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He stood before me, thick with a foreshortened shadow. His hands were ugly, I remember that. The thumbs looked like big toes.
I ought to have been afraid of him. But I thought I was way passed that. I couldn’t make myself afraid anymore. I didn’t feel much of anything.
He stood in the small cell before me, and I failed to be correctly afraid. I looked at him like I’d looked at the light-bulb, for the two and half days before he turned up. He was a fixture, part of the fabric. He had a very recent gouge, near the corner of his mouth.
You’re in my space, he said, and the scar went up and down. I shrugged my shoulders, lamely, and I sat back down on the bed. They didn’t have bunks on this wing, a new thing they were trying, ‘cause of hangings, suicides and that.
You’re in my space, he said again, and nodded his head, accusatively. I watched the scar more intently and wondered if it required any answer. It’s not somewhere I’d be out of choice, I said, picking my words with care. They came out of my mouth like Scrabble tiles, arranged neatly between us, thoroughly flat.
He seemed to mull this statement over, a while, making a chewing motion with his funny thin mouth. Why’d they put you in here? He asked, when the dinosaur brain had completed a circuit.
I considered it back for a minute, then said, I suspect they are punishing you… or me.
This answer seemed to please him. He clasped his hands behind himself and stretched. Or you, he repeated, softly, and began to whistle, high-pitched and tuneless. I didn’t care. Let him whistle. His eyes were watery jellies, like something you’d find in a fish pond.
…
My cellmate’s name was Christie. He told me this on the fourth day. I’ve got an Uncle Christie, I said, stroking my chin. What do I care about your fucking uncle? He snapped. I smiled and shook my head, leaning back on the one flat pillow.
He’d ignored me the most of the morning, but now we were shut in again, my purposefulness irritated him. He kept asking me what I was doing, and when I told him, the answers enraged him, guilty somehow of some secret deficiency.
What’re you doing?
Reading.
Reading what?
Ian Wilson.
Who’s he?
An Englishman.
What’re you reading that shite for?
It’s not shite. I like it.
What’s it about, then?
I’m not sure yet.
Then how can you tell if you like it or not?
Well… I like the way that he writes. The first chapter just introduces the characters, so you get a flavour, you know?
He looked at me disgustedly. Flavour, he repeats, incredulous, and kicks at the bottom of his bunk.
Another time he took offense at my drawing. Why’s it all sooty like that? He said. I explained it was meant to be sooty, and in any case it was charcoals so it’d have to be. Why can’t you do it properly, then? But I didn’t know what he meant by that, and anyway I hadn’t got any other materials.
…
Christie’s friends were on the second floor. For dinner we went our own way. I sat apart so I could shelter myself, my back to the wall, from the others.
Sitting there the day would dwindle to a point, me staring at my face in the surface of the tray. I’d never been too keen on eating, and regulated meal times were worse. If I felt sorry for myself at any point, it was dinnertime when the despair came down, when my loss of freedom seemed most acute, and I wanted to get away.
Sometimes I saw Christie watching me. I would look away then, absorb myself in other things, in my book, in my mug, in the palms of my hands. I would bite the inside of my mouth very hard.
…
On the thin bed one night I lay awake feeling sick. I could see his chest-shape just across from me, inning and outing in Vesuvius heaves. Christie? I asked in to the dark. What? Came the grunting reply.
I was thinking, about before, about why I’m in here with you.
And?
Maybe we’re supposed to… I don’t know… look out for each other. What d’you think?
He props himself up on one elbow so I can see his wet eyes, glinting hawkishly. Fuck off, he says, I’m not your fucking babysitter.
No. I know… But they might think that… I’m not sure, really…
Look, just shut the fuck up, alright? I’m no friend of yours so fuck off.
I rocked back on my bed in the silence. We spent most nights in silence, after that.
…
I could see him where I sat, most visiting days, ‘cause our last names began with the same letter. Sometimes a fat blonde woman would come. I guessed she was his mother, but she might not have been. My own mother only came once. She cried the whole time and looked thin. I told her she shouldn’t come back here again, it was no place for someone like her.
I had others to see me instead, but all visits were much of a muchness. Everyone said how skinny and pale I was getting, and pledged their faith in me and my self-professed innocence. Only Lucia really understood. She never said much but she looked me in the eye while she said it, and when it came to goodbye would press my cold fingers with her pink dishpan hands. It was a small thing but it meant a great deal, much better than all that moist-eyed messy fussing.
One time Christie’s blonde didn’t come. That night I heard him crying, and name-calling in to the pillow. At first I pretended to sleep, but when it didn’t stop I called out. There are worse things than nobody coming, you know?
I felt the silence soak up me like icy-cold water, then after a long time his sullen bulk humped over. And what would you know about it? He said.
A bit.
Like what?
His voice was aggressive, but curious too, like he really did want to know. We lay with the width of the small cell between us, me on my back and him on his side. For a while I said nothing, tried to hear him waiting, part of me wondering how far I could push him. Stupid really. I give it a while then I said, it’s hard for them too, you know? Families.
I fucking know that… That’s your advice, is it? Thanks, pal.
His words fall flat on the smooth silent floor. In the dark it looks like a body of water, salty, lifeless, an inland sea. I try to see my reflection in it, any reflection but that knife’s edge surface glint. I cannot, so I talk some more.
I didn’t say you didn’t know, Christie. But you have to think about it, remind yourself. In here you get used to the thing at least, ‘cause you’ve got nothing else to think about, see?
Sure, he says tersely, so what?
But they don’t get time to get used to it. They’re sort of settling, to being without you, then they have to come back here again, to this dump. It’s hard, see? To keep letting go, over and over.
When his voice comes back it’s a shiver, a ripple of sound on the Dead Sea cell floor. I know it, I know it, he says quietly, but I can’t get used to it either.
