The Wicked Go to Hell (2 page)

When the Bull had gone, the two new men remained standing side by side for a moment, without looking at each other. Then there was a kind of click of release. Time, which had been flowing over them without intruding on their consciousness, suddenly jolted them out of their prisoner’s stupor and swept them up on its aimless way. They looked at each other closely for the first time, sizing each other up with fierce interest, like two animals who come face to face. Eventually, one of them—the one with the half-closed eye—gave a shrug. He looked round the cell. There were three hinged cots, each with a straw mattress and a blanket. The prisoner who couldn’t speak occupied the farthest one.

The man with the split lip gestured towards the two unclaimed pallets.

“The only freedom we’ve got left,” he said sneeringly, “is the freedom to choose which bed we have. Do you prefer one or the other?”

The other man flopped onto the cot that was nearest.

“We’re not on a train,” he sighed. “Here, it don’t matter whether you want facing or back to the engine…”

He stretched out his legs and put both arms under his head.

“The name’s Frank,” he said after a moment. “Frank somebody, but that don’t matter any more. I left my surname at the door… in the register… What’s great about this place is that you don’t need any papers saying who you are…”

His companion lay down on his stomach on the remaining bed. He stretched his arms along the sides of his body and
kept his head buried in the evil-smelling mattress. It stank of sweat and dirt. It was acrid, pervasive, but not so very unpleasant when you got used to it… The trick was getting used to it.

“Mine’s Hal,” he said after a while.

His voice was muffled, barely audible.

“Let’s leave it at that. No need for introductions,” he added. “It’ll come down to first names soon enough anyway, so we might as well make a start now.”

Frank said:

“Thanks. And same goes for me.”

The mute had not shown any reaction. He was still curled up on his bed watching his new cellmates with an air of resignation.

He was a small man, thin and sallow, with grey hair, a large raven’s-beak nose and thick tufts for eyebrows.

Slowly, Hal heaved himself onto one elbow and winked at him. He felt as abandoned as a dead body.

“Anyhow,” he said aloud, “we’ll feel drained today, but tomorrow we’ll start getting used to it…”

Frank gave a start.

“Used to what?”

His companion waved one hand vaguely.

“You know… everything! To jail… to the whole deal… I’ll get used to you and you’ll get used to me… Isn’t life just grand?”

“That’s news to me…”

“What’s news to you?… The idea of getting used to me?”

“You bet!” said Frank venomously. “Also the idea that life is just grand. There’s days when I look up and see that life’s got a face that’s as friendly as a toad!”

He pointed to the mute man.

“There, that’s what your precious life looks like, you moron!”

Instead of getting angry, Hal smiled. The mute made an effort to understand because he’d seen that they were talking about him. But he couldn’t work out these new men. They weren’t the usual run of jailbirds.

“This your first time inside?” asked Hal.

“What’s it to you?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”

“So why ask?”

“You know, talking without saying anything is another of those habits you got to get into. Take the weather. You can’t count on the weather to keep the conversation going. The weather! Boy, the weather has played a big part in my life. And that’s a fact. I was a truck driver… But now…”

He stretched and gave a moan of pleasure.

“…I’ve got the weather off my back now. Come rain or shine, I don’t give a damn! Not a damn! Not a single damn!”

He’d shouted loud enough to strain his voice box. Frank watched him out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t feel threatened, just curious.

Tears were streaming down Hal’s battered cheeks.

He hiccuped and said:

“Say, can you believe that at this very moment there are guys out there tapping their barometers or listening to the weather forecast on the radio?”

Frank got up and walked a few paces to the cell door. His hands gripped the bars hungrily as he looked out.

The corridor was empty. He could hear other prisoners whispering to each other.

“Nope,” he said. “There’s nothing out there! Out there don’t exist any more! All there is now is bars… That’s God’s truth… Bars have sprung up all round me like a forest of iron! And I’m alone! All alone!…”

He leant his head against the bars.

“All alone?” murmured Hal diffidently. “What about me, then?”

“Oh, you…”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You don’t matter.”

“Thanks a million!”

“What difference does it make to me that you’re here, eh? Maybe you think I’m interested in your case?”

He took three paces, which brought him to the foot of his cellmate’s makeshift bed.

He stared at Hal’s face, which was puffy from the beating he’d been given. Hal had a shock of thick, brown hair, light-coloured eyes, more grey than blue, and vigorous features.

“Anyway, you’ve got an ugly mug!” he added.

It was Hal’s turn to scrutinize his cellmate. Through the tears misting his eyes, he made out his mean face leaning over him. Frank had light-brown hair. He was fine-featured and his eyes were blue, quick and intense. Hal reckoned that with both eyes in good shape, Frank would be a good-looking man.

