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- Peter Masturzo
Years have passed since that dawn; I believe eleven years, eleven years from one moment. Yet, I remain in prison, deprived of any manner of free will and happiness, and what’s more, I have been forgotten. He had no one, and now I am the sole inheritor of this dispossession.
I wish I had a photograph of him or, to put it more realistically, of myself, from those lost times. It is not important for me to know which of us had a finer face; rather, a photograph in these confusing times can reveal much that has been forgotten or that has nestled in the wrong folds of the mind. There are memories in my mind that I am no longer sure are my own personal experiences.
Nine years is not a short time. I will disregard the first few months as an occasion for us to find one another amid the crush of alienation and for our inevitable friendship to form. The oldest memory of him that remains in my mind belongs to the recreation hours outdoors. In single file we would walk in a small circle surrounded by gray walls, our pace imposed by a collective in which none of us played an independent role. Still, in the midst of our same-colored clothes, our common smell, and our exasperating lack of individuality; the stateliness of his movements and eyes that instilled an unpleasant yet irresistible sensation in any observer made him stand out. As the circle of flesh turned and the familiar sounds of rustling clothes and scraping heels spilled over the small yard, I would involuntarily watch him. Depending on where in the circle we were on a given day, different angles of his face and figure would be visible to me. And then we became cellmates.
He hated snoring—as I do now—and among all those men, I was the only one who did not transform my dreams and nightmares into hoarse rasps in the crater of sound, and it was this that led to our coming together and his acceptance of me. Yet, there were times when we—he and I—in the blistering and leaden air of rage, would go at each other simply to quench our thirst for social interaction and fresh associations. When we beat each other—in silence, so the night guard would not notice—we would swallow our groans. Fists are silent, especially if they land on the hypochondria. Those in neighboring cells who became aware of our fights, with their shoulders shaking from stifled laughter and in anticipation of the gibes with which they would grace us the next day, would crawl under their blankets and from time to time listen to the muted, fleshy sounds coming from our cell. His fists were heavier than mine. When he punched me, my breath would freeze in my chest and I would hunch over and press my arms against my sides. Then, after air gradually penetrated the constriction lodged under my sternum, I would rise up again and strike him. I would grind insults between my teeth and pound my fists against any organ within my reach. When we grew weak and drained, we would collapse on our beds; it was then that we could talk.
During the monotonous prison nights, the mind, like a night crawler, emerges from its lair and begins to hunt. It hunts for every movement, sound, or even abstract instinct that will nourish it so that it can then slither into the cavities of the distant past. Of course, that is only on nights when at dawn they are not coming to take someone to be executed. On such nights, the silence of the cellblock grows deeper. Everyone stares at the ceiling with wide-open eyes. Sleep, filled with fantasies of sprawling meadows, of the winter-morning sun shining on crystalline surfaces, and of beautiful, docile women with longing in their eyes, flutters overhead like a weary bird that wants to land on a branch swaying in the wind but cannot. And we obstinately resist this pleasant sleep so that when at last we surrender to it, it will be all the more enjoyable. And then it is dawn and the footsteps of those who come, and we are one man fewer.
The game—a term he used so as to conceal the inner savagery of our pastime—was the only means by which we could pass through those tall walls. He taught me to play. The rules were simple. Yet, without exaggeration, we both suffered to master it. The game would embrace us like a magic cocoon; it would spin time around us. And inside the dark and musty warmth of this spun filament, the game would transform us from larvae. Fluttering our wings we would emerge, someplace else . . .
During the first five of the nine years that we spent reflecting one another like mirrors, we shared our pasts, our memories, and our thoughts, often filling in exact details that came to us at later times. Over and over again. At first, we would drift along the ordinary and even dull exterior of our minds. Swimming and floating in a shallow pond where the feet reach the bottom and repugnance from the touch of dregs and algae stains the point of contact. Commonplace memories of mundane relationships. We had plenty of time, so we crossed the pond. On its surface, the mysterious reflection of moonlight and the shadows of silvery young leaves lay before us. He would say, “Have you ever swum naked in the water? We are there now; it tickles. One must imagine it.” Gradually, with nervous tension and taunts, the unveiling of secrets and the thrusting of humiliation’s dagger into that ungular bulwark we call identity, we floated free in our abyss. It was vast.
