James

by Kirsten Bergen

Feather light wings span the sky: some mystic white giant of the air. Free and wild against the burning turquoise blue. A heavy, dusty grey covering creeps forward, encircling, ensnaring and enslaving. The beautiful majestic white beings are reduced, humiliated, assimilated until they succumb. Totally. Annihilated. The murky, dull, ugly blanket covers the earth, suffocating light and happiness, pressing down, emitting a low growl. Melting into the belching soot, the retching fumes and the vomiting smoke, the camouflage of industrial gloom and capitalist ugliness is perfect and complete. The dream shattered; peace gone. The spark of life is nothing but a faint, dying glow. Waves of doubt pulling down, drowning in emptiness, energy and will sucked from the soul…

But he won’t give up. He won’t die. He will find a way. There must be a way. With a deep sigh he tore his eyes from the window, his face set in grim resolution.

Never let them know what you think, what you feel. Always keep your guard up. Maybe his sigh was too loud, maybe his body heaved too much as he exhaled, maybe he had betrayed himself. You’re not alone. You’re never alone. There are always eyes prying and ears hearing. Apart from that, there were three other people in the small workroom.

Not long now. He knew it. One way or another he would be gone. Either the way they planned, or the way he chose. Maybe a miracle would happen and he would wake up and realize this was all just a bad dream. But then it would be a very vivid bad dream which had lasted far too long.

The fingers of claustrophobia curled around his heart. How he longed to be out, to be free and roaming, to be able to relax and stop hiding, stop running from the invisible enemy. Even if it was only out to that desolate, dreary wasteland visible from the small, grimy window and even if it was only for an hour. Anything. Just a short respite.

How he longed to see his family, his friends, his little daughter. She would be five now. He had missed her first steps, her first words. Could she say “Daddy”? Did she know who he was? Would she even care? How long had it been since he had seen anyone? Did anyone still care about him, try to visit him? Would he ever know? Sometimes they told him that he wasn’t allowed visitors. Sometimes they said they had turned his loved ones away. Sometimes they said no one had asked to see him for months. No letters, no messages, nothing.

A few beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and his rough, scratchy shirt suddenly started clinging to his body. Get a grip. Calm down. Come on, grip it. His commands to himself sounded panicky, desperate. Slowly he calmed, slowly his heart stopped racing, slowly he could turn around and face the others.

The guards were playing their favourite game with the inmates. “What do you miss most here?” The typical question. So seemingly innocent. Such a trap. So dangerous. Almost anything you said could and would be used against you. To taunt you, haunt you, tear you apart. He had learned fast. It was his turn. “What do you miss most here, James?” “Whiskey” he said automatically, the lie now coming easily from his lips.

The lie. All his life he had fought for justice, truth, transparency and honesty. And now he told the same lies every day. His whole life was a farce, a lie. “Whiskey” he said a little more forcefully, making it sound sincere and urgent. “I really miss the whiskey”. The mocking laughter. What did it matter. He hated whiskey, had never liked the hard stuff. Only the odd cold beer, never any hard liquor. He had seen what devils alcohol could awaken and had often suffered at the hands of the possessive demons. Never, he had sworn to himself, never will I touch the stuff. He had been ten years old.

He knew what would happen tonight. The usual. A couple of guards would station themselves outside his cell with a bottle of whiskey and one glass too many; already poured, but out of reach. They would spend hours there engaging him in meaningless banter getting drunker and drunker as the minutes slipped into hours. And still the one glass would be pointedly placed directly in front of him, just out of his reach and never offered. They would find it hilarious, taunting him as the drunkenness took its grip. Eventually they would leave, stagger down the hallway, whooping and shouting on the way to their quarters to sleep and wake up in the morning in the unforgiving embrace of a bad hangover, leaving the glass behind to torment him – or so they believed.

