My Fellow Prisoners

The Suicide

Tall, skinny, with sloping shoulders – the immediate impression was one of utter dejection. His story, though not an untypical litany of vicissitudes by prison standards, was also desperately sad.

He worked as a civil engineer. He’d been employed by a newly formed company, with responsibility for deliveries and the quality of construction – a good position and a decent salary. For eight months, while all the preliminary work was going on, everything went fine. Then his boss went on leave, and his deputy fell ill. Artyom (as our new cellmate was called) was asked to stand in for the bosses for a couple of weeks. At this point he became aware that nobody had ordered in the construction materials. Somewhat alarmed, he kept trying to contact the boss, but he was never in. His deputy was likewise unavailable. He went to the police, but they told him to get lost.

Shortly afterwards he started getting calls from anxious investors. Not only had the firm’s managers disappeared without trace, so too had eight million dollars.

The very same policeman who had refused to deal with his earlier allegation now demanded a million roubles, or else he’d make sure the buck stopped with Artyom. Clearly he’d kept that promise. Artyom got eight years. His car and many of his possessions were confiscated ‘to pay for the lawsuit’. His wife came to see him only once. The conversation didn’t exactly flow.

You feel sorry for the guy, but in this place every other person has exactly the same story. You simply don’t have the energy or time to listen to other people’s woes. Every day there are court hearings, another stack of papers you have to read through. You just don’t have the time for him! And yet he doesn’t seem to understand this. He goes around whining on about how hopeless he feels, how the judge couldn’t care less whether he was guilty or not, how his children are too ashamed to look him in the eye because ‘Dad’s a swindler who robbed people’, how the truth is irrelevant if you haven’t the money for a bribe…

Come on, we all know this already, and plenty more besides! It’s not exactly earth-shattering news. Your own misery is always greater, obviously, but what’s that got to do with anyone else?! Anyone will lend you a hand with the everyday stuff, but as for the mental anguish – sorry, pal, you just have to learn to deal with that yourself…

Prison has taught me to sleep lightly, so the throaty gurgling in the toilets wakes me instantly. I jump up, fling myself at the door, yank at it so that it bursts open – oh woe!

The light-bulb on the toilet wall is protected by a heavy-duty grille, some two and a half to three metres above the floor. Attached to this grille I see a cord made out of a torn bed-sheet, and hanging from the cord – Artyom. By the look of it, he’s clambered on to the toilet and jumped off, but the cord has stretched a bit and so his feet – the very tips of his toes – are just touching the ground as the rope bounces up and down.

He’s wheezing, clearly no longer aware of what’s happening. I dash towards him and grab him, lifting him up with one hand and attempting to pull the cord off with the other. I can’t do it. You wouldn’t think he’d be that heavy but he’s like a dead weight and I just can’t lift him.

Grabbing him with both hands I just manage to hoist him up a little so that he can breathe, and I then call in a hoarse whisper (so that security don’t come running): ‘Guys, help me!’

This minute locked in an embrace with a semi-corpse feels like one of the longest in my life.

At last the others wake up, rush over and together we pull him out of the noose. We lay him down, press down on his chest – he starts to breathe, coughs, throws up. Okay, he’s alive.

In the morning we give him a scarf to wrap around his neck, but the screws inevitably notice the circular bruise and soon Artyom is summoned ‘with his belongings’.

The administration has no truck with suicides. They mess up the statistics. A failed attempt means the cooler, the ‘attempted suicide’ mark on your chest, and no early parole.

As for the rest of us, we avoided each other’s eyes, ashamed. After all, we could have known that he was on the edge, but we chose to ignore it. Indifference is a terrible sin. It’s only one short step away from the professional fish-eyed look of the unscrupulous judge who believes that the happiness of his own family is justification enough for any such ‘Artyoms’.

Can we really be at peace with ourselves, pretending that someone else’s fate is no concern of ours? How long can a country survive when indifference becomes the norm?

The time of reckoning always comes eventually.