Despite his claims to the contrary, we all knew there was no freedom for him. A three-hundred-year sentence, regardless of the various opportunities that would qualify him for clemency, would claim his entire life. Yet, now he has gone—no, it is more accurate to say “escaped”—just as he had always promised he would, a claim that had often put him in the position of being ridiculed by others. At the time, he was forty years old, but now that eleven years have passed and I have turned fifty-one, he is in possession of my youth. This intensifies my feelings of having been cheated. To have years of one’s natural life span taken away in a single night is not an insignificant loss to bear. Of course, I did not face this fact with my current composure. I shouted—
I won’t deny that at first it was out of horror—and then, when perforce I faced the dreadful reality, it was out of rage and as testimony to what had happened. The prison psychiatrist—here they have psychiatrists, too—diagnosed my behavior as nothing more than the result of an illness I had feigned to gain sympathy and to pave my way to the prison infirmary for a break. Our exchange lasted only a few minutes, after which he threw me out so that the next patient, a madwoman, could lie down on the bed and allow him to lay the eggs of his inculcations in her mind like a cuckoo bird.
The details of what took place are as significant to me as any personal memory or memento of the past is to an individual. To avoid extinction or perhaps the disarrangement of my past, I tell my current cellmate all that I recall of my life, recollections that I am sure belong to me, and he commits them to memory: the date of my birth, the town where I was born, my father’s name, lists of places and times that are of personal importance.
When the cellblock lights are turned off and that particular prison silence, softer and colder than our blankets, wraps around the corridors, stairways, and lower floors; amid the hum of hushed moans and hallucinations in sleep, of the guards making their rounds, and later, of the yawns of the steel poles and doors contracting, digesting in the belly of this silence; I lie on my bed, close my eyes, and try to imagine a bright spiral at the point where my left and right visions meet. The spiral spins and splatters light; it widens; it moves closer and its brightness blankets the darkness in my eyes—the dazzling brilliance of a sunny day as I walk back from school. The warmth of the sun penetrates my skin and the hidden layers and cavities of my body; a numbness indicative of well-being creeps into my hands and feet. Our front yard had a fence separating it from the street. Ivies had coiled around its rusted bars and, half-grown, had dried up. They had strangled each other. I stand in the middle of the yard. I sense that the house is empty, void of life and deserted for years. The sharp angles of the building, its collapsed sections, and the height of its windows and the color of their curtains are unfamiliar to me. Have I been here before? I know this is a crucial moment. If I enter, my action will have forever chosen me and this house. Now I am inside the house. Someone is knocking, pounding an unyielding fist on the rusted steel. Nowadays, I can’t bring sounds to life in my mind, perhaps because sound is the most perishable trace of our existence. There are pleading cries behind the door and that man walks out of his room. He casts a reprimanding look at me and cautiously opens the door a crack. Someone wants to enter and pushes against the door, claws at it, and the man bars the door from opening with his shoulder. Then I hear a scream and catch a glimpse of a woman through the narrow opening. The pressure of the door against her cheek has distorted her face. The man shouts, “Get lost, you double-crossing whore.”
Now it’s nighttime. When the doors in the cellblock slam shut, their unrelenting echo sounds familiar to me. Perhaps that door closed with this same sound. And then there is silence and a clump of that woman’s hair remains stuck in the door so that it can later be disposed of. I was able to recognize the face that, contorted from pain, fear, and tens of other emotions, had for an instant looked through the narrow opening in the door. She saw me. She was shocked—perhaps that is why she weakened and was pushed back. It was her, my mother.
