Dark Days

by D. Randall Blythe

  “Thank you, bro. I’m Randy. Do you speak English? What’s your name?” I asked. The short man sat looking at, then asked Raymond Herrera a quick question, who answered, pointing at me and the short man.

  “Englishky? No. Name? Rene,” he answered, pointing to himself. Raymond Herrera spoke to him again in Czech or Romani (I couldn’t tell the difference), and Rene’s eyes got big, then he turned to me with a big smile on his face.

  “Aaaah, Americansky,” Rene said, pointing at me “rock and rooooool, baby!” and laughed as he began to air guitar. I suppose Raymond had informed him of who I was. I was definitely not going to be the anonymous American on our cell block. Oh well—at least the Roma seemed friendly.

  “Yes, rock-n-roll,” I sighed. “You are Romani?” I asked, pointing to him and his two friends.

  “Yes, yes. Say Gypsy, Gypsy,” Rene replied, then turned back to his friends and resumed their conversation.

  “I read about you in the papers,” the tall overweight man carefully said, not unkindly.

  “Yup, that’s me,” I admitted. “Do you know why they brought us here?”

  “Drug test,” he replied, and soon a guard returned with a tray of urine sample cups with printed labels on them, handing one to each of us as he read the name on the label. As the guard left, a collective groan went up from over half the men in the cell. Uh-oh. Although I was almost certain I would pass any standard drug test administered, as I had been clean and sober for close to two years at that point, a part of me harbored a tiny shred of worry. I had just come off a month of festival tour gigs. Backstage at any festival of any sort, anywhere on earth, not just heavy metal—rock, jazz, country, hip-hop, classical, gospel, it does not matter—I can assure you that somewhere, someone is smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Even if the musicians themselves aren’t smoking it, someone in the crew, either local or band, is getting stoned. That is just a fact of the music business, and I have walked through or sat in countless billowing clouds of ganja smoke in the closed environment of backstage, unavoidably breathing some of it in, much to my annoyance. I don’t think there is anything wrong with recreationally smoking a little herb here and there, just as I don’t think drinking like a normal person is wrong; although even when I was partying I didn’t partake in it much at all—it simply wasn’t a drug I enjoyed. And yes, weed has legitimate medical uses, and it is ridiculous that it’s illegal while cigarettes are not; but just like alcohol, marijuana is a drug. It was not something I wanted popping up during a urine screening in prison, especially since I didn’t even get to enjoy it when I “did” it. (All you deluded and self-righteous stoners with your hackles lazily raising up right now—calm down, I’m not saying your little magic plant should be illegal; but please, for God’s sake stop lying to yourselves—it’s a freaking drug. Psychotropic foreign substance + your body = radical change in mental and physical condition. This means you have done a drug. Why else would you call it “getting high”? Get over it.)

  One by one we got up and went to the toilet in the corner and filled our little cups, carefully placing them on the ground near our feet, except for the junkie beside me. In a moment of opiate-inspired genius, he had placed his on top of the small privacy wall beside the toilet, where it was promptly knocked over by the large overweight man already in the process of filling his own cup. The piss splashed all over the junkie and onto the floor, some hitting my feet. I cursed and jerked my legs back, the junkie cursed and grabbed the cup from the floor, Rene paused mid-story to curse and laugh, and the large man jumped behind the barrier, startled by all the cursing. He emerged sheepishly from the toilet with his cup only half full, apologizing as he wiped his own urine from his hands on his sweatpants. Our little trip upstairs was off to a roaring start.

  The junkie was in process of refilling his cup when I heard a man screaming from a cell next to ours, followed by several other voices in the cell yelling in Czech. Immediately four or five large guards came running past our cell, wearing white medical masks, like the ones common during the SARS scare of a few years back, strapped over their noses and mouths. I heard the barred door of the holding cell next to ours being hurriedly unlocked, and the screaming man increased his volume. I heard the unmistakable sound of a scuffle as guards and other inmates in the next holding cell were all yelling over the screaming man. Everyone in my cell had stopped talking and was listening wide-eyed to the ruckus next door, which gave no sign of calming down.

  “Dude! What’s going on out there?” I asked the urine displacer, as he had spoken in excellent English to me earlier.

  “There is a man next door with tuberculosis. He does not want to go to the hospital,” he replied, shaking his head. “This is not good.”

  Tuberculosis? Good God, my Grandma used to talk about how bad tuberculosis was during her childhood! If my Grandma, a woman who grew up during the Great Depression and was one of the toughest people I have ever met, says that something is bad, that means it’s bad. TB has been pretty much eliminated in America, so I didn’t know much about it except that it could kill you—and that it was a highly contagious airborne disease that flourished in crowded places with poor sanitation. Places like Pankrác. I immediately pulled my t-shirt up over my mouth and nose, and most of the other men in the cell did the same. The Vietnamese didn’t bother. They just squatted there and lit up another cigarette, probably thinking what a bunch of scaredy-cats we were—Southeast Asia has a ton of weird diseases that aren’t common in other parts of the world. The Vietnamese are very tough people, and these guys probably ate tuberculosis with a side of influenza with their morning bowl of pho everyday back home.

