines:

  “I can’t remember anything, can’t tell if this is true or dream . . .”

  Hearing music made by friends of mine was like getting a call from home, and that song did me more good at that moment than they could ever know (thanks, dudes), and we pulled into Pankrác with it blasting—Charlie even let me stay in the car until the song was over. The irony of rocking out to some of the lyrics behind the gates of a prison did not escape me (“darkness/imprisoning me/all that I see/absolute horror/I cannot live/I cannot die/trapped in myself/body my holding cell”), but as their grim musical tale of a severely wounded war veteran trapped in his own body ended, I walked through the front door of Pankrác with a little more pep in my step. I said goodbye to Charlie, and he wished me luck. The laundry office was closed for the day, so I was led back to my cellblock wearing my street clothes. Bradley was waiting, that stupid grin of his plastered on his face.

  “So, you have nice day with police?” he smirked as he opened my cell door.

  “You’re goddamned right I did. It was fucking great,” I said. “The police were super nice to me, and we went for a nice long drive through the country. We stopped for McDonald’s, and they bought me cigarettes and coffee. Then I sat around in an air-conditioned office talking to a guy who spoke perfect English, and we listened to heavy metal on the way home. I even heard some of my friends’ music; plus it was beautiful outside, too. Did you have a nice day in this shitty basement?”

  “Why are you wearing these clothes? You must change into prison clothes,” he said, obviously disappointed by my cheery report and trying to regain the emotional upper hand.

  “No can do, chief—laundry is closed. It sure is nice to not wear those crappy pajamas though,” I said, and flopped down on my bed with a smile. Suck it, Bradley.

  The next day after breakfast, a guard who spoke excellent English took me for a visit to the psychiatrist. I had written a note earlier in the week, which Felix translated into Czech for me, requesting an appointment to ensure that my rapidly disappearing prescription of Lexapro was refilled. While I hoped to eventually get off the drug (and eventually did, during the writing of this book), I did not want to stop taking an antidepressant cold turkey in prison. I was scared of what would happen to my mind, as my brain chemistry might still be all screwed up—I had put in twenty-two years of hard drinking and drugging, so I had without question, done my best to make it so.

  The shrink was a sour-faced woman who, with the guard acting as a translator, asked me the standard prison shrink stuff: How are you doing? What is your mental state like? Have you been depressed at all? What do you think of the prison so far? Are you having any problems getting along with the other inmates? I had been warned by Felix about this woman, so I knew just what to say.

  I told her the truth.

  “Well, I must tell you the truth and say I’m doing just fine, m’am,” I chirped, sounding happier than an injury claims lawyer at a thirty-car pile up. “I have all the things I need to survive. I have food, clothes, and shelter. I am grateful for these things—many people in the world are not so lucky. They don’t get three meals a day. They are forced to wear whatever rags they can scrounge up. They don’t have a bed to sleep in. And many of my countrymen and women are at war, stuck fighting in the desert somewhere, with people who hate them and are trying to kill them. They have it much worse off than me. So no, things really aren’t so bad here when I think about it that way.” The shrink looked up at me from her notepad, her face brightening like an elementary school teacher who had just discovered a star pupil in a class full of juvenile delinquents.


  “Well! I certainly wish all the prisoners here had such a good attitude,” she said, making a note for the prison pharmacist to send me 10 milligrams of Lexapro daily, and I was off and back in cell #505 in a short amount of time. In-and-out in about ten minutes. Easy-peasy-Japanesey.

  What I had told her was 100 percent true; I was grateful I wasn’t starving, I was grateful for clothes and shelter, and the men and women of my country’s armed forces did have it a lot worse than me, and no one had tried to kill me in Pankrác . . . yet. And really, I honestly did think about all of these things on a daily basis. That’s the truth, and my gratitude list reflected it. But our interview would have gone very, very differently had I not been carefully choosing my tone of voice and words to convey an almost moronic sense of contentment with my lot. Had I not been afraid of being locked in the basement longer, or pissing off the psychiatrist so much she refused to authorize my drugs, I would have said something like this:

  “How am I doing? HOW AM I DOING?!?!?!? How in the fuck do you think I’m doing, you sloth-witted bitch? I’m in prison. In a foreign country. I’m doing terrible. Who gave you this job, Bozo the Clown? What do I think of the place? Am I depressed? Have you bothered to look around? Have you ever seen the basement of this dump? For Pete’s sake, have you ever even tried the soup? My God, do you even know where you are right now, you mutton-headed shrew? Of course I’m depressed, of course my mental state is a little bit on the grim side right now. What do you expect out of me, cartwheels and a thank-you note? Jesus H. Christ, if all I have to do to get a gig as a psychiatrist in this country is ask unbelievably stupid questions with excruciatingly obvious answers, then as soon as I get out of this hideous den of sorrow and woe, I’m going to take your fucking job and figure out a way to stick you in the basement with Cuckoo Khan the whistling wonder. I’ll let you rot down there for a couple of weeks, then ask you the same asinine questions you just shot at me out of that clueless gob of yours. Then we’ll see whose mental state needs evaluating.”

  But I had been forewarned by Felix, so I played the game and acted like a grateful little criminal. If I was going to be stuck in Pankrác until my trial (and as each day passed, this seemed more and more likely), I wanted to be moved out of that dark basement, upstairs into population, and properly medicated so I didn’t flip my wig. I wasn’t happy about having to play suck up, but sometimes discretion truly is the better part of valor.