He would ask, “Was it wintertime?”
I would not open my eyes. The sun would revolve in the spinning spiral and silvery waves would ripple high above the rooftops. It was wintertime, I’m sure: the memory of the winter sun shining on a faded fence and a garden patch with flowers is enduring. No, there were no flowers; that garden patch never had any flowers; it had a thicket of dry weeds and ivies that had woven their way through the fence.
“You passed the garden patch, the ground was tiled. Then there were the stairs, the edge of the stone steps were worn.”
“Then there was the front door of the house, with flaking white paint.”
“That had a brass handle.”
“And in front of the door there was a metal screen, did you forget?”
“And when you entered, there was the hallway that was always dark.”
“Most of the time. During the day it had no sun, and at night, its lamp . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember it ever having a lamp.”
“When was this? Exactly when? How old were you?”
“Twelve, thirteen, around then.”
“And she was your mother.”
“I saw her, her eyes, the color of her hair. There was a strange look in her eyes.”
“So she wasn’t dead.”
“Dead?”
“You said before that she died before you started school. You spoke of her funeral, you remembered the white flowers and the black clothes. She taught you the names of the different colors.”
I would shout, “She was not dead! No, that woman was my mother. I’m sure.”
“She was your mother and she was not dead. You did not witness her death. Then she should still be alive, and even that father whom you despised.”
“He despised me. He couldn’t stand the sight of me. He wanted to kill me. I told you. He took me to the edge of the cliff and told me to look down. I looked down. I was terrified. I turned around and saw his hands ready to push me. I ran, and he called me. He called me and ran after me and I ran faster. It was windy, raining; the tall weeds kept twisting around my ankles.”
“This must be one of those dreams you wanted to have but never did, you just wanted to so that they would feel sorry for you like they would for a puppy.”
“I didn’t need that.”
“A helpless little puppy caught in the midnight rain.”
“So that I could hide my ugliness, just like you. So that I could make little girls cry and then flirt with them when they took my hand to comfort me.”
That uniform brightness is no longer behind my eyelids; darkness has come. I open my eyes and half rise. He is still lying on his bed with closed eyes and confident breaths.
“You broke the rules of the game, stupid. You lied. Lies that you have always spun for yourself you are now spinning for me.”
I would get up and beat him. Fists are silent. He would claw at my hair in the dark and throw me against the wall. I told you that he was big and strong. He took care of himself, always exercised, and when others would wake up in the middle of the night and masturbate he would make fun of them. We shouldn’t empty ourselves; energy must be preserved. He would exercise, wildly and with some deliberate masochism, and then, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he would fall onto his bed. The strong smell of his body would flood the cell. And by the time he had caught his breath, his eyes would be closed and he would be imagining that bright spiral spinning around and filling the darkness behind his eyelids.
He would sprawl out like a drop of oil that drips onto a pool of water and blossoms with the one-dimensional rainbow that appears when light glides over a greasy film: greens, yellows, and reds that are inseparable, borderless. And then the lines would appear—glassy lines that were visible from behind one another and reflected on each other. The lines would connect and create faces and objects. Together with his voice, which like the squealing of the mice scurrying across the cement floor would creep into every corner and cavity of the cell, the contours of his words would pour into my eyes and create images. Whatever he saw, I saw. Him, as an eight-year-old, a thirteen-year-old, and then, later, his entire life. And by the time we had finished recounting our lives, that which had been private had become public—a shared ration ready to be re-masticated and remade by trivial inaccuracies and personal perceptions. From then on, memories that once depended on my existence would reconstruct themselves in my mind, as though they had found an independent existence through him and his interpretations. They gained this ability during the final years of my first sentence and at a time when I was growing more tense and nervous by the day. How slowly time passed when I focused on the seconds. And when she would come, when she could, with a few flowers, time would pass even more slowly. At night I would speak of her during our game, of the words that her eyes had spoken after the guard in the meeting room had yelled, “Time’s up!” Standing in the doorway, she would turn and look at me; she would push the cascade of her thinning hair behind her ear and her eyes would become her entire face, and her eyes would be all words, and the moment she was gone I would crush the flowers in anger.
