Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  After walk I went back to my cell and finished my letter to Gavin, the lamb of god fan from Canada. The letter wound up being quite long, nine pages, and included a history of the prison, an outline of my daily schedule, and a crude drawing of the layout of my cell. Near the end of the letter, I asked him to scan it and post it on the internet if he would, as I wished fans of my band to know that I was alive and well, if pretty unhappy about my current situation. After seeing T.Q.G. holding his face, I was thoroughly sick of being muzzled. I was sick of the climate of fear I was living in, sick of the constant circus that was my bail situation, sick of it all. I just wanted to go home, and if I couldn’t do that, I wanted to be heard. (I was free by the time Gavin received the letter, so he never posted it. He had scanned it though, and I have a copy of it still.)

  I spent most of the next morning working on a letter to my family to prepare them for their upcoming visit. In the letter, I very strictly emphasized that they were not to get emotional in front of the paparazzi, who would undoubtedly be waiting to hound them outside the prison gates. Like my wife, I would not have my mother and stepmother be seen crying on Czech TV or in a newspaper. I wasn’t really worried about the old man; while I knew he wouldn’t be overjoyed to see me behind bars, I also knew he would keep a stiff upper lip in public. But I was slightly concerned about the ladies; I wanted them to be completely dry-eyed and walk with their heads held high when the press jackals came sniffing around, and I informed them in no uncertain terms that it should be so. While I was working on the letter, a guard came by with something absolutely wonderful for me: a battery powered FM radio. I had asked Martin to purchase me one and drop it by the prison, and although it took the prison over a week to inspect the radio to make sure there was no contraband inside, it had finally arrived. I placed the radio on the table, turned it on, and after scanning through several nauseating pop music channels and a bewildering bit of Czech talk radio, I found what I was looking for: the local classical music channel (98.7 on the FM dial, if you’re ever in Prague). I am not an aficionado of classical music, I cannot recognize but a handful of pieces by name, I cannot tell you much about any of the great composers, but I do enjoy listening to it. It’s relaxing, cerebral music, and it’s great to write to. It had been quite some time since I had my own source of music available, and although I would have rather have had my fully loaded iPod, I was very grateful to have found some classical. (I figured Prague had to have a classical channel; after all Mozart did work there.) I returned to my letter, feeling some tension leaving my body as the orchestra began to work on my subconscious. I wrote smoothly and without as much angst, for music had entered my life again, and suddenly everything was beginning to look up.

  Until five minutes later, when Dorj started complaining.

  “Bah. Music spatny. Screech, screech, screech. No good. Turn off,” he said, imitating a violin player hacking away with a bow.

  Enough was enough, and I had had more than enough of my obnoxious cellmate.

  “Dorj, shut the fuck up. For five weeks now I have had to listen to you whistle and whisper and slurp your goddamned food like a pig. I do not give one single solitary fuck whether or not you like classical music. I do not care if it pile drives you through the gates of insanity. I do not care if it makes you bury your head in the toilet and drown yourself to death, kaput! I am going to listen to some music, and there is not a goddamned thing you can do about it, so once again, shut the fuck up.”

  “Fuck you!” Dorj said, scowling like a four year old on the edge of a tantrum.

  “Fuck me? No, fuck you, you fat motherfucker. Whistle over this,” I said, and turned the radio up as loud as it would go.

  Dorj crossed his arms and huffed and puffed on his bunk, but didn’t make a move to touch the radio. I was glad he didn’t, because I was pretty pissed off, and may very well have hit him if he had gotten up from his bed and in my face. He had finally driven me to the very edge of mental instability, and his whistling chickens were about to come home to roost if he tried to deprive me of one of my only joys in that sordid place. The music sounded absolutely atrocious coming out of the crappy boom-box speakers at top volume, but it did the trick. I couldn’t hear Dorj at all. After an ear-deafening two or three minutes, I turned the music down to a tolerable level, and looked at Dorj.

  “Now, if you will stop bitching like a little girl and play nice, I’ll keep this at a reasonable level,” I said.

  “Bah. Music spatny,” Dorj said. But he just rolled over on his side to sulk, eventually falling asleep. Ganbold sat on his top bunk, shaking with silent laughter. After a while, he hopped down from his bunk, grabbed our Czech/English dictionary, looked up a word, and said quietly as to not awaken Dorj, “He is a pleasant.”

  “A pleasant? No, Dorj is definitely not a ‘pleasant’. What do you mean?” I said.

  “Yes, yes; he is a pleasant. From village,” Ganbold said, pointing to a Czech word in the dictionary. I looked at the English definition.

  “Oh, peasant. No L sound; pleasant means something entirely different. Yes, Dorj is most definitely a peasant,” I laughed. I had never had the occasion where I felt the need to use the word peasant to describe another human being, as it seems a bit archaic, not to mention insulting to farmers and rural people (from which I am descended), but it worked perfectly in this situation. Dorj was an unpleasant peasant, and whatever village he came from, I’m pretty sure he was known as its idiot.