  After I got back from the shrink, Bradley popped by to tell me that I had to change out of my street clothes immediately. He seemed really bummed that I was just kicking it in my normal duds. When I laughed in his face and told him that these were the only clothes I had to wear, unless of course he wanted to lend me his, he stomped off in a huff to find someone to take me to the laundry. He came back shortly wearing a triumphant grin and said that a guard would take me upstairs soon to change. No one ever showed up to collect me, and Bradley looked extra pissy at lights out when he saw me lounging in my camo shorts and skate shop shirt. Read it and weep, I thought as I pointed out the printing on the shirt with a smile as he peeked through the cell door hatch. No Mercy, Bradley, you insufferable douchebag.

  The next day the guard came and yelled “Advocate!” and up I went to see my lawyer, or in this case, lawyers. Seated with Tomas Morycek was Jeff Cohen, and I had never been happier to see his face. Besides the fact that I loved Jeff as a person, besides the fact that he was there to help my Czech lawyers out, besides the fact that he would be able to explain to me in plain English from an educated point of view what in the hell was going on with my case so far, besides the simple fact that his was a comforting familiar face—Jeff was an American. He belonged to my team. He was my countryman, and I had not seen one of those in a few weeks.

  Jeff had also brought me four packs of cigarettes (the guard only let me keep one) and a book. Jeff has a highly developed sense of irony, and as he handed me the book he said, “You know, I was talking to some people about what to bring you to read, and some of them suggested giving you really long stuff, like War and Peace, to eat up some time. But I said, ‘Fuck that!—there is only one book Randy needs to be reading right now,’ and this is it, baby.”

  I looked at the book in my hand. The Trial, by Franz Kafka. Jeff had brought me The fucking Trial; the singular weirdest, most depressing, surreal fictional account of an arrest and prosecution by a court of law ever written. To make things even worse, it was written by Franz Kafka. In Prague. Two or three miles away from where I sat at that very second. I hadn’t cracked open any Kafka since high school, and I had never bothered to read The Trial, but I was vaguely familiar with the book’s plot—Josef K. wakes up one day and is arrested out of the blue for an unspecified crime by two agents working for an unknown agency. The rest of the book just gets stranger and stranger as Josef K. struggles to understand the nature of the nameless charge against him and the bizarre and convoluted “court” that automatically assumes his guilt. In the end, he is executed with a butcher’s knife, his last words being “Like a dog!” Josef K. dies a bloody death, never even knowing what he has supposedly done wrong. It is, like virtually all of Kafka’s work, a very, very dark book. Any hopes I might have had for a little light reading, something to take my mind off my bizarre situation, perhaps a nice mindless fantasy novel, were dashed immediately.

  In press coverage of my legal ordeal, the term Kafka-esque would be repeatedly used to describe the predicament I had found myself in. The journalists who bandied that term about were not so much hitting the nail on the head as dropping an atom bomb on the freaking thing—the parallels hit a little too close to home for comfort. I had been suddenly arrested one day while going about my normal business, and told to my disbelief that I had committed a serious crime. Although, unlike Josef K., after a short while I was made aware of the charge against me, I still had no memory of committing any such action, and all the same began to be plagued by self-doubt and consumed by worry for my future. There was a strange (and to my American eyes) inscrutable legal system arrayed against me, one I labored mightily to understand, and which seemed to employ a strange set of arbitrary rules that simply did not make sense to me. These occurrences and emotional downward spirals were what filled the pages of The Trial, just as they filled my current life. Even the setting of some of the scenes in The Trial perfectly mirrored my surroundings—dark, dim, crumbling buildings with dirty rooms full of unhappy people. Surely Kafka had at the very least glimpsed Pankrác at some point in his travels through his hometown, if he did not know someone languishing behind its walls. The whole thing was just too eerie for my tastes, but I tried to smile as I thanked Jeff for the gift. After all, reading material was scarce, and while I decided I would eventually read The Trial, I hoped it would be somewhere far, far away from Prague and a few years into a (hopefully) free future. (But Jeff Cohen is a very smart man, much smarter than me; he knew me and he knew what he was bringing me. His choice was perfect—I did wind up reading The Trial during my incarceration, and after my initial misgivings, found the similarities both fascinating and helpful when thinking about my situation.)

  After saying hello, Jeff and Tomas and I discussed the status of my case, focusing mostly on how to make my already paid bail effective—getting me released. The prosecuting attorney had made good on his plan to raise an objection to my bail, claiming I was a flight risk, and now an appellate court would review my case again to determine whether or not I would be released. It seemed asinine to me that almost a quarter million dollars had been paid and I still wasn’t out of prison, but my team (suddenly I had “a team” of lawyers, something I had never wished for before in my life) were doing everything they could to secure my release—talking to the police and judges, trying (unsuccessfully) to parlay with the prosecuting attorney, carefully reviewing any available evidence arrayed against me with a fine tooth comb, looking up legal precedents, filing complaints and objections, and possibly hiring a private detective to try to dig up new evidence and get
me out of the country once I was released. I began to feel better now that Jeff was there, a man I had known and trusted for many years, and he seemed to be fired up and ready to kick ass and take names. The long and short of it wasn’t very surprising to me—the prosecuting attorney was being a complete dick to my attorneys and was doing his best to keep the wheels of the system spinning in order to keep me incarcerated. But I was extremely grateful that someone was there to ask the hard questions about the Czech legal system for me. I needed answers, because rotting in prison after paying bail was still not processing too well in the old ramen noodle helmet.

  My favorite part was the private detective, though.

  “You’re gonna fucking love this guy, Randy! He’s brutal—he’s all ripped, ex-KGB, a Krav Maga expert, and he’s got a fast sports car with black tinted windows he’s going to pick you up in, to get you over the border and the fuck outta Dodge as soon as you are released,” Jeff said.