It was a small inconvenience. It was something to be tolerated. And heck, he sometimes also gleaned important snippets of information from them. Someone had asked after him. A message for him had been intercepted and he would know which prisoner to seek out for the much longed for news. Carefully, imperceptibly, innocently approach him, find a way to talk unobserved and then quickly disappear again.

Such events were much more preferable to the ordeals the unwary went through. He had heard of stories of abuse, beatings and even open torture. He was thankful that he seemed to be taboo, that he was spared. There was nothing he could say or do anyway to stop it. Consoling the victims after was a sure ticket to reprisals. How he hated it here.

He had learnt fast. At the beginning he had said he missed his family and friends, that he wished he could have more visits. The agony and heartbreak that had led to. “Hey James, we rang to see if anyone wanted to visit you, but no one cared” or “Your wifey came last week, but we told her to leave, said you didn’t want to see her any more”. Sometimes they would wave a letter just out of his reach, tear it open, read it greedily to themselves and make sordid comments, then rip it up while he could do nothing, just watch. Sometimes they would come by handing out the post, stopping at his cell and making a great show of looking for a letter for him, then say that no one had written, no one cared, they had all abandoned him, forgotten him, and then carry on to the next cell saying loudly “Hey, you got three letters this week, lucky you. People still care about you and haven’t forgotten you.”

He was a victim of the system. Since they had come to power so many had fallen. Many had given up to save their lives, to save the ones they loved. He had been one of the handful who couldn’t renounce his beliefs. He couldn’t turn his back on the truth. They may have squashed freedom of expression, but they could never destroy freedom of thought.

He had managed to survive in semi freedom for a year, writing short articles, commentaries and editorials under a pseudonym. He had to use a pseudonym for the sake of his family, to try to keep them safe. He hid by day and moved about cautiously by night. He went to small, informal gatherings to discuss the situation and what steps could be taken to rein in the gross floutings of the law, the increasing iron grip of power of the megalomaniacs. His abode had changed almost as often as he changed his clothes. But seeing as he only owned three threadbare suits and five worn shirts, that hadn’t been nearly as often as he would have liked.

Then it happened. The raid. They came in broad daylight, broke the door in. The sickening groan and splintering of the wood as it crashed in and came part way off its hinges, hanging limply, a broken barricade. They smashed the windows after they barged in. They had gone around the room systematically ramming their batons into the window panes. They had kicked the furniture over. The simple yet elegant wooden corner table Ira’s husband had given her as a wedding present was overturned and broken as if it had been nothing more than a matchstick. That was the one prized possession of hers other than the photograph of them together in front of the registry office which hung in the simple metal frame above the table. They tore that down, smashed the glass and ripped the photo up. They knew what hurt most and they did their deeds cruelly, ruthlessly, gleefully.

They had ransacked the house, taking the precious few items of any value with them. They beat Ira. She was 73, but they didn’t care, they just beat her. He never found out if she had survived. He was taken away together with the two others. The last thing he had heard was a faint whimper from the broken, frail heap in the corner, the heap that was the once proud, strong, indomitable Ira.

Arthur committed suicide the day the verdict was announced. They were branded traitors, dissidents, terrorists accused of plotting to overthrow the state. They were held responsible for the explosions, the acts of vandalism, the power cuts, the mass lootings and the freezing of the bank accounts. Anything that could be invented or blamed on them, no matter how incredible or impossible, was. The accusations ran to over 200 pages. 200 pages of lies. Arthur couldn’t take it. They had been deserted, abandoned, left to flounder, to drown. He had decided to die rather than face a life of disgrace in prison. Sometimes James could understand his decision, even if it was an unspeakable crime to take your own life.

“Get back to work” a guard growled from just behind his elbow. With an effort James pulled his attention back into the present, back to the meaningless task he had been set. This was the fourth week in a row he’d been on the line. Sewing buttons onto the prison uniforms. Mountains of jackets needing buttons replaced. How did so many buttons come off, he wondered? He had heard a rumour that one work team spent its days simply tearing the buttons off jackets to provide work for another team to sew them back on. It was a rumour that hadn’t been confirmed though. And rumours are dangerous.