  Later that evening Martin came by with some entirely expected bad news: predictably, the prosecuting attorney had raised an objection to my newly doubled and paid in full bail, and had (just as predictably) waited until the very last moment to do so. His reasoning for the objection was so feeble as to be laughable—Musik tried to justify it by saying that the Czech court would not be able to get mail to me in the U.S. to inform me of my new court date, and that furthermore, even if the court somehow was able to miraculously put enough postage on a letter to get it to America, I was never home long enough because of my touring schedule to check my mail anyway. I laughed out loud when I heard this, as I was starting to realize that my antagonist didn’t possess the most brilliant of legal minds. Where did he come up with this crap? Maybe he was drunk when he wrote his objection.

  “Really? That’s the best reason for keeping me in this dump he could cook up?” I asked Martin.

  “Yes, I know, it is ridiculous. Your manager has already written a letter to the court saying that he will inform you of any developments with your case no matter where you are, which we will try to get to the appeal court before they review your case again,” he said.

  “They gotta throw this out. That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard out of a lawyer—it sounds like Musik is running out of gas,” I said.

  “Yes, but still, I do not want you to get your hopes up too much. The court will hopefully decide to reject his complaint sometime this week. Then they have five days to write up and send their opinion down to the lower court, which will order your release. But do not forget, within the first forty-eight hours of the lower court receiving the appeal court’s opinion, Musik can write a new request to place you in custody again. Then you will be stuck here until we can appeal to the Czech Constitutional Court, which will take at least two weeks. I am sorry, Randy, but I do not want to promise you something that may not happen,” he said.

  I thanked Martin for his candor and went back to my cell. Martin had always been a straight shooter with me, and I had grown quite fond of him, even though lately when he popped by it was to deliver consistently bad news. I had taken this latest development pretty well, as it was pretty much a given that Musik would object to my new bail. And while I had basically given up on the bail situation and was almost entirely convinced by this point that I would remain in Pankrác until my trial, I felt slightly better about my chances in court. I was no lawyer, but considering the facts that both the U.S.A. and the Czech Republic no longer generally delivered mail by horseback and
airplanes existed, even I could have come up with something better than the cockamamie excuse that getting a letter to me was simply too difficult for our countries to achieve. I began to wonder about Musik’s courtroom capability, but I would find out all about his obstinate nature later.

  The next morning Ganbold had to go see the prison doctor for some reason, and when he returned I saw him speaking outside our cell in a very excitable manner to two guards I didn’t recognize. It appeared as if they were briefly arguing over something, then they must have acquiesced to Ganbold’s wishes, as I heard him enthusiastically thank them several times in Czech. The cell door was locked, and Dorj immediately began to pepper Ganbold with questions in rapid-fire Mongolian. They talked briefly, then turned to me with doleful expressions on their faces. Something was up, and from the looks of my cellmates, it wasn’t good.

  “What now?” I asked Ganbold.

  “Doctor Pankrác, this very bad news for you. Me, Dorj moving upstairs today. Bachar say you must stay here. They give you two new men for this room,” he replied solemnly.

  “WHAT?” I exploded. “I’ve been here just three days less than Dorj and I still don’t get to go upstairs?”

  “No. Bachar say they bring Chimpo Weaselman and other man to room after we go. I sorry, Doctor Pankrác,” he said. This immediately sent me over the edge.

  “No! No fucking way. I am not living with Chimpo. I refuse! No way! I am calling the bachar back right now! I must talk to them,” I said, getting up from my bed to go and bang on the cell door. Ganbold got up and stopped me.

  “No, Doctor Pankrác, no. I ask these men for you to go upstairs, but it is mots spatny. These bachar no like you. Say you must stay with Chimpo. I sorry, Doctor Pankrác. Very sorry,” he said quietly.

  I sat down at our table and buried my head in my hands. This was unbelievable. The absolute worst. I was living in a nightmare. Dorj may have driven me completely nuts, but he was a far cry from Chimpo Weaselman. The thought of being locked in a cell with Chimpo twenty-three hours a day, constantly doing battle over cigarettes, coffee, and whatever else I possessed made me begin to start contemplating my options for suicide. Oh sweet Jesus, what if he got his hands on some speed somehow? What then? I began to see extra time being piled onto my sentence as I envisioned myself snapping and knocking his gigantic teeth out. I would never ever leave this terrib-

  “BAHAHAHAHA! Doctor Pankrác looking so sad! Big joke onto you! We all go upstairs now, bahahahaha!” Dorj said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. I looked up at Ganbold, who quickly (and somewhat ashamedly) told me that the guards he had been arguing with were originally only going to take Dorj and myself upstairs, but he had somehow convinced them that as a Mongol he needed to remain with his chubby countryman. He had told Dorj this, who then persuaded him to play the joke on me.

  If I hadn’t been so relieved that I wasn’t bunking with Chimpo, I would have assaulted them both.