“You heard what the screw said,” he muttered. “No fights in here. You’ve got the creeps, that’s normal. But it’s not a reason for taking it out on me!”

The arrival of the Bull temporarily suspended their spat.

“Listen up, you two!” he said. “I forgot to say one thing: you mustn’t use the bedding to hang yourselves with!… House rules don’t allow it!”

He gave a laugh, mightily pleased with the witticism.

“Seeing you two, no one could say you look as fresh as daisies. My, it must have been some roughing-up they dished out! I tell you, that’s one party I’m real sorry I missed! Just look at you, so beat up you look like brothers!”

He had replaced the first little flower with another one, freshly picked. The one he was chewing on now was a nasturtium. A yellow nasturtium, delicate and shaped like the very small horn of an ancient gramophone.

“I’ll make you piss blood,” he promised as he walked away.

Frank sighed:

“Brothers…”

The word had shocked him. He sat on the end of Hal’s cot.

“Lemme see!” he barked.

“See what?”

“Your cuts and grazes.”

“You want to know what yours look like?”

“That’s part of it.”

“You want to use me as a mirror, is that it?”

“Basically, yes!”

Hal gave a derisive laugh:

“Why not show me yours?… May I?”

Without waiting for a reply, he reached out one hand towards Frank’s face. He touched the cuts and abrasions. He felt stickiness. Frank yowled with pain and pushed Hal savagely away. Hal fell backwards onto his cot.

“What are you, crazy?” he shouted. “Touching me like that with your filthy hands! It feels like somebody’s thrown acid in my face!”

Hal was disconcerted.

“I just wanted to check,” he explained.

“Why don’t you feel your own?”

“I know that mine are real!”

Frank sat up suddenly. He lowered the hand he’d used to protect his smarting face. His half-closed eye glinted.

“What do you mean, real?”

“I had this idea that your cuts and gashes were phoney.”

Frank shook his head.

“I don’t get it.”

“Like a disguise,” said Hal, straightening up.

Frank leant over him.

“Come on, spit it out.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Lost for words?”

Hal rose to the challenge implicit in the other man’s question. Slowly he smoothed down his tousled hair.

“Well, thing is, the way I see it, it’s a bit off, the two of us being put in the same cell.”

“Ah!” said Frank. “Great minds think alike. I had the same idea.”

Then they did what in the circumstances was the most unlikely thing: they smiled at each other.

In a level, almost friendly voice, Hal asked:

“Tell me… has somebody planted you here as a stool pigeon?”

“Nope,” said Frank, without getting angry. “How about you?”

“I’m asking the question,” said Hal. “That says it all…”

Frank thought about this. Then he gave a shrug.

“It doesn’t say a damn thing! Or put it this way: it just means that you’re trying to quiet my suspicions.”

“All right, all right,” sighed Hal as he stretched out on his bed again, “I can see your injuries are real… Cosh, was it?”

“Yeah… and fists… Cosh for the face and fists for the ribs… They know what they’re doing.”

“But what if they’d really done you over?” Hal went on after a moment’s thought. “To make your cover look authentic.”

Frank in turn lay face down on his cot.

“You must have some very important information to spill for me to be handed over to such high-class make-up artists.”

“I’ve got nothing to spill,” said Hal savagely.

“Me neither,” said Frank. “So you see… we’re quits!”

The night was long and filled with strange groans. The two men did not sleep. All through the interminable hours they lay, hands clasped behind their heads, gazing up at the dirt-encrusted blue night light and thought about their new situation.

Sometimes they jumped when their mute cellmate choked in his sleep or when the clammy silence was ripped apart by the nocturnal screams which are common enough in over-crowded places.

They did not exchange a word. From time to time they turned their heads towards each other and each caught the glitter of the whites of the other man’s eyes. Then they would turn over onto their backs and stare up at the ceiling, which was too high and had a barred air vent set into it. Its opening looked like a foul, malevolent mouth which mocked their predicament.

At the far end of a secret universe an immense muffled roar pulsated—the ocean, which was close by. When dawn appeared through the bars of the vent, turning the night light pale, the two inmates sensed that the rumble of the waves would now die away. But in reality it was fatigue which dimmed the sounds around them. Both fell almost simultaneously into a trance-like slumber, which was not sleep but nevertheless transported them far from reality to a hazy zone that was iridescent and warm.

Shouts and the sound of measured footsteps dragged them out of their torpor.

The Bull ran his stick along the bars of their cell as though they were the strings of a harp.

“Time to shower!” he yelled.

He thrust his bloated face against the bars.

“Right, you new lads, settling down in our family boarding house, are you?”

He unlocked the cell door and left it ajar.

