Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist Part 18

[18] Sentence.

"Shut your d.a.m.ned trap!" the officer retorts, angrily. The consumptive bends over his work, fearfully eyeing the keeper's measuring stick.

As the officer turns away, Jim pleads:

"Mr. Hoods, I lose time teachin'. Won't you please take off a bit? De task is more'n I can do, an' I'm sick."

"Nonsense. There's nothing the matter with you, Jim. You're just lazy, that's what you are. Don't be shamming, now. It don't go with _me_."

At noon the overseer calls me aside. "You are green here," he warns me, "pay no attention to Jim. He wanted to be bad, but we showed him different. He's all right now. You have a long time; see that you behave yourself. This is no playhouse, you understand?"

As I am about to resume my place in the line forming to march back to the cells for dinner, he recalls me:

"Say, Aleck, you'd better keep an eye on that fellow Jim. He is a little off, you know."

He points toward my head, with a significant rotary motion.

II

The mat shop is beginning to affect my health: the dust has inflamed my throat, and my eyesight is weakening in the constant dusk. The officer in charge has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with my slow progress in the work. "I'll give you another chance," he cautioned me yesterday, "and if you don't make a good mat by next week, down in the hole you go." He severely upbraided Jim for his inefficiency as instructor. As the consumptive was about to reply, he suffered an attack of coughing.

The emaciated face turned greenish-yellow, but in a moment he seemed to recover, and continued working. Suddenly I saw him clutch at the frame, a look of terror spread over his face, he began panting for breath, and then a stream of dark blood gushed from his mouth, and Jim fell to the floor.

The steady whir of the looms continued. The prisoner at the neighboring machine cast a furtive look at the prostrate form, and bent lower over his work. Jim lay motionless, the blood dyeing the floor purple. I rushed to the officer.

"Mr. Hoods, Jim has--"

"Back to your place, d.a.m.n you!" he shouted at me. "How dare you leave it without permission?"

"I just--"

"Get back, I tell you!" he roared, raising the heavy stick.

I returned to my place. Jim lay very still, his lips parted, his face ashen.

Slowly, with measured step, the officer approached.

"What's the matter here?"

I pointed at Jim. The guard glanced at the unconscious man, then lightly touched the bleeding face with his foot.

"Get up, Jim, get up!"

The nerveless head rolled to the side, striking the leg of the loom.

"Guess he isn't shamming," the officer muttered. Then he shook his finger at me, menacingly: "Don't you ever leave your place without orders. Remember, you!"

After a long delay, causing me to fear that Jim had been forgotten, the doctor arrived. It was Mr. Rankin, the senior prison physician, a short, stocky man of advanced middle age, with a humorous twinkle in his eye.

He ordered the sick prisoner taken to the hospital. "Did any one see the man fall?" he inquired.

"This man did," the keeper replied, indicating me.

While I was explaining, the doctor eyed me curiously. Presently he asked my name. "Oh, the celebrated case," he smiled. "I know Mr. Frick quite well. Not such a bad man, at all. But you'll be treated well here, Mr.

Berkman. This is a democratic inst.i.tution, you know. By the way, what is the matter with your eyes? They are inflamed. Always that way?"

"Only since I am working in this shop."

"Oh, he is all right, Doctor," the officer interposed. "He's only been here a week."

Mr. Rankin cast a quizzical look at the guard.

"You want him here?"

"Y-e-s: we're short of men."

"Well, _I_ am the doctor, Mr. Hoods." Then, turning to me, he added: "Report in the morning on sick list."

III

The doctor's examination has resulted in my removal to the hosiery department. The change has filled me with renewed hope. A disciplinary shop, to which are generally a.s.signed the "hard cases"--inmates in the first stages of mental derangement, or exceptionally unruly prisoners--the mat shop is the point of special supervision and severest discipline. It is the best-guarded shop, from which escape is impossible. But in the hosiery department, a recent addition to the local industries. I may find the right opportunity. It will require time, of course; but my patience shall be equal to the great object. The working conditions, also, are more favorable: the room is light and airy, the discipline not so stringent. My near-sightedness has secured for me immunity from machine work. The Deputy at first insisted that my eyes were "good enough" to see the numerous needles of the hosiery machine. It is true, I could see them; but not with sufficient distinctness to insure the proper insertion of the initial threads. To admit partial ability would result, I knew, in being ordered to produce the task; and failure, or faulty work, would be severely punished.

Necessity drove me to subterfuge: I pretended total inability to distinguish the needles. Repeated threats of punishment failing to change my determination, I have been a.s.signed the comparatively easy work of "turning" the stockings. The occupation, though tedious, is not exacting. It consists in gathering the hosiery manufactured by the knitting machines, whence the product issues without soles. I carry the pile to the table provided with an iron post, about eighteen inches high, topped with a small inverted disk. On this instrument the stockings are turned "inside out" by slipping the article over the post, then quickly "undressing" it. The hosiery thus "turned" is forwarded to the looping machines, by which the product is finished and sent back to me, once more to be "turned," preparatory to sorting and shipment.

Monotonously the days and weeks pa.s.s by. Practice lends me great dexterity in the work, but the hours of drudgery drag with heavy heel. I seek to hasten time by forcing myself to take an interest in the task. I count the stockings I turn, the motions required by each operation, and the amount accomplished within a given time. But in spite of these efforts, my mind persistently reverts to unprofitable subjects: my friends and the propaganda; the terrible injustice of my excessive sentence; suicide and escape.

My nights are restless. Oppressed with a nameless weight, or tormented by dread, I awake with a start, breathless and affrighted, to experience the momentary relief of danger past. But the next instant I am overwhelmed by the consciousness of my surroundings, and plunged into rage and despair, powerless, hopeless.

Thus day succeeds night, and night succeeds day, in the ceaseless struggle of hope and discouragement, of life and death, amid the externally placid tenor of my Pennsylvania nightmare.

CHAPTER VI

MY FIRST LETTER

I

Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., October 19th, 1892.

Dear Sister:[19]

It is just a month, a month to-day, since my coming here. I keep wondering, can such a world of misery and torture be compressed into one short month?... How I have longed for this opportunity!

You will understand: a month's stay is required before we are permitted to write. But many, many long letters I have written to you--in my mind, dear Sonya. Where shall I begin now? My s.p.a.ce is very limited, and I have so much to say to you and to the Twin.--I received your letters. You need not wait till you hear from me: keep on writing. I am allowed to receive all mail sent, "of moral contents," in the phraseology of the rules. And I shall write whenever I may.

Dear Sonya, I sense bitterness and disappointment in your letter. Why do you speak of failure? You, at least, you and Fedya, should not have your judgment obscured by the mere accident of physical results. Your lines pained and grieved me beyond words. Not because you should write thus; but that you, even you, should _think_ thus. Need I enlarge? True morality deals with motives, not consequences. I cannot believe that we differ on this point.