My Fellow Prisoners

Roma

Half the criminals freed on parole return to the familiar world of the labour camp.

Every morning in our barracks starts with the deafening sound of an alarm and a wild screech.

If you think that a yell of almost a hundred decibels can’t have any meaningful content, you’re sorely mistaken.

The person doing the yelling is Roma, the night-time orderly. His job is to get everyone up. And he does so with considerable inventive aplomb. The melody emitted under his direction from an ordinary bell, and the words that go with it, are different virtually every time. Sometimes the gags are so good you just can’t get up from laughing so hard.

Roma even looks like something from a gothic fable: sturdy, not very tall, with expressive, laughing eyes and a smile that reveals a single tooth in the middle of an otherwise empty mouth.

It was the booze that put Roma in jail. Whether it was just a fight or a robbery during a fight – he’s none too clear. ‘I don’t remember’ is all he can say.

Roma is making an effort to ‘get back on track’ and wants to apply for parole. Working as an orderly should help.

Occasionally I tease him. ‘Why do you want to get out? It’s pretty good here – there’s food, protection, you’re kept off the booze…’

Roma is suddenly serious; he talks wistfully of how he’ll get out, fix his teeth, get a job at the local factory. He can rely on that…

The seriousness disappears as quickly as it came on, and he skips off to do a session on the horizontal bars, where he also performs wonders.

Then comes the court hearing. It’s a positive result. Ten days till freedom. Roma doesn’t know what to do with himself. From time to time he comes up to me and describes in detail, day by day, what he’ll do ‘beyond the fence’. I listen attentively. He obviously needs to get it out of his system, but I know the statistics only too well: 50 per cent come back for another ‘stay’.

Roma can sense my scepticism and tries passionately to convince me: ‘I’m not coming back here again, ever!’

I pull his leg: ‘Roma, at least try to get those teeth done.’ For which I’m subjected to another detailed repetition of his plans.

Release day. Roma’s somehow found himself a tracksuit and trainers, and he walks along the detachment yard followed by good wishes and goodbyes.

A month passes, and then another. No news from Roma. Some of the guys are starting to get seriously worried – they gave him money and are waiting for the packages they ordered.

Soon, however, word comes through. With a new intake of prisoners sent from a local prison. Alas, Roma is already there. He got drunk, got in a fight, nicked a phone. The town is small – he was recognized, of course, and arrested.

Why on earth did he do it? Who knows? Most likely he just didn’t know what to do with himself and subconsciously wanted to return to the familiar world of the labour camp.

Sometimes you get the feeling that the police and the courts are playing a strange kind of game, by releasing on parole just the sort of people who they know they’ll soon be locking up again. And they do absolutely nothing on the other side of the prison fence to make this a less frequent, or even less immediate, occurrence.

The explanation, of course, is simple: human beings are actually less than nothing for the state – they’re just statistical report fodder.

As for the teeth, Roma didn’t have time to get them fixed…