A Prison in the Sun

by Isobel Blackthorn

  'The rucksack.' They both spoke at once.

  A gasp.

  Then the female voice said, 'I bet he didn't hand it in.'

  'Must be why he was so keen to leave the apartment.'

  'No wonder he's so awkward.'

  I walked in at that point as I could bear the speculation no longer and if they were going to carry on like a pair of sleuths, they could ruddy well do it elsewhere.

  'Fabulous day again, don't you think?' I said loudly, striding over to my coffee cup. I slugged the tepid liquid in three large gulps and turned to face my guests, pasting a broad grin on my face to mask my irritation.

  'We must be getting on,' Claire said. 'We're holding you up.' She stood and headed for the sink. I moved away to give her room. She put her cup on the draining board.

  'Thanks again for letting me stay at your place,' I said, smiling at Claire and handing her the sheets, which this time she took.

  It was a relief to see them go, and I hoped I would never have to see them again. As their car pulled away from the kerb and disappeared up the road, I realised I knew nothing much about either of them. Clearly, they had no children. But how had they met and who had the money? One of them had to be loaded to afford such a grand house, and neither of them had mentioned they worked. Odd.

  Thinking of work brought me to the foot of the real dilemma I now faced. They suspected I had held onto the cash after all, and not gone to the police. It was only supposition on their part, but it was true. How long would it be before they came around and robbed me, attacked me, sent someone else round to do the very same? I needed to get off the island, and I needed to act fast.

  I went and got the washing in. It was dry, and I could have donned my gym gear and headed into Puerto del Rosario for a workout, but I was not about to leave the rucksack unguarded. Instead, in a desperate bid to restore some equanimity, I channelled all my apprehension and indignation and humiliation into the translation, completing another two thousand words by nightfall.

  I awoke early the next morning craving exercise. My muscles commandeered my reasoning. Might be the last time I used the gym before I left the island and no one, not even Paco and Claire, would turn up at dawn to raid my house. If that was the path they were going to take, they would need to create a plan and that took time. As long as I headed out the door and returned in under two hours, the rucksack would be safe.

  I downed a Clen, ate an orange, and drove to the city on sunrise. The journey was made difficult with the sun at the horizontal blazing through the windscreen, but I put my foot down, squinted and peered beneath the visor. The clock was ticking.

  Pushing open the entrance door, I was amazed to find the gym full. All the bikes were occupied save the one at the end near the weight machines. I adjusted the seat and the tension and mounted the bike, pedalling faster, much faster than I had previously.

  When I was about halfway, Mario sat on the leg press nearby. Luis joined him. Mario seemed irritated. To my astonishment, they both spoke in English, but I soon realised why.

  'You need to do something about Javier. Why do you let him in here?'

  Javier? No, no, surely not…

  'I have no reason to ban him.'

  'Find one. Juan was in big trouble. Javier and his gang were after him when that drug deal went bad.'

  'Do you think they killed him?'

  'All I know is they came to my workshop looking for the cash. I told them I knew nothing about it.'

  Javier? My Adonis? A gang leader?

  'Do something, Luis, before someone else gets killed.'

  I looked down at the monitor and found I had pedalled fifteen kilometres. I hopped off the bike onto wobbly legs, grabbed my gym bag and went over to the chest machines, keen to get the workout over and done with as fast as I could. But the bench press, table pec flies, incline dumbbell press and the decline machine press were all in use. Tunnelling my gaze, I turned around and walked out of the gym, narrowly missing colliding with the behemoth making his way inside. He seemed about to say something, and I recalled I was due for another Tren injection. A moment's hesitation, the memory of the coughing fit the last time, and I ignored the steroid-pusher and hurried to my car.

  As I pulled away from the gym, I knew I would never be back. A three-month membership and an expensive injection of steroids and I hadn't even managed a fortnight, but I refused to let that part of my mind calculate the loss. I couldn't get off the island fast enough. Never mind Paco and Claire. Javier was the one after the cash. My beautiful Javier, the guy who I had momentarily lusted over. The man who triggered a wet dream and had me convinced I was gay. A drug dealer. If that was where my same-sex predilections were taking me, I wanted no part in it. I would rather be celibate. I'd been betrayed. Betrayed by a man fit to be a statue and by my own lust.

