My Fellow Prisoners

The Down-and-out

They brought him in and shoved him into the cell. He was a terrible sight, with a face the colour of mud, hands still black even after decontamination, and a thicket of hair that seemed to stick out uniformly all over his face and head. You couldn’t get a good look at his eyes as they were swollen, either from a beating or a beating combined with a hangover. He looked, at first glance, about sixty to sixty-five years old. He shuffled in, peering around, and wound his way to the bed which one of us pointed out to him.

The old man unrolled the mattress, collapsed on to it and stayed there in silence for almost two days, getting up only for inspections and to go to the toilet. Nobody bothered him. On the third day he finally got up for the gruel as well. At which point we tried to engage him in conversation, but his unintelligible answers revealed nothing except what he’d been put inside for – hooliganism. The usual story.

Ignoring, as always, the Federal Penal Enforcement Service’s misanthropic ban on sharing things, we gave him some tracksuit trousers, a jacket, underwear and a razor, supplemented his gruel with a few extras from our food parcels, and then forgot about the old man. After all, everyone has his own business to get on with, and it’s a big cell.

Another week went by. One day I got back from a meeting with my lawyers and saw a newcomer – someone about my own age who’d clearly not had an easy life but looked pretty robust – busily tinkering with our television, having taken the back off it. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The television in our cell barely had a functioning picture but you could at least hear the news – and for me the news is my life.

‘Who’s this?’ I groaned.

‘Meet Valentin Ivanovich,’ my cellmates responded. ‘Remember the old guy? It’s him. He’s a radio technician. He says he can fix it.’

Valentin Ivanovich didn’t turn round but nodded and continued with the job, kitted out as he was with a sharpened spoon and paperclips.

A few days later we got talking. His was a familiar story: his son was killed, then his wife died, he started drinking heavily, his devious neighbours got him kicked out of his apartment, he lived on the streets for nearly a year, got into a fight – and was brought in. Later I had a chance to look at his case file – the same story, just written in officialese.

He was pleasant to talk to, although we had very little time together because the court cases and the vast quantity of documents I had to read left only a tiny window of opportunity. He too was always busy, fixing things, equipping the cell in one way or another. The cell had clearly become his new home. And when, during my hunger-strike, the administration tried to get him to sign a false document saying that the hunger-strike hadn’t taken place, like the rest of my cellmates he refused to do so, despite coming under significant pressure.

However, it became clear that he totally lacked the will or readiness to fight for his own fate – so crucial if you’re to keep your head above water in today’s cruel world. His future was not hard to predict: prison – street – prison – death in a ditch from exposure or heart attack.

I have seen so many people like him over these years. And so often have I subsequently heard that they have died…

So then, what do you think? Is it not worth trying to make our world just a bit less cruel? After all, these people need only a very small bit of help…

Soon afterwards I was summoned to ‘have a chat’ with the prison governor and when I returned the cell was empty. They gave me fifteen minutes to get my things ready – I was being moved to a new prison.

I was leaving without saying goodbye, but having watched the latest REN-TV news – on a television that was now working pretty well.