One of the few post–strike events on which both sides shared a common interest was the announcement that the Department of Justice had appointed a three–judge special hearing panel to review the cases of Kamas political prisoners. Each evening after the mid–April announcement, a queue formed in the mess hall to pick up petition forms and instructions at a table manned by the legal appeals clerks, judges Richardson and O'Rourke. From dinner until lights–out, prisoners of all ages and backgrounds could be seen toiling to prepare their petitions. It seemed that hope lingered in every man's breast that Washington would at last discover its errors and order his immediate release.
As for myself, I had no desire to line up for the privilege of consulting the hack judges. Nor did I believe that there was a chance in a thousand that I would gain legal relief through such a petition. I saw the case reviews as nothing more than a cynical trick to distract the credulous by occupying their leisure time.
I spent most of my spare hours during April trying to restore my health. On several follow–up visits to Georg Schuster at the dispensary, I came away with enough supplemental ration tickets to stabilize my weight and actually gain a few pounds. Schuster's nurse, Gwen, also resupplied me with tonic herbs and slipped me a bottle of expired multivitamins to speed my recovery. On Sundays, I napped, ate, read, visited with friends, and went to bed thinking of my wife and daughters.
Early in the month I received my first message from Sigler's widow. It was an ordinary sheet of cheap copy paper twisted into a scroll to fit into a hollowed stick. I felt a special thrill on seeing a woman's handwriting in a note addressed only to me and an even greater thrill when I read that she agreed to correspond.
In Helen Sigler's second letter, using the code I had proposed, she explained that she and Alec had used their letter exchange primarily to convey messages between women in Division 1 and men in divisions 2 and 3. Helen visited the women's division regularly under the pretext of trading food, herbs, soaps, and skin lotions for prison handicrafts that she resold in town. As security measures in the women's camp were relatively flexible, and as she paid a portion of her revenues in bribes to the gate guards, Helen was able to meet scores of women prisoners, some of whom had brothers or husbands only a few hundred yards away on the other side of the Service Yard.
Nearly all the messages we exchanged during April were devoted to requests from female prisoners to locate their male relatives and to the men’s responses. I soon found that the task of searching for these men was the easy part of the job. Since nearly all the women already knew that their loved one had been arrested, finding him alive and in the same camp came as joyous news. Even to learn of a relative's ill health or death was preferable to knowing nothing. Most often any bad news had been discounted long in advance.
Delivering the women's messages to the men, however, was not as simple. In most cases, the male relative had been the first family member arrested and, being denied the right to correspond, was unaware that any other family member was in custody. It was also natural for any prisoner who had agreed to cooperate with State Security to expect that such cooperation would spare his relatives. So the news that a man's wife or sister or daughter had landed in a labor camp almost always came as a crushing blow. It took me most of April to devise a method for preventing or cushioning these reactions.
The end of April stands out in my memory for another reason. Rumors of an incoming prisoner transport began before roll call on the last day of the month. According to several warders and guards, a convoy had arrived just before dawn and consisted of five or six hundred prisoners. But the new men were not politicals like us. They were common criminals convicted of crimes like murder, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery. Most of us had encountered this breed of prisoner in transit camps before our arrival at Kamas. But apart from the transit camps, which served political prisoners and common criminals alike, politicals and thieves had always been held in separate correctional facilities.
News of the incoming transfer sent a shockwave through the camp. Nearly every prisoner who had been thrown in with the thieves in the past dreaded facing them again. We remembered how the thieves had intimidated us, beaten us, cut us, stolen our food and belongings, raped the young and weak and murdered those who stood up to them, all without risk of punishment from the authorities. We remembered how our fellow politicals generally lacked the stomach to match the criminals blow for blow and how the thieves, who operated in gangs, easily dominated the independent and disorganized politicals.
As we marched off to our worksites on that last day in April, we fretted about how our world would change when we returned from work. Mercifully, the thieves would be held in quarantine for their first full day. That would give us time to conceal treasured possessions and perhaps lay hands on a weapon. But what would happen when the thieves moved into our barracks? Who would be singled out first for harassment or worse?
At the worksites we talked of nothing else. How would we meet our production quotas when the thieves shirked their work and refused to contribute to the team effort? What if the thieves were appointed as warders, foremen, or work group leaders? And how could we keep the thieves from informing on us to the camp bosses as they invariably did?
Our work team returned to camp that evening more agitated and depressed than we had been in weeks. As we entered the mess hall, we watched the thieves as closely as they watched us. In the lead were simpering rat–faced punks, cocky gangsters, and sullen, slow–witted giants who served as their bodyguards and enforcers. Behind them were the capos and their lieutenants, resembling professional wrestlers in their exaggerated villainy and exuding an unmistakable brutality and animal cunning. Tomorrow these would be our new barracks–mates.
The fact that the thieves were permitted in the mess hall at all was the first indication that the warders and guards were unwilling to enforce the rules against them. According to quarantine regulations, transferees were to remain separate from the regular camp population for twenty–four hours after their arrival.