  The moment I was back at the farmhouse, I booked a ticket on the next available flight to Stansted, departing in two days. I had no idea where I would stay in England and I was disappointed to be leaving Fuerteventura so soon, but needs must. Besides, if I kept the money I didn't need to worry about such trifles. The bigger issue all along had been what to do with all that cash. I still didn't feel entitled to it, but who was? Not Juan's family, that much was now certain, since it was evident this was the proceeds of crime, and I was not about to let Javier lay his hands on a cent of it.

  I had no idea how much cash I was allowed to bring into Britain, but fifty thousand euros did seem suspicious. I could do a money transfer. It would create a paper trail, but at least I could siphon off some of the amount.

  My thoughts started back at the beginning, and I wondered if I should simply hand in the rucksack and give myself peace of mind. I shook myself out of the conundrum and decided to funnel the anxiety the dilemma was causing into finishing the translation. After all, Javier knew nothing about me. He didn't even know I existed. Clearly, he was Mario's rival or enemy. If in the next two days, Paco and Claire told Mario their suspicions about the rucksack, Mario would not tell Javier. The worst that could happen was Mario turning up with his hand out. If it came to that, I would hand the rucksack over.

  I went and downed another Clen with a glass of juice, took a shower and went back to work.

  I worked through the rest of the day. At six in the evening, I took another Clen, planning on working all night. Around seven, I switched off my phone and shut down the internet on my laptop. No more distractions, especially from Angela. I didn't want to know about Flint and the award. That piece of news could wait until the morning.

  Once I had all the words translated into English, I began working on the story. I was driven, focussed, certain that this would be my best work. The harder I strove, the more I saw my coming to Fuerteventura as fated and by sunrise, as I hit the save button, I relished the moment I would send the results to Angela.

  Part Two

  The Hostel

  Dawn, and the summer sun struck a glancing blow on the shutters of the north-eastern wall, pouring radiant orange on my face. I squinted into the blinding bands of light, ventured a raised arm to shade my eyes, then eased myself onto my side to stare into the dimness of the cell. The lacerations on my back from the flogging I received the day before – swollen and weeping, the blood dried and crusted – stung with every move I made.

  A flogging for what reason? There was no reason, none that was justified. The guard had blamed me for the sun being too hot. That was not the truth but what difference would it make if it was. I was flogged because I stepped between a guard and a wizened wretch of a prisoner too weak to lift the rock he had split. Part of me wished I hadn't, but I saw frantic despair in the man's eyes.

  The day was already warm. Dust-laden air drifting in from outside circulated in the space, doing nothing to lift the rank stench of unwashed clothes, filthy bodies, sweat and stale urine, our breath. I raised myself up off the mattress – so thin I could feel the wooden slats beneath – swung my legs to the floor and paused for the head spin to ease as my
feet touched the floorboards.

  The cot opposite creaked, and I looked over and nodded to Raphael as he caught my eye. He lay still. He was in no hurry to rise. No one was. It was Saturday, our one day of rest. I hesitated. Why dress when I could just as well have dozed? I could give myself no answer.

  My pants and shirt were hanging from a nail on the wooden beam above my cot. I stood to unhook the clothes and put them on, taking care as I eased the shirt on, tucking the thin fabric into the trousers the way I used to when I dressed each morning for work.

  Brown pants and grubby white shirts were hanging everywhere from the barn ceiling, airing, crowding the already crowded space. The cell, one of three, was a small, narrow rectangle. There were twelve of us sandwiched in an area that was about the size of my parent's bedroom. Seven cots on the windowed side facing five cots squashed between two doors. Centred in the far wall at the end of the aisle was another doorway leading out to a concreted anteroom and on to the adjoining cell where another twelve men slept. Two cells for twenty-four men and all of us were gay.

  The third cell, unconnected, housed another twelve prisoners. They were the non-gays, among them at present were three hardened criminals, two professional thugs, an alcoholic, three drug addicts, two political prisoners and a simple youngster with the mental age of about six. Pablo had no idea why he was here except that he knew he must have done something very bad.