  A half-hour later we were packed and ready to go. Bradley came and opened the cell, and the three of us walked to the end of the hall, where Felix sat with his belongings on a bench outside the cellblock office. We took a seat, and soon two guards came to escort us upstairs. I picked up my bundle, and ignoring Bradley’s smarmy hoot of bon voyage, walked out of that basement forever. Goodbye Bradley, and go fuck yourself. Goodbye Archie Bunker, I hope you choke on a knedliky. Goodbye Tom Selleck #1, you turned out to be pretty cool, may your ’80s hairline never recede. Goodbye Tom Selleck #2, you weird bipolar motherfucker, I hope you learn a different word than yarl one day. Goodbye Pankrác Manzelka, our love was never meant to last so please don’t show up in Richmond, my sexy babika. Goodbye moldy basement. Thirty-one days in you was thirty-one too many.

  The long hall that housed our new cellblock was much airier, with a large set of open floor to ceiling barred windows at the end. Bright, blessed sunlight streamed in through the windows, and a slight breeze blew down the hall. Things were looking better already. The guards walked us almost all the way to the end of the hall, stopping in front of cell #176, our new home. A trusty came to the room as the guard was unlocking our cell, and in perfect English told me that the tier would be leaving for walk in twenty minutes, so we should just arrange our stuff later if we wanted to go outside that day. I thanked him and took a look around our cell. It was laid out basically the same as our previous one, but smaller, with lower ceilings. It also looked to be even older and more dilapidated; paint was coming off the wall in great swaths, the toilet was in worse shape than the wreck we had had downstairs, and the dirt coating the cell somehow looked more ingrained. The cell was also hotter, as we had moved up several floors.

  Overall, the move had been a huge downgrade, which is really saying quite a bit, as our other digs hadn’t exactly been palatial. But as they say, location is everything, and we were more than happy to trade a little space and cool air for a room with a view. I looked out the barred window and saw the low skyline of the Pankrác suburb for which the prison was named, stretching in all directions above the endless garlands of razor wire that topped the prison walls like cruel dull-gray strands of deadly DNA. I could see the outside world, and after a month of staring at a pile of rubble and concrete from the ground level windows of the subterranean mold terrarium I had been living in, my imagination was fired. I saw a woman hanging laundry from her balcony on the upper level of an apartment building across the street, and I wondered about the life she lived a stone’s throw from the prison. Did she ever wonder about the men and women inside? Did she know anyone in Pankrác, inmate or employee? Did her eyes even register the crumbling bulwark outside her front window anymore, or did her brain block it out, a regrettable and aesthetically unpleasant bit of scenery piggybacked atop her cheap rent? I would never know a thing about the woman, but I would often look for her out of that window, and my ruminations on her life were a source of pleasure for me, cerebral calisthenics that stretched the myopic boundaries that prison life imposes on an inmate’s mentality.

  I turned from the window as a guard unlocked our cell to collect us for walk, and quickly grounded myself in the reality of my situation and surroundings. Now I would walk the yard in general population for the first time, and I knew it would be critical to remain alert and show no fear, as there would be many sets of eyes on me, watching and judging the way I carried myself, looking for weakness. As Gandbold, Dorj, and I were escorted to the end of the long line that stopped at the main gate of our tier, I heard the whispers begin as I passed one by one by the hundred or so men already in place to walk outside. I neither stared at nor averted my eyes from the men, strolling casually with my head held high and my shoulders squared. When we reached the end of the line, I saw many heads turned towards me as the men pointed and talked in low voices amongst themselves. In the past, after my brain had been marinating a few hours in a sizable amount of high-quality lysergic acid diethylamide, sometimes I had been possessed by the irrational fear that everyone surrounding me was looking at me, whispering amongst themselves, discussing the particulars of my warped state of mind. Of course that had been groundless psychedelic induced paranoia, but the looks and whispers in that prison hallway were very much real. All the inmates knew exactly who I was, why I was there, and they were, in fact, talking about me. Like the first day I had gone out for walk in the basement, I mentally prepared myself for the possibility of sudden violence being directed my way. A tattooed bald man in his late forties with a gaudy silver medallion around his neck seemed particularly intent on staring at me, but I couldn’t tell if his look was hostile or merely curious, and I made a mental note to keep my eye on him. I had the strong feeling that if something was going to go down, it would happen outside and it would happen today. I prepared myself to move swiftly and without mercy, as my actions would have to make a strong impression, whatever their consequences may be. As we waited to walk outside, I talked and joked casually with Ganbold, trying my best to appear disinterested in my surroundings, the whole time
my heart hammering in my chest. It is a frightening thing to be the focus of one hundred strange prisoners’ blatant attention, and it was an experience I will never forget.

  The guards unlocked the gate and we all filed out, walking down the flights of stairs with our hands clasped behind our backs, my cellmates and I near the front of the line. I could feel the eyes on the back of my head, and as soon as we were outside I took a seat on a bench bolted to the ground sitting flush with a tall chain link fence so that my back would be protected. I lit a cigarette and waited as the men filed past me into the yard.