Читать книгу The Testimony - James Smythe, James Smythe - Страница 67

We heard the guards talking at the end of the corridor, saying that there had been a problem in a block that we had never heard of. Neither Finkler nor I were old-timers. We’d been here less than six months, both of us, and the amount of talk about the rest of the prison flew by. You ignored it; no need to learn the ropes when that same rope would eventually hang you. The guards saw us listening and told us that it was time for our showers; it wasn’t close to that, but the noise of the water deafened all else. They switched them on, told us to strip, prodded us – myself, Finkler, a thug from New York who called himself Bronx, a man who smothered his wife and children while they slept, name of Thaddeus – into the shower room. The water ran hot always, and we were forced to stand inside it, directly under the faucets so that they soaked our faces. They couldn’t be sure we were washing properly, they said, and this was the only way: scalding our skin. Finkler turned thick pink, like a lobster; he complained about the heat. Thaddeus wept. Bronx kissed his teeth and turned, and called Thaddeus a whiny bitch, and laughed at him. Nobody spoke to me, or looked at me. These people were not dangerous; they fashioned themselves as threats, either by accident or intentionally, but they were nothing. We stood under the faucets and watched as the guards – two of them, Johannsen and another one I didn’t recognize – spoke in the corridor. I heard Bronx whisper something, out of his faucet, closer to me.

We can take ’em, he said, rush over, I’ll take one, you take the other. This panic, we could be out of this fucking place. Bronx was a rapper (though nobody could lay claim to having heard his music); he had shot three people from a moving car, caught by a traffic camera. Come on son, he said, we can get out of here. No, I said. He laughed, rocked backwards – he fashioned himself like some African chief, his laugh belly-deep, a false man to his very core – and grabbed my shoulder. No shit, he said, you like it here, eh? I washed myself. You fine with staying here, dying in this place? Shit, man, you crazier than Finkler. He nudged toward Thaddeus; I knew before they even whispered to each other that the family-killer would join in with the plan; he didn’t cry over his family, he cried over himself. There’s two types of pity in prison: self, and for what you did. You have self-pity, my father used to tell me, you can’t have any self-respect. Thaddeus was nothing but self-pity, a ball of it. Next thing I knew, he was running toward one guard, Bronx toward the other. They barrelled into them, slamming them against the wall. The guard I didn’t know the name of was quick; he shouted, reached down for his stick, but Bronx was faster, clubbed him across the face with his forearm. Come on, he shouted to me, you can get the fuck out of here. Solidarity in colour. I turned away, took a towel, dried myself and returned to my cell. What the fuck? Bronx shouted. You won’t make it, I said, but he didn’t listen, and the three of them ran down the corridor.

Only one who returned – ten minutes later, cowering, shakier than when he left – was Finkler, and he didn’t say what happened to Bronx and Thaddeus, and I didn’t care to ask.