We waited until the last of the thieves left the mess hall, and then filed in for dinner. Conversation was lackluster.
After we returned to our barracks, Ralph Knopfler called me outside to watch the spectacle of the thieves smashing their barracks windows and lighting bonfires on the parade ground. It was not until after lights–out that guards arrived with fire extinguishers to put out the fires. These stern disciplinarians now were seen chuckling at the audacious spirit of the young criminals. Unlike politicals, the thieves represented the underprivileged, whose foibles were tolerated in the new Unionist society.
If the thieves' arrival heralded a new tactic in the bosses' campaign to crush the political prisoners' will, it seemed off to a promising start. The threat of an alliance between the thieves and the camp bosses had caught us completely off guard. On the eve of the May Day holiday, none of us slept soundly.
CHAPTER 21
"Don’t believe, don’t fear, don’t ask."
—Soviet camp saying
TUESDAY, APRIL 30
The late afternoon sun filled the Chambers living room through half–opened blinds. Claire sat at Martha's desk hunched over her math worksheet and concentrated hard on finishing her last few fractions problems before Marie stirred in the upstairs nursery. Once she heard the baby's cries, there would be no more time for homework until much later.
The doorbell rang. It was Helen Sigler.
"Hello, stranger."
Claire buried her face in Helen's brown wool jacket and squeezed her around the waist. A pair of covered straw baskets lay on the doorstep.
"I brought some herbs for Martha. Is she in?"
Claire welcomed Helen inside.
"She’s in the kitchen. I'll go get her."
Marie let out a wail upstairs. Claire came back with Martha Chambers and set off up the stairs.
"Helen, what a lovely surprise!" Martha said with genuine warmth. "How about a cup
of tea? I have some Earl Gray that Doug just brought back from Denver."
"No thanks, I can only stay for a few minutes," Helen answered, removing her coat and accepting a seat on the sofa. "Your gate guard comes on duty at six. I'd prefer to be gone before he arrives."
"Six is when Doug comes back, too. He's bringing the Warden with him again," Martha said with a frown.
"All the more reason to be brief," Helen added. "But before I forget, please take these herbs. I brought them in case they questioned me at the gate."
Upstairs, Marie let out a piercing wail.
"Do you need to get that?" Helen asked.
"No, Claire knows what to do," Martha replied. "Tell me, Helen, do you have children of your own?"
"A daughter. She graduates from college next month."
"You must be very proud," Martha said. "Will she be coming back to Utah?"
Helen lowered her eyes.
"Lucy has never been to Utah. She lives with my sister in Virginia. They agreed to adopt her after Alec's arrest so that Lucy could stay enrolled in school."
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize–"
Helen continued as though she hadn't heard the apology.
"It was the only way I knew to give her a fair chance in life."
"What was Alec charged with?" Martha asked.
"The charge was merely a formality. The point was that Alec ran for the state legislature on a ticket that opposed the Unionists. When he lost, Alec presented evidence that the other side had stuffed the ballot boxes. A week later he was arrested. That was eight years ago this fall."
"Eight years in the camps for that?"
"They called it advocating overthrow of the government," Helen replied. "But at least Alec had the satisfaction of standing up and publicly opposing them. And of never giving in. This June he would have completed his sentence."
"Would have?" Martha repeated.
"Alec died last month."
"I'm so very sorry," Martha said, reaching out to touch Helen's hand.
"You had no way of knowing. Even I didn't find out until weeks later."
"What will you do now?" Martha asked.
"I don't know. I plan to stay in the cabin a while longer until I sort things out."
"Forgive me for being so naïve," Martha began gently. "There's so much I still don’t understand."
Helen looked up at Martha with a sympathetic smile.
"You see, when we came back from Paris after the Events," Martha continued, "everything around me had completely changed. But nobody wanted to talk about it. Whenever I asked Doug what it was like during those years, he said he just wanted to forget."
"Then why on earth would he choose to join State Security?" Helen asked.
"Looking back on it, I think Doug knew very well what he was getting into when he joined the Department. I remember how desperately unhappy he was after being wounded and how he brooded that his Army career was over."
"And was he surprised at what State Security expected from him?"
"If he was," Martha replied, "I don’t recall that he showed it. In fact, what worries me sometimes is how well Doug has adjusted to it. It doesn't seem to matter at all what they tell him to do as long as he can hold onto his rank, bonus pay, free house, and car. It’s as if he’s given up on himself and has let them take over his life."
"Have you told him how you feel about his working for the Department?" Helen asked.
"Not in as many words. I've told him how I think he's changed but he doesn't want to hear it."
"Do you love him?"
Martha took a deep breath.
"Frankly, I'm not sure anymore that I ever did."
"Then why on Earth did you marry him?"