  I came from a family of five, and I found myself in another family of five. There were Jorge and Ruben and Rafael and, the closest to me, Manuel. We were all from Tenerife and all about the same age, brothers bound together not by our sexuality but by our various affinities and experiences. A little brotherhood of five, for all the good it would do us.

  The other seven in the room were from Gran Canaria. While all of us twelve were friendly enough, the Gran Canarians tended to stick to their cultural group and we to ours. Each island was different. We spoke in different dialects and had somewhat different attitudes and traditions. There was no hostility among us, we had no energy for that, but congregating with our own kind made things easier. The other cell comprised men from La Palma, La Gomera and even tiny El Hierro, along with two men from Lanzarote. Seven islands, seven distinct cultures, and one simple binding force: our sexuality.

  I had the cot on the windowed side of the room, two down from the end and below the shuttered window that looked out across the plain at the mountains. Manuel had the cot beside mine. Ruben and Raphael occupied cots on the other side of the aisle, Raphael's nearest the door. Jorge's cot was hard up against the wall on the other side of Manuel's. Manuel's was so close to mine if we wanted, we could reach out and hold hands.

  We never did. Our sexuality had everything to do with why we were all here and nothing to do with the relationships we formed with each other. Yet our sexual preference hung in the air, ever present, an atmosphere, almost a smell, the smell of masculinity and forbidden desire and self-disgust and shame. We existed within this vortex of instinct and emotion as we endured the worst deprivations any of us could ever have imagined despite what had so recently taken place in Germany, in Poland.

  All of us wished we were dead, that they would kill us instead of making us endure the misery.

  There was a commotion outside. I stood on my cot and peered through the shutters. Two guards, who had hurried down from the military headquarters situated on the rise above the cells, appeared at the end of the cell block, running towards the chicken coop, weapons to the ready.

  Brito, the prison director, emerged from inside the coop, yelling. He held out in one hand a mess of white feathers and blood and as he came closer to the cells I saw it was a chicken. A well and truly dead chicken, what was left of it. Small spats of blood stained the dirt behind him. He disappeared around the corner of the last cell, on his way up to the compound. The guards followed on behind.

  The men in the cell who had been determined not to wake, began to stir. I pulled away from the window and sat down on my cot.

  'What is going on?' Jorge groaned, groggy with sleep.

  'There's been a massacre in the chicken coop. A dog, I expect.'

  'Then we have no chickens.'

  'No eggs,' Manuel murmured. He still had his eyes closed.

  Jorge observed him with scorn.

  'We never get eggs, darling.'

  'Or chicken,' I said.

  'Chicken!' Manuel's eyes sprang open. 'Oh, what I would give for a slice of breast!'

  My stomach clenched in response. What I would have given for any half-decent food. For fresh bread and roasted goat meat, for grilled fish and wrinkled baby potatoes. Tomatoes!

  Saliva built in my mouth. I swallowed hard.

  It was best not to dwell on food. It was best to pretend that food did not exist. Otherwise, the hunger only intensified. The hunger that never went away. It would be sundown before we ate.

  Raphael got up, dressed and sat at the end of Ruben's cot. Jorge joined him, the two men facing me. Behind them, Ruben was still lying huddled beneath his grey blanket.

  In the cot next to mine, Manuel threw off his covers, put on his clothes and sat cross-legged on his cot. In a bizarre moment of self-preening, he began picking dirt from beneath his toenails and sniffing at the results. I half anticipated he would put the toenail cheese in his mouth. He didn't. None of us had the energy to tell him he was being revolting. No one really cared.

  'Do you think there will be anything left?' Jorge said.

  'Of the chickens?' I said. 'I doubt it.'

  'Whose dog was it?' Manuel said without looking up.

  'Does it matter, darling?' Jorge, ever the marica, couldn't help taunting the equally effeminate Manuel. We all ignored his tone.

  'That farmer,' said Raphael. 'The one who waves at us sometimes when his wife isn't looking. He has a dog.'

  Jorge said, 'They all have dogs.'

  No one disagreed.

  'Brito will be livid,' I said, reflecting on how that stark fact would affect us.

