by Tig Hague
It took no more than half a minute to complete a lap and as we began our walk round and round the short perimeter, like zoo animals, Zubi explained that there were dozens of similar exercise shacks strung out along the roof and that each one was used by the cells directly below. Our area, for instance, was used by our cell, 310, and at other times of the day by the inmates of the other four cells directly below it: 110, 210, 410, and 510. I could hear dozens of voices on either side, and people clearing their throats and noses and gobbing repeatedly. All along the roof prisoners banged their fists on the metal walls, creating a hellish din. When our neighbours realized we were there, they immediately began to shout and hammer on our corrugated walls, and the clamour was all the more disconcerting for coming from people we couldn’t even see. Zubi shouted back to them in Russian, and by the way he spoke it was clear that he was fielding questions.
‘What do they want? What are they saying?’ I asked Zubi.
‘They want you, my friend. You’re a celebrity. They’re asking “Who’s the English boy? What the hell’s he in for? What’s he like? Is he bad?” English boys just don’t end up here. You’re a novelty.’
‘A prison novelty! Great. So I’m the English idiot with 500 dollars in his wallet who somehow couldn’t buy his way out of some minor hassle at the airport.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling them, man, but they just don’t believe that. They think you’re one bad mother-fucker who committed such a heinous crime that you couldn’t even bribe your way out of it!’ he laughed. ‘They think you’re a big player in the crime world – and I’d go along with that if I were you. It’ll win you a bit of respect.’
For an hour we walked, like zombies, round and round the exercise area with nothing to do but listen to the demonic sound of other prisoners shouting and shaking their decrepit, rusting enclosures. I felt very mildly exercised but it was something of a relief when the hour was up and we filed back downstairs.
Back in the cell, Ranjit gave me three empty Russian exercise books and a biro and I promised that I’d pay him back when the Embassy or my family came to deliver my parcel of provisions. ‘I hope not, my friend,’ he replied. ‘I should be out of here by then.’
For an hour or two I lay on my bunk, writing up my diary, filling the pages with depressing thoughts and wild fears and desperate expressions of love for Lucy and remorse for the grief I’d caused everyone. The act of taking all these feelings out of my head and my heart and putting them down on paper somehow relieved their intensity.
I’d only been in the cell for about twenty-four hours – and it was a great cell compared to the previous one – but I had begun to feel the first but very real sensations of claustrophobia, the very physical discomfort of not being free to go where I wanted, when I wanted, of being trapped, stripped of the basic comforts I took for granted at home. But the worst bit was being separated from the people I loved. The trauma of the arrest, the panic about how to react to the rapidly unfolding events, the lack of sleep, Zubi’s crash course in prison life, the rush of new experiences… together they’d overwhelmed any other feelings competing for my attention. But lying on my bed, staring at the slats of the bunk above, my wrist aching from writing so much so quickly, the loneliness, the boredom, the frustration began to take hold of me.
As I lay there behind my sheet, paralysed with misery, I could make out a dull muttering coming from the direction of Zubi’s bunk. It had been going on a few minutes and I thought little of it, assuming he and Ranjit were having a quiet chat, perhaps about Ranjit’s impending court appearance. When I emerged from my bunk to have a smoke, however, Ranjit was sitting at the table going through his papers and Pasha was sitting on his bed, in the lotus position as ever, staring into the middle distance. But the murmur from behind Zubi’s bunk drape continued.
I looked at Ranjit and then at Zubi’s bunk, and Ranjit smiled at me. Embarrassed, I took this to mean that Zubi was answering a call of nature and pleasuring himself, but after about five minutes, Zubi pulled back his screen and said: ‘English boy, come over here. We need to chat.’
I was nervous as I leant back against the wall with my legs sticking out under the drape, fearing that he was about to show me his private stash of porn mags so that I could take them away for my own half hour of fun. I had noticed that when Zubi wasn’t talking about prison, he liked to talk about sex. It was all pussy this, and pussy that, and Christ if only I’d seen some of the beautiful pussy he’d had the pleasure of bedding down the years… The way he talked about girls made me feel a little priggish and uptight and I found myself unable to join in the banter. It was the only thing that irritated me about him. In all other respects he was my saviour. But girlie mags were not, it turned out, the purpose of our meeting.
‘Look, English boy, if we’re going to get you out of here, you need to start making a few calls, and doing some deals.’
‘How am I going to do that? You’re not allowed phone calls, are you?’ I replied, nonplussed, but relieved that he hadn’t handed me a copy of a hardcore Russian girlie mag.
‘I think I know I can trust you,’ he said.
And from under his leg, he produced a mobile phone.
‘What the fuck?!’ I blurted.
Zubi could see the excitement burst across my face as I took it from his outstretched hand and examined it. He hadn’t been wanking in there, he’d been talking to his wife or his daughter or his lawyers! He was in contact with the outside world.
‘This crappy little pay-as-you-go phone is worth about ten dollars on the outside. In here, my friend, it’s gold dust. It’s our lifeline to the world beyond. It’s our prized asset and we need to defend it and care for it, like our lives depend on it. If they find this, we’ll be in for a big-time beating and probably a spell in Razburg.’