I close my eyes.
He asks, “Is she beautiful?”
“To me, very much so.”
“It depends on one’s taste.”
“Yes.”
“The flowers are from the garden at her house. All that distance. She gets on the train holding the flowers and comes.”
“There is a willow tree in one corner of her garden.”
“She wears dark clothes. Ever since you ended up here, you have never seen her wear brightly colored clothes, the ones that women fancy, that make them look like flowers.”
“No, she doesn’t. But she always wears her gold necklace. She leaves it hanging outside of her dress. I bought it for her. A bird in flight, on her chest.”
“You think the most beautiful birds are golden.”
“And there are none. There is no golden bird in the world other than hers.”
The two bright dots of her pupils appear in the center of my eyes, but now they are opaque. A gray light spawns from the black, from the grayish black—fruit of an ancient contrast. And the cloudy color of a rainy day, the color of dawn on the sea’s horizon, forms in my eyes. The sand is wet. It rained the night before and ours are the only footprints on the sand.
“I said, ‘We will get married on a rainy day so that we can come here when there’s no one around.’”
“Her voice. Did you say her voice is delicate?”
“Like the chime of an exotic oriental instrument. Although I can’t hear it now. I’m incapable of imagining voices.”
“It is gray everywhere.”
“I told you: everywhere, the rain is waiting in the sky.”
“I see it. You took her hand.”
“But first she blew on her hands. They were ice cold. The waves come close to our feet and I take her hand in my hands. My hands are warmer.”
“You had given her the gold bird the day before; you wanted to say it, but you couldn’t, you were afraid.”
“I was afraid that maybe it was just a long dream, that if I said it, it would turn into mist, until the next day when I just blurted it out.”
“You said, ‘We’ll get married on a rainy day so that we can come here when there’s no one around.’”
“No. I said, ‘When there’s no one here and we can come.’”
“She laughed.”
“She didn’t get angry. She looked at me and laughed. Then she blew on her hands because of the cold and I took her hand, and together we watched the fog looming over the sea. If she didn’t agree she would have pulled her hand away and asked that we leave. We didn’t leave. She said, ‘I want to sit on the sand.’”
“The sand was cold and wet.”
“But we sat down, facing the sea, and the fog that didn’t rise from the water but instead descended from the clouds on the horizon glided in on the surface of the sea. Like a dancer on ice wearing a white lace dress.”
The fog closes in on us. I get up and sit on my bed. My head is about to explode. Sweat is streaming down my temples. The air feels heavy and an old stale fog has swept across the cell. He says, “Let’s go all the way to the end. It’s not over yet.”
“I can’t. My head . . . My head is about to burst.”
“You didn’t let go of her hand, and when you sat down you kissed it and squeezed it. She was looking out across the sea, at the dancer gliding toward you on one leg, with open arms and a smile as wide as her face.”
“I wanted to kiss her lips. I leaned forward, toward her smooth, damp hair. Her perfume and the scent of the sea had mingled in it. She pulled her head back and said . . . she said . . .”
“When we get married.”
“Yes, when we get married, on a rainy day when there’s no one here. Until then . . .”
“She didn’t say anything else.”
“She laughed . . . The air is so heavy, I have to splash some water on my face. I’m burning up.”
“What else, after her laughter?”
I shouted. I shout, “No!”
I don’t remember if she said anything else, and then we left, and . . . It is so warm. I feel like I’m suffocating. I get up and walk toward the door to call the guard. He is lying motionless on his bed and the reflection of a pale light, the source of which I cannot see, glides over his sweaty forehead and into the hair on his temples.
I tell my new cellmate, “This is how it was. Will you remember it?”