  'Maybe he'll go on the rampage,' Raphael said with a snigger. It was no laughing matter, yet we couldn't help but laugh. The man, Brito, behaved like a headless chicken himself. Or maybe not. More like a rabid dog.

  'Like the dog that killed the chickens,' Raphael said, reading my thoughts.

  'Snarling, growling, rearing his upper lip.' Manuel bared his teeth.

  'Drooling,' Jorge said, serious now, and grim.

  Raphael, whose gaze hadn't left my face, said, 'He will be genuflecting and pleading with the Blessed Virgin.'

  'What for?' Manuel said.

  Jorge laughed. 'Who knows what for, sweetheart. Brito is deranged.'

  'He will be pleading for absolution and begging for mercy.'

  We all laughed this time, but none of us was certain he knew what Raphael meant. Eyes fell on him inquiringly.

  'For being a maricon, of course. He probably sees the chicken massacre as his punishment for being gay.'

  Jorge scoffed. 'That has to be your most absurd thought yet.'

  Raphael ignored him. 'He'll never admit it. Even though this is what is sending him mad.'

  'Yeah, he would blame us, not himself,' I said.

  We fell into silence.

  Manuel hunched over to attend to his other big toe. I could see his ribs, like rungs of a ladder through the skin of his back. My eyes drifted to the others. We were all emaciated. Raphael's bones showed through his flesh. Jorge's face was drawn, his eyes sunken. I guessed mine were the same. It was hard to know how gaunt I had become as I never cared to look at my reflection even when I could, which wasn't often.

  Ruben turned over in his cot, curled in a foetal position and drew his blanket up around his shoulders. A look of concern flashed into Raphael's face. Ruben had been ill for weeks, ever since we got soaked in the rain in a sudden spring downpour while we were out breaking rocks in a nearby field. A bad cold he could not shake had now turned nasty. He was feverish. He wheezed when he breathed. The warmer weathe
r had not helped and now it was early summer, and as the days grew hot, he wilted.

  We couldn't help him. We prayed, for all the good it would do. We willed him well with what little strength we had. At night, I had to resist closing the window to protect him from the cool night air. Resist, or get arrested.

  It was not worth the beating.

  Ruben coughed. His cough became a hack, and his whole scrawny body shook. The day he arrived, he was a strapping young man of twenty-two. Originally a farmer's boy from Vilaflor in the dry south of Tenerife. His tenant father paid such a high tribute for his tiny scrap of land to the absentee landowner who preferred to live in the island's north, that there was little left for the family to survive on. Twelve-hour days and near starvation. Hunger drove Ruben to Santa Cruz, initially to a life of scavenging. Then he learned the ancient art and grew strong and fat on the pesetas of the old maricones, doing whatever they asked of him in the urinal or the cinema or the park. Now Ruben huddled sick in his cot, a bag of bones. I could almost hear him rattle. I feared we would lose him.

  There was another commotion outside, and I went to the window and peered between the shutters.

  Brito was charging towards the chicken coop, arms flailing. As he neared a bemused-looking guard, he yelled something, stopped, swung around and stormed back up to his office. The guard scanned the cells as though making up his mind which to choose. His gaze settled on ours. I withdrew from the window and sat on the end of my cot.

  Moments later the door flew open. The men at the other end of the room murmured under their breath. Every man in the room avoided the gaze of the guard. Everyone except Manuel who was slow to twig. The instant their eyes met, Manuel knew his mistake.

  'Come with me.' The guard looked at me. 'And you, and you and you,' he said, stabbing the air at Jorge and Raphael.

  We stood slowly and pulled on our shoes, bending to tie up the laces. None of us was in a hurry.

  Reluctantly, we made our way to the door beneath the uneasy gazes of the other prisoners.

  The moment we were outside, the guard herded us along the narrow concrete path that fronted the cells, down the side and across the gravel to the chicken coop that had been erected beside a disused barn. There, we huddled together, bracing ourselves for what was to come. The sound of clucking that would normally have greeted the ears had been replaced with an uncomfortable silence. Another guard came barrelling down the slope and shoved buckets and a hessian sack into our hands before marching off again. We went through the rickety coop door, ducking on our way in, filing past the remaining guard who looked determined to stand where he was.