I was so overjoyed at the thought of being able to call home that I barely listened as he explained that the main body of the phone was kept behind a loose brick just outside the open barred window, the battery behind a brick by his bunk and the charger beneath the tiled threshold of the door. Zubi’s wife had brought the phone to him in the cells below the courthouse after a hearing. She hid it in a bowl of salad, then paid off the courtroom guard with 100 dollars.
‘How did you get it back into Piet?’ I asked.
‘Up my arse – and I tell you it took one helluva push to get it out. The charger came a few days later with a food delivery, hidden inside a packet of noodles. This is the deal, English boy. We only use it after midnight, once the guards outside have disappeared for a couple of hours’ sleep. You can make as many calls as you like, as long as I say it’s safe, but your people in England have to pay to keep it topped up and I get to use it as much as I like too. It’s gonna cost them some big dollars, but that’s the price you pay. It’s always on vibrate mode, for obvious reasons, and after tonight you should get your people to call you, otherwise it’ll cost your folks, or your girl, a small fortune calling England from Russia. Now phone your Mum and let her know Zubi’s looking after you,’ he said.
Zubi handed me a shred of paper with the mobile’s number written on it, slapped me on the shoulder and then left me on the bunk. My heart started racing and I began to feel big emotions welling up as I punched in the code and my home number – it’s been the same for thirty years. 0, 0, 4, 4, 2, 0, 8, 8, 5, 7… One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings…
‘Hello.’ It was Mum, and her voice sounded weak and sad.
‘Mum, it’s me. Tig!’ I said, struggling to keep my voice to a whisper, tears pouring down my cheeks. I wanted to bellow with joy.
‘Tig! My boy! My boy! It’s him, John. It’s Tig. He’s on the phone! Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. How’s my little boy? How’s my boy?…’
Scarcely one full, rational sentence passed between us in the five minutes that followed; both of us were crying and choking so much and telling each other how much we loved each other and talking at a hundred miles an hour about the first thing
s that came into our heads. I couldn’t stop apologizing for what had happened, but when Dad took the phone he cut me off and said: ‘Don’t waste your energy apologizing, son. It’s happened. Water under the bridge. Don’t beat yourself up. Besides, there’ll be plenty of people inside to do that for you!’ he said with a forced laugh. ‘Now we’re all going to get focused on getting you out of there as soon as possible. Don’t worry, we’re on it. You just stay strong and stay out of trouble and your family will get you out of this business. You be cool, my boy. Just don’t bend over in the showers…’
I gave Dad the mobile number and he made a joke about it being a ‘cell phone’, but I knew all the building-site banter was just bravado to keep my spirits up and make me feel everything was cool and that they weren’t really too worried for me. I knew what he was really feeling and thinking. They were all going to come out and see me as soon as possible, he promised – Mum, Dad, Lucy and Rob – but first of all they were busy trying to mobilize lawyers and the British Embassy and raise a fighting fund to pay legal fees and travel expenses and so on.
I was still buzzing when I called Lucy straight afterwards. There was no reply at her mum’s at Leyton and I immediately tried her mobile. It rang just once before she picked up.
‘Babe, it’s me.’
‘Oh my God, Tig! I’ve been beside myself, my love. Where are you? What’s going on? Are you all right? Are you safe? When are you coming home? When are you getting bail?…’
‘I’m not getting bail, Babe. It’s going to trial…’
‘What? Trial? When?’
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and after a pause I replied: ‘It should all be over in a couple of months, my love…’
‘A couple of months! But what about the house, what about your job? What about you…?’
Zubi began waving at me, pointing to the door.
‘Luce, I’ll call you as soon as I can. I’ve got to…’
Zubi angrily snatched the phone off me and stuffed it under his mattress, saying: ‘Quick, go to your own bunk. I can hear guards.’
7
It was a hot night and sleep was difficult. The lights were kept on all night in Piet but it was the tapping on the bloody pipes that was driving me crazy. There seemed to be a lot more communication going on than the night before, and a lot of it seemed to be coming from cells near us, because it was much louder. It sounded like an orchestra of children playing with pots and pans and kettles and cutlery, creating an almost constant background din. The mosquitoes were out in force as well, buzzing in my ears like little electric drills, and I didn’t want to fall asleep in case I was bitten by one – not after what Zubi had been telling me about the TB and HIV and hepatitis and fuck knows what else that was rife throughout Russian gaols. Half the people in there were junkies who’d committed crimes to feed their habit. We were at the height of the mosquito season, and the thought of one of them sucking the blood from a junkie and then landing for another snack on me was freaking me out so much that, in spite of the heat and humidity, I put on the fleece Ranjit had given me to cover as much skin as possible. It was not long before I was sweating so much I could feel my T-shirt clinging to my flesh and eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer. I swivelled off my matras and jumped into the room to take it off.
As I emerged from behind my sheet I was surprised to see Ranjit standing on the top bunk with his arm stuck out of the window. Zubi was sitting on the edge of his bunk with a few small pieces of paper and a biro.