Picking up the jacket which had fallen neglected on his lap, he pulled the thread tight, sewed over the button the reglementary four times then wound the thread round the button and anchored the stitching securely on the back before biting the thread off. They weren’t allowed scissors or knives. Biting the threads made threading the needle difficult. In fact, the whole chore was difficult because the needle was so blunt you could hardly get it through the rough, canvas textured material.

He was always on the sewing team when the seasons were most alluring. It was neither too hot nor too cold out. Most days the sun played hide and seek amongst the white fluffy clouds which sailed lightly overhead. Sometimes though the weather was bad, like today. It had started raining and got cooler. There was a storm in the air.

In the summer he had to work in the quarry. The sun beat down relentlessly, the heat oppressive pushing him almost physically down to the ground. The white of the stone in the quarry was reflected as an intense, piercing, blinding light. The rhythmic chinking of the picks on the stone echoed dully in his ears. Bodies bent, burdened by the heat, the back breaking work, the exhaustion, the hunger, the thirst. Sweat glistening on the bare backs and arms, running down the white dust in rivulets, blinding the eyes. The air was almost too hot to breathe, and each breath filled your lungs with dust, stifling you, choking you. Fourteen hours a day. Six days a week. Permanent aching muscles, never ending headache, throat searing. When evening came and the prisoners trudged heavily back to the compound three kilometres away the two thoughts uppermost in everyone’s minds were: water, bed. They were too tired and broken to worry much about hunger, or anything else.

Winter was spent waist deep in near freezing water, rain pelting down when they were lucky, wind chilling them to the bone. Winter time was for cleaning the canal and the river. Dozens of shivering, pale ghosts plunging their arms into the murky muck to pull up discarded shoes, tyres, bicycle parts and unthinkable gunk. Teeth chattering so hard that it was impossible to hear anything else, snow often swirling around them, drowning out all other sound, making each man a lone, forsaken island in the cold. Out of touch and out of reach of any one else, icy fingers slowly clawing at their bodies and souls. Even their minds seemed to freeze. Numbed into submission, working like mindless robots. If any thoughts did pass fleetingly through their heads, they were of warmth, dryness and food. And even those thoughts were pushed out of their consciousness as quickly as possible. They knew that a lukewarm shower, a set of still damp clothes and a thin, but thankfully warm bowl of broth or porridge waited for them. That seemed like heaven to look forward to. Had they really fallen so far?

Spring and autumn were the only times they had enough to eat, were neither too hot nor too cold and felt in any way comfortable. It was also the only time they wanted to be outside, and the only time it was denied them. Except for the brief half hour just before sunrise and at sundown, just after the sun had sunk below the horizon but before full dark had settled in.

The hours dragged on. He occupied himself with repeating the names of capital cities by continent. Then he listed all the names of local flora. He went through all of the presidents, prime ministers and dignitaries, recapping on their lives and their activities. A detailed biography for each one mapped in his mind, meticulously filed and pulled out as and when needed. Then he went on to reflect on what he had been fighting for. What were the facts? What were the lies? What were rumours and what could be set in concrete? Where was the black and white? Where were the grey areas? What had they renounced? What would they need to renounce in the future?

Listing the events in the lead up to the mass arrests he suddenly pulled himself up short and chided himself. The ration quota had been modified on the 9th, before curfews had been extended on the 11th. He mustn’t forget the details. Forgetting the details or getting them mixed up would jeopardize their whole fight. He needed to know everything for when he got out. He would get out. He had to. He had been sentenced to three life sentences.

The all too familiar, treacherous, paralysing panic began to creep around his heart: would he ever get out? Not now, now is not the time to panic, he told himself. Keep it for tonight, when it’s dark, when no one can see, no one can know. His face became an expressionless mask again as he picked up the next button to sew.

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~ This piece was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 and was filed under Writing, Short Story. You can make comments on it below. ~