“Form up in lines! Hands behind your backs! And no talking, you dogs! Silence, or I’ll rattle your bones with my rib-tickler!”

The mute was first out. He looked even more sallow here, under the corridor lights. His small rat’s eyes, with their mealy eyelashes, kept flickering. The Bull helped him on his way with a kick, as he did every day.

He laughed out loud, proud of this miserable action, which he had brought to a pitch of perfection and wheeled out each morning with undiminished delight.

The mute scuttled to the end of the line of prisoners, all waiting in gloomy silence for the order to move.

Hal and Frank joined him.

“Forward, march!”

They moved off between an escort of armed warders. The shower room was located on the floor below.

It was basic. There were twenty or so cubicles with neither doors nor curtains in a row running along one wall. The facilities for washing consisted of a shower head and an on–off control in the form of a pull chain.

The prisoners undressed, hung their coarse canvas fatigues
on a row of pegs and showered while the warders looked on and kept up a flow of jeers at their expense.

Hal and Frank stripped to the skin with the rest of the men and stepped into adjacent cubicles. Through the steam filling the room, the prisoners were able to exchange a few words… Occasionally warders would bawl half-heartedly: “No talking!” The sound of splashing water was cheering and the punch of the warm water soothing.

Hal peeked over the top of the partition separating him from his new friend.

Frank spotted him.

“Peeping Tom are you?” he asked.

Hal gave a leering laugh and yanked the chain, which turned the water on. A stream of warm water rained down on his gleaming body.

“You’re hardly marked about the body!” he called. “One bruise for effect, now that’s a classy touch!… You took most of it on your mug, because that’s where it shows most.”

The water suddenly stopped flowing in the next cubicle and Frank was standing in front of him, shamelessly naked, with an angry crease on his forehead.

“You’re not starting up on that same tack again, are you?”

Hal’s eyes were flooded with water. He shook himself, released the shower chain and took one step forward.

“Not starting, continuing… If you think I’m going to be fooled by your sordid little game, you’re making a big mistake!”

“What?”

They were wreathed in clouds of steam, and through the watery fog their movements were ghostly. Their bodies glistened like freshly caught fish.

“That’s enough!” cried Frank as he advanced.

He slipped on the wet tiles and stumbled slightly forward. Hal assumed he was being attacked by his cellmate and threw a punch.

There was a damp thwack. Frank’s face twisted with pain, for Hal’s knuckles had landed on the cheek which had already been split open.

“Bastard!” he grunted. “You dirty swine!”

He launched himself. The thud of punches was lost in the coughing and spluttering of water in the pipes and the shouts of the warders.

Face to face, breathing hard, gasping for air, the two men slugged it out with silent fury in Hal’s cubicle. They grunted briefly with pain when a punch struck home. Their eyes, irritated by the water, stood out from their heads.

“Goddammit! There’s a couple of the bastards beating each other up here!” cried a voice.

Warders came at a run. Blows from batons rained down on the two prisoners from every angle and their anger evaporated abruptly.

The shower they’d already taken was followed by this other much more brutal kind.

“Animals!” roared the Bull. “Run these characters back to their cell! Take a hose to them! Hit them in the nuts! I’ll drop in on them later and say hello.”

Neither Hal nor Frank remembered how they’d managed to get dressed or how they’d got back to their cell at the junction of the two corridors. Everything happened in a bewildering frenzy. Hands grabbed them, feet kicked them, voices roared abuse in their ears, blood ran down their faces…

Then they were lying on their backs in the grey cell, and came round in a state of agonizing peace.

“That was a damn-fool stunt to pull!” said Hal.

“Don’t give me that. You started it…”

Hal said nothing, his silence an admission of the truth of the charge.

Frank went on:

“Listen, pal, carry on like this and I’ll knock your insinuations down your throat. Have you got that?”

“Only truth offends,” murmured Hal.

Frank sat up.

“Say that again!”

“Oh, don’t be a fool… Anyway, I don’t give a damn whether you’re a stoolie or not. All I’ll say to you is that you’re wasting your time.”

But Hal was aching all over and utterly sick of it all.

“Same to you…” said Frank soberly. “You’re wasting your time too… I can see through it, you know. You’re taking this little game of yours too far…”

They both fell silent. The other inmates returned. They all craned their necks trying to get a glimpse of the two pugilists. The arrival of new prisoners always added excitement to their dull lives. They were curious about them.

When they’d all returned to their “home from home”, the Bull walked into the cell on the heels of the mute. He locked the door behind him and nodded to one of the warders that he was to stay nearby. A happy little smile lit up his bloated face.

“It seems you are always ready for a scrap, then?” he asked in his high, thin voice.