‘One of the volk’s guys needs to borrow the phone,’ he whispered, beckoning me over to where he sat. ‘I think he’s ordering in more drugs for the prison. Ranjit’s doing the daroga. If you hear a guard outside, dive straight back into your bunk, or we’ll be in the shit, big-time.’
The daroga system, Zubi explained as I sat down on his bunk, was the way the prison communicated and passed belongings between cells: fags, phones, drugs, whatever. The word means path or route or network. The tapping on the pipes was one cell talking to the ones on either side, above or below. It was like the phone ringing, and when you heard the taps you went to the window and waited to be passed the message or the item in transit. It was like something out of The Great Escape, and I felt a buzz of nervous excitement as Zubi continued.
Each cell, he said, had a long piece of string or cord, fashioned from the pieces of thread pulled from clothes, that was easily hidden in the stuffing of a matras. A sock with something heavy like a spoon in it was then attached to the end of the cord and the written message or the item being passed on was put into the sock. When the message-sender was ready, he alerted the neighbouring cells by tapping on the pipes and then swung the piece of string round and round outside his window until the prisoner leaning out of the cell window above, below or next to him grabbed hold of the sock and took out the contents. The process was repeated until the message or object had reached its destination. If you had experienced operators on the windows, Zubi claimed, it was possible to send a message from one corner or end of the building to the other in under five minutes. A searchlight scanned the wall for periods throughout the night but these guys had become experts at evading it. If you heard the jangle of keys outside, or the sound of the key in the lock, you had about five seconds to pull in the rope, leap down and get back into your bunk. The guards knew all about daroga, and the risks were great if you were caught. Savage beatings were the common form of punishment – for everyone except the volk and his inner circle.
‘But what if they don’t give the phone back?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll be back. It’s a question of prison honour, a code of trust. The system wouldn’t work if people didn’t get back what they’d lent. Also, who’s gonna pay to top it up?’
As he spoke, we heard a commotion erupt in a cell a little way down the corridor, maybe two or three doors along. Ranjit leapt off the top bunk and I hurled myself from Zubi’s into my own. The sound of guards shouting, dogs barking and prisoners screaming in pain and protest reverberated down the corridor. I lay on my bunk frozen with fear at the noise of the violence, terrified that we were all in for a thrashing but more worried that our phone had been confiscated. The violence continued for five minutes before we heard the cell door slammed shut with an almighty bang, followed by the sound of the guards moving off down the corridor slowly giving way to a tense silence.
Zubi pulled back the sheet over my bunk and whispered: ‘Don’t worry, English boy, that was nothing out of the ordinary. They were probably just making an example of one cell to shut the rest of the prison up. Something’s going on, though, and I don’t like it. It was busier tonight – you could tell from the tapping that there was a shitload of stuff being passed around. We’ll get our phone back later tonight. Just wait and see. It’ll go quiet for a bit and then it’ll start all over again.’
Sure enough, an hour or so later the tapping started up again, at first softly and just once in a while, but slowly increasing in volume and frequency. I prayed hard for that phone to come back, willing it on its way from one cell to the next, and finally, as I began to doze off, there were three loud raps on the pipe coming from the cell to our left. I felt Ranjit sweep out of his bunk next to mine and pull himself up on to the top bunk. Within seconds he was back down, and whispered: ‘Phone’s home.’
In the morning, Zubi said: ‘That’s it! No more fucking daroga! It’s getting too dangerous. A load of drugs has been smuggled in here in recent weeks, and I’m sick of risking my ass to distribute them round the prison for a load of junkies. What’s to say they won’t raid us one night and catch us with a sock full of smack that ain’t even ours? Try telling that to the judge. If that happens, we don’t just take a beating and have the cell broken up – we end up in the dungeon and they add more drugs offences on our charges, which means they’re gonna bang our pussy asses in gaol for the next ten years.
‘I see it like this: we got a cosy set-up here. Why fuck with it? There’s just
a handful of us. It’s clean, we’ve got food, no one’s sick, we’ve got TV, and most important, we’ve got the phone. It doesn’t get any better than this in here. But it can get a whole lot worse. Trust me. Every time we play daroga, we risk losing it. And how the fuck do we benefit from daroga anyhow? The answer is we don’t.’
Zubi looked around the room at the three of us. Ranjit shrugged, saying nothing. He was due in court for his trial later in the day and was banking on not coming back. He’d been in for five months and his people had thrown 20,000 dollars in bribes at the judge and prosecutor. He knew they had taken the money, now he was just hoping they’d keep their word. Pasha wasn’t even listening. He was sitting cross-legged on his bunk doing the Buddhist ‘Om’ with his eyes closed.
‘Fucking airhead!’ shouted Zubi, throwing his arms up in the air and looking at me. ‘It looks like it’s just you and me, English boy.’
‘But what about this volk guy?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t this going to piss him off?’
‘Fuck volk. We can deal with volk. Number one: we’re foreigners and the rules don’t apply to us as strictly as they do to the Russians. We got a bit of leeway there. Number two: I think I can play him off. Make up some bullshit for a while, string him along. Number three: the drugs can pass through the cells around us. It’s a minor inconvenience for the daroga boys. Number four: we ain’t the only ones with phones in this joint.