"I ask myself that nearly every day. When I met Doug he was handsome, witty, affectionate, fun to be around—just about everything I wanted in a man. And he adored me. He was so dogged about asking me to marry him that I didn't know quite what to do. I told him I didn't think I was in love with him but he said not to worry–, that it would develop with time. Except it hasn't. I still care deeply about him, but I'm not in love with him. The trouble is, it's a little late now when we have a child and another on the way. And then the business about the girl in camp had to come up…"
"Actually, that's one of the reasons I came here to see you," Helen said. "I asked my contacts in the women's camp about her. It hurts me to say it, Martha, but what they told me appears to agree with what you learned on your own. It seems that Doug has been seeing a young nurse's aide in the camp by the name of Gwen. They meet in a private examining room at the dispensary two or three times a week.
"Whatever they’re doing, it’s not medical treatment. Gwen isn't qualified for that. And even if she were, there's a separate staff dispensary where Doug would normally go if he needed treatment. More than that, since the trysts started, my sources tell me Gwen has received special privileges that would be impossible without a high–level protector.
"Martha, what I'm saying here doesn't prove anything and I would be the first to tell you that it's not enough to support a decision to leave your husband. But I do know that the only way you're going to know if it's true, other than catching him in the act, is to ask him about it."
"These women you talked to…" Martha pressed. "Are you sure they have no ulterior motive?"
"I can't rule it out," Helen replied. "But they’re decent, honest women who appear to pity Gwen more than they envy her. They’re the ones I’ve relied on for years to distribute free herbs and vitamins in the women's camp. I trust them completely."
Martha stood up, paced back and forth several times, then crossed the room to her desk and returned with her purse.
"I don't know what to say, other than to thank you."
She removed all the money from her wallet and handed it to Helen.
"I'd like you to take this to buy more vitamins for your women. It's my own money, not Doug's. It would mean a lot to me if you could help someone with it."
When Helen didn't move, Martha tucked it into the pocket of Helen's coat.
Helen rose to leave.
"It's nearly six," she noted, glancing at the clock on Martha's desk. "I'd better say goodbye to Claire and be on my way."
"I'll call her," Martha said. "And thank you for all the help you've given me. After I've had time to think, I’d like to visit you again at your cabin some time to talk some more."
"Anytime," Helen answered.
Martha called up the stairway for Claire, who came down promptly with Marie in a fresh diaper. They conversed for a minute, then Helen gave Claire a hug and picked up her baskets to leave.
The moment she took a step toward the door the doorbell rang. Martha looked out the peephole.
"Oh, my God. It's the Warden," she said, panic rising in her voice. "What do we do now?"
"Let him in," Helen answered in a whisper. "I was delivering the herbs you bought, remember? And if anyone noticed how long I was here, it was because I showed you how to use them."
Martha opened the door. Helen stepped out as if she had been unaware that anyone was waiting on the doorstep.
"I'll have some new items in a few weeks, Mrs. Chambers," Helen announced in a businesslike voice as she walked past the Warden. "Come by the station some evening and I'll show them to you. Meanwhile, take good care of yourself and the baby. Good night."
Fred Rocco watched Helen step past him with the puzzled expression of someone who recalled having seen her face before but not quite remembering where. Before he could make the connection, Martha Chambers ushered him inside.
"Doug's not home yet. May I fix you something, Warden?"
"Please, call me Fred. I'm off duty."
"Of course, Fred. Bourbon?"
"I'd love some. Just a touch of water and lots of ice."
Martha led him into the kitchen and filled his glass with ice while he donned his bifocals to scan the newspaper lying open on the counter.
Not far away, in the breakf
ast nook, Claire spoon–fed Marie in her high chair.
"Do you know that woman well?" Rocco asked, fixing Martha with a sharp look over his spectacles.
"I buy homemade breads and herbs from her sometimes. Why do you ask?"
"She comes to the women's camp now and then to peddle her junk. Her husband used to be a prisoner. I've had a hunch for some time that she exchanged messages with him somehow but we were never able to prove it. At any rate, there's no chance of that happening anymore. Her husband was shot last month while attacking a guard. Good riddance, too. He wasn’t the kind of prisoner we could ever allow on the streets again, believe me."
Martha's hand shook as she topped off the bourbon with water and stirred it with a spoon.
The warden watched her closely and gave a contented smile.
CHAPTER 22
"Some [trade unionists] are crying that they were beaten. Yes, you will be thoroughly beaten!"
—Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean dictator
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1
The May Day holiday fell on a Wednesday. In keeping with tradition, even political prisoners were excused from work.
After roll call, the warders divided the newly arrived criminals into groups of fifteen or twenty and led them to their new barracks. The group assigned to Barracks C–14 consisted for the most part of young gang members and assorted delinquents between the ages of sixteen and twenty–five, with none over thirty. Nearly all were urban poor, evenly mixed among Hispanics, blacks, and whites.
The warders entered the barracks ahead of their charges, announcing that our new barracks–mates were real Americans, not traitors like us, and that we should treat them with respect.
"Watch how they live and follow their example," Grady lectured us with his usual sneer. "Maybe you'll learn something about how real men handle themselves."
Forty Days at Kamas Page 18
