My Fellow Prisoners

The Aggrieved

In prison they’re also called ‘the dropouts’, the ‘downcast’ and a whole litany of other far less savoury names. They are the prison’s ‘caste of untouchables’: you don’t sit at the same table as them, eat from the same dish, use the same utensils, and so on. In any disagreement within the prison community, their voice carries no weight whatsoever; as such they’re unable to count on any form of protection.

Nowadays, thankfully, such distinctions are gradually eroding but much remains as it always was. Prison is a very conservative place.

In the world outside people generally think that it’s only homosexuals and those who have committed the most depraved crimes like rape or child abuse who find themselves in this position.

That hasn’t been the case for a long time. Nobody believes the courts any more, and anyone can claim that their sentence is just another result of coming into conflict with someone else’s commercial interest. It’s not easy to verify, and there are indeed a great number of cases relating to these ‘commercial’ issues.

There are not many genuine homosexuals in prison, so those who find themselves in the ‘aggrieved’ category are generally people who are unable to stand up for themselves, who have shown some form of weakness. And it is they who are forced to carry out all kinds of unpleasant work.

But sometimes it can turn out differently.

Ostap is one of the dozen or so ‘aggrieved’ who live in our barracks. A barracks is one large communal space – everything and everyone is on permanent view. Ostap didn’t seem particularly different. A small, quiet guy who, like the rest of his ‘caste’, did the cleaning, took out the rubbish and washed other people’s clothes. Nowadays, at least, this type of work is paid for in tea, cigarettes and the like.

Showing an interest in how someone came to be in this position is just not done.

Self-respecting detainees try to have a normal sort of relationship with the ‘aggrieved’, and avoid being discourteous, but those who feel that life has dealt them a raw deal and are more arrogant often look to bolster their own self-esteem by denigrating this defenceless group.

One day Ostap was just getting on with tidying up under a bed when a loutish bloke blatantly poked him below the waist as he went past, accompanying this distinctly offensive gesture with a no less offensive comment.

It was a run-of-the-mill occurrence, and usually the ‘aggrieved’ put up with it. And so Ostap, without standing up straight, muttered something quietly under his breath and moved slowly into the nearest corner.

Some halfwits standing a little way off started sniggering; to hear what Ostap was muttering you had to stand pretty close to him. He was repeating just one phrase: ‘I’ll kill you.’

When, half a minute later, Ostap finally stood up straight, in his hand was an enormous shank he’d pulled out from somewhere – a thirty-centimetre-long piece of file, sharpened to be as lethal as a dagger.

I literally leapt out of the way. I had no desire whatsoever to get a piece of forged steel like that in my side.

But Ostap was already heading towards his tormentor. The latter made a dash for the only door, but this was blocked by a surge of people racing for the exit – also keen to avoid getting caught up in the heat of the moment. The rest just stood there, petrified.

Ostap moved slowly but deliberately, and his opponent began to howl. That’s the only way to describe the drawn-out, bloodcurdling cry of a man who had just a few seconds left to live.

At this point we pulled ourselves together. Someone also screamed, someone, more cool-headed, moved the beds, preventing Ostap from reaching his target. His friends jumped in, grabbed him by the arms, dragged him off…

The reprieved victim eventually broke out of the barracks. He didn’t come back – ‘abandoning the detachment as a safety precaution’. A humiliating turn-of-phrase for the camp…

The following day Ostap was cleaning out the barracks once again, but people looked at him differently from then on. And when the regional prosecutor visited the camp for an inspection and invited anyone who wanted to meet him on a one-to-one basis (and this can be fraught with consequences), nobody was surprised when the only person who marched across the apparently deserted camp was Ostap.

‘Our Ostap’, as he was now called in the detachment, with a note of pride.