Then you’d better.
What?
You’d better. You can get used to it, or you can kill yourself.
I knew he’d come over and hit me. I laid still and stiff and I tried my best to take it. Christie’s a simple creature. Words would bounce off him like bullets off Batfink. The only way I could get to stop him being sad is to make him be angry instead.
So I got the kicking he’d meant for his mother. It hurt but it was better than that horrible crying, that brittle tinny, helpless sound.
…
The thing about being inside is, you don’t get many opportunities to do good things. The only incentives you have are selfish, that’s how it has to be to get through. The thing about being inside is, the only motives you’re left with are self-serving ones. They’re all you can use, you see? That’s the way it winds up in the end.
I try to make myself good but it’s hard. You can’t do good things for people who know not to trust you, and in turn there’s nobody you trust. Demoralising, it gets after so long, when everything’s either a trick or a trap.
You can’t live in constant vigilance, and you can’t try too hard to be good. In the end something has to give. In the end something in me just gave.
We were supposed to slop out but I stayed where I was, gazing glazedly up at the ceiling. The ceiling seemed lower to me, lower than I had six months ago. I wondered if that were possible. It was probably just a trick of the lack of light.
Aye, even perspectives couldn’t be trusted.
We’re supposed to stand outside and they’re calling out names. Christies says to come on, then he pulls at my arm. I don’t alter my eyes from the ceiling. What’re you doing? He says, his voice shrill. Stop acting the maggot, stop fucking about. But I do not answer, I lie there instead, laxly and blankly, continue to stare. In the end he stumbles outside.
When the guards come in and have pushed me and pulled me, and shouted obscenities in to my face. When I have been sat up, stood up, arm-twisted and clouted, they concede that inside me something may have snapped.
No one’s surprised. It isn’t the first time.
They put me on a gurney and they wheel me away. The sensation I get is like weightlessness, a bit like might be in space. Though more like on floats at the school swimming baths. I can still see only the ceiling.
…
I was away for a while. Then they took me back to where I was before. Perhaps they thought we had missed each other.
When I’m let in Christie looks at me funny, just sits on the bed and stares at me. After a while he says my name. He uses my second name ‘cause that’s how they talk, the older inmates, the ones its best to be in with. I turn to him very slowly. What is it? I ask him, with even indifference.
I thought I’d get somebody else.
Sorry to disappoint you.
No, I don’t mean that.
Oh.
I mean…
I do not prompt him. I really don’t care what he means. My throat is scratchy and sore. My back and my dick both ache. I just want to lie back down. So he doesn’t finish his sentence. We sit there until it is dark.
After lights out I can still hear him breathing, so I decide I’ll tell him something I learned. They figured it out from the files, I said, from all those reports that they’ve got.
Figured what out?
Us. How we got put together. It’s from files, or computers, like what dating agencies use.
You’re bullshitting me.
No. It’s something like that.
Oh, he says, and he sounds disappointed. Silence again. You could fit our silences end to end and they’d go once around the world. Like the human digestive tract.
Ó Dubhuir?
Yes?
Why us, then? Why’d we match?
We’re not dangerous, I tell him, not to others, and we’re neither of us in great shape. There’s that and they think we might kill ourselves, if left to our own devices.
I never would, he says angrily. I smile in the direction of the darkened bars. Didn’t say you would. That’s professional consensus, that’s all.
Would you?
Now? I don’t know.
Did you ever?
Once or twice.
Oh… Ó Dubhuir?
What?
I can hear him licking his thin string-bean lips. His tongue just touching the moustache he’s been vainly attempting, a fungal growth on the damp ledge of his lip. I feel queasy lain here in the dark. What? I say again, ‘cause I can feel the sweat running down my forehead and in to my eyes. He swallows hard, a big carton gulp, like the cat with the dinner plate shape in its throat, on those Saturday morning kids cartoons.
That’s the other thing about prison. Everything is a reference to something outside. You can’t express yourself or thing without being reminded. Ó Dubhuir? He says again. I bark what? He eases himself up on the bed and begins.
I didn’t know before, what they said that you did. I never asked you ‘cause I thought… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me, but I wondered… is it true? What they said you was in for?
I lie still considering his faltering speech, then I sigh. I suppose that depends what they said. His eyes just dance at me in the dark, like a hungry dog, like a feral cat. He waits to be prompted again.
The fire, yes?
Yeah… But you didn’t?
No, I didn’t.
But you know who did?
Do I?
That’s what everybody says.
Say a lot, don’t they?
Guess… Ó Dubhuir?
What?
Aren’t you going to ask me?
Ask you what?
What I got sent down for.
No.
Why not?
I don’t care, Christie, but you go ahead anyway.
He nurses his lip in some more wounded limbo, but he can’t keep it in very long. Aggravated burglary, he says at last.
Ah…
Ó Dubhuir… What are you thinking.
Funny word, aggravated… has a ring to it. Good night.
…
They got me moved to the hospital not long after that. It was one of the women and their endless appeals, demonstrating I wasn’t quite right in the head. That and the usual violin stories. I knew I would be out very soon.
I didn’t feel excited. Just sick.
Some time after they moved me I heard he tried to kill hisself. He ate broken bulb but it didn’t come off. One time after that it transpired he’d hanged. Using his own clothes, tipping the bed. Don’t know why they didn’t bolt the damn things to the floor.
I didn’t feel bad for Christie, not really. I’d known for a while that the blonde woman had died, and that’s why she didn’t come in more. I’d kept finding the time to tell him I was sorry, but it never seemed right, not really.
I didn’t feel bad because he was free. From prison and life and the ugly shit-house of himself. His hands were ugly, I remember that. He always called me by my second name.
------
The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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we are not amused