He was chewing on a rose. The flower completely hid his mouth and his words seemed to come out of the red petals.

Neither man responded.

“Stand up when I’m talking to you!” he bawled at them. “I’m going to teach you respect!”

Hal and Frank got to their feet.

“Hands straight down the sides of your trousers!” thundered the chief warder. “Head straight, chin up a bit… Are you two catching my drift?”

The two prisoners did exactly what they were told but with such obvious bad grace that there was something insolent about their obedience.

The Bull unstrapped his leather stick and tapped the palm of his hand several times with it. He liked the sound it made. He especially liked sharing it with prisoners.

With amazing speed, he raised the supple baton and in a single sweep brought it down across both their faces.

The two men screamed simultaneously.

“That’s right,” said the fat man as he wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. “Sing up, it chases away the blues… I warned you that house rules don’t allow brawling. Next time I’ll lay you out good and proper and you’ll cop a week in solitary. We got everything here, boys! This is the last jail in France that still has cells with rats! Take my word for it! Rats as big as my thigh, are you listening?”

Both men gave a sign that they had heard.

“That was a word to the wise,” added the Bull, who had a large collection of such ready-made sayings, as he left.

Frank turned to Hal.

The blow from the leather stick had left a savage mark on
Hal’s face. It stretched across his cheeks like a bar, a purplish welt over which a bloody dew was slowly forming.

Frank looked away and sat on the edge of his cot. The mute pulled a dirty rag from underneath his pillow and held it for a moment under the tap. When the rag was soaked, he held it out to Hal.

Hal took it from their disabled cellmate with a brief nod of thanks. He sponged his face with it. The rag quickly turned red.

“For a guy who topped his wife,” said Frank, “he’s very considerate.”

“It doesn’t mean a man’s got no feelings,” said Hal. “Maybe she made his life hell. Women are good at that. From the moment you drag them off to the town hall they start behaving like pigs… That’s the way it goes.”

“You married?”

“For my sins…”

Hal gave the mute his rag back after rinsing it through.

“Thanks,” he said, speaking clearly so that he would be understood.

The mute smiled sadly and slipped the rag back under his pillow.

“He was lucky, given the fix he was in,” said Frank.

“Lucky?”

“Sure… Lucky to be in France… It’s one of the few countries where you can do your missus in without having your head separated from your shoulders.”

“A grand place right enough. The jails are comfortable… It’s only the lack of sex that gets the thumbs-down.”

He groaned. The cold water had temporarily dulled the pain but the whack he’d taken from from the leather stick
was now gnawing his cheeks with bared teeth… Fine, pointed teeth, closely set and sharp as a pike’s.

“That guy,” he murmured, “is a sadist.”

“Damn right,” said Frank. “They all get like that, more or less. Spending your life in jail without having to is a clue… How about you? Did you ever do time in prison?”

“This is my first stretch.”

“Same here.”

“So we’ve got one thing in common,” said Hal. “What did you do on the outside?”

“I sold petrol,” said Frank after a moment.

“You mean you were a pump attendant?”

“No, traveller for an oil company.”

“That’s something else we got in common,” said Hal happily. “You sold petrol and I used it. I drove trucks.”

“Do you like strawberries?” Frank asked unexpectedly.

His cellmate looked at him, wondering if he was trying to get a rise out of him. But Frank seemed to be serious.

“Yes,” he answered. “Why are you asking?”

Frank got up and approached Hal’s cot. He bent his knees and leant them on the wooden frame.

“So do I, Hal,” he said, without ceasing to be deadly serious, “so do I. I like strawberries too. So you see, that makes a third thing we’ve got in common. Keep on looking and we might find more. Look, what’s the idea? You want me to be like you, or you to be like me? Or maybe your old man canoodled with my old lady or my old dad with your ma? Or maybe we could be brothers?…”

He grabbed Hal by the lapels of his fatigues.

“Would that make you happy?”

Hal firmly pushed him off.

“You’re a clown!” he muttered.

“And you’re not, I suppose? Watch your step, pal, or you’ll get into what makes us different and that would be a real shame!”

He stood up, did a few physical jerks, then walked to the far wall and leant against it just under the small high window. The sun did not shine into their narrow cell because a wall nearby was in its way. But the aperture allowed a square patch of bluey-green light to enter. By now, the muffled roar of the sea had melted into the background noise of the prison… At times the despairing cries of seabirds drifted in, raucous and plaintive.

“Trying for a tan?” asked Hal after staring at his companion upside down.

“In a sense, yes,” said Frank.

“What sense is that?” growled Hal.

“The other sense… I mean the wider sense… The sun… Do you think the sun still exists?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Hal. “I don’t know anything any more!”