  After another minute of struggling, the guards quickly returned past our cell with the screamer in a brutal-looking restraining hold, yanking him down the hall and out the door as he struggled and yelled in Czech as loud as he could through the beefy arm currently constricting his windpipe. Why on earth he wouldn’t want to go to the hospital, I had no idea, but I was glad he was gone. I kept my shirt above my nose just in case any stray tuberculosis particles were still floating about in the air. Soon a guard appeared, unlocked our cell, and called out a Czech name. The piss-soaked junkie stood up and took his second cup of urine with him, holding up his sagging sweatpants around his emaciated waist as he walked out the door. After a few minutes he returned, sans cup, but pressing his thumb into the crook of his elbow, holding a tiny square of gauze in place. He sat down next to me, and within seconds blood had soaked through the gauze and was dripping down his arm and onto the floor. I scooted further towards Dorj. In a matter of minutes there had been piss splashed on me, a hysterical man with a contagious and deadly airborne disease was dragged kicking and screaming past my cell, and now this junkie was bleeding like a stuck pig less than a foot away from me. Things were not going smoothly.

  Someone handed the junkie a wad of toilet paper to replace the useless scrap of gauze, but soon it was just as soaked through, and his blood kept dripping down his scrawny arm and onto the cell floor. I guess that’s what happens when you can’t find a vein after you’ve collapsed them all shooting dope, I thought, thankful that I had somehow never fallen into intravenous drug use. I heard a groan, and looked up to see Abercrombie staring at the blood flowing down the junkie’s arm. Abercrombie was very, very pale and appeared as if he was about to either throw up or pass out, maybe both.

  “Dude, are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Oooh . . . the blood . . . I cannot look at blood . . . it makes me dizzy,” he replied in barely accented but very shaky English. Abercrombie looked like he was about to faint, so the quiet gypsy seated beside him got up and let him lay down on the bench. I burst out laughing. I had heard of people who fainted when they saw blood, but I had never seen it happen. I tried briefly to contain myself but it was absurdly hilarious to me that this pretty boy was actually about to pass out at the sight of a little (admittedly probably pretty unhealthy, maybe even deadly) junkie blood—if he couldn’t handle
this little unpleasantness, how was he going to deal with prison life? It was too funny.

  Then I realized what a complete asshole I was being. It wasn’t Abercrombie’s fault that he was born with genes that gave him a pretty face and a predisposition for falling out when he saw a little of the red stuff. I honestly felt terrible, and no one else was laughing either.

  “I’m sorry, man—I’m not trying to make fun of you. You just reminded me of my younger brother, Mark.” I lied. “He passes out every time he sees blood, too. He’s been that way since we were kids.” (Sorry Mark—I had to come up with something.) Abercrombie accepted my apology in a weak voice, laying there with an arm thrown across his face, trying to regain his composure. He still looked funny to me, prostrated like a swooning woman on a couch in an old silent movie, but I managed to keep my mirth to myself. One by one, we were all called to a nurse’s office where the worst phlebotomist I have ever had the displeasure of being stuck by drained a few vials of blood from each of us none-too-gently. (Dorj and I would later compare the large bruises on our arms.) Abercrombie returned looking even paler than before, the guard basically holding him up. During my turn, I handed a nurse my urine sample, and I watched her do a brief chemical test on it as the needle-wielding sadist drew a few mils of blood. I asked her if I had passed, and she gave me a thumbs-up and told me my urine was clean. Yay! I didn’t know what the penalty for pissing dirty would have been, maybe nothing, but I knew it wouldn’t reflect well on me when it came time for court. I gave Dorj a questioning thumbs-up/thumbs-down gesture when he returned, but he shook his head and gave a rueful hiss between his teeth. I guess Dorj liked to party.

  For some reason, it took about two hours for everyone to have their blood taken. Thirteen of us crammed perspiring into that holding cell, the smell of piss and blood and sweat and tuberculosis and God knows what else hanging in the unmoving air. The only upside to this whole ordeal was that the older gentleman began producing full packs of cigarettes from his leather bag, eventually giving them all away. Rene took the cigarettes and distributed them evenly to everyone in the cell who smoked. I felt bad taking so many cigarettes from the old man, so I had Abercrombie ask him in Czech if he was sure about handing them out so freely. He replied that it was no problem, that his lawyer would bring him more. I hope that he didn’t have to do a lot of time there, because as I would find out later, getting cigarettes wasn’t always as simple as having your lawyer drop off a few packs.

  After everyone had fallen victim to the vampire in the nurse’s office, Bradley and another guard came back to escort us back to the cellblock. We were walking single file down a long hallway when I heard a strange noise behind me, like air being let out of a car tire. I stopped and turned around and Martin, the man who looked like he had the flu (he had spoken a small amount of English in the holding cell and had introduced himself to me), stood there looking very dizzy. The blood drained from his face, and I saw him actually turn gray right in front of me as he began to fall to his knees. Dorj, myself, and the older gentleman grabbed him before he fell out, and lowered him to the ground. Martin’s eyes were rolled back into his head, his mouth had a bit of foam in the corners, and I quickly wondered if he were epileptic and about to go into convulsions. Thankfully he did not, but Bradley and the other guard came back as the whole line stopped, jabbering impatiently in Czech at us, motioning for us to pick Martin up and carry him. They were not in the least bit interested in what was happening with this man, they just wanted him back in his cell. When Martin came to, Dorj and I helped him down the stairs into our cell block, and were walking him to his cell when Bradley stopped us and wouldn’t let us help him any further. Martin thanked us and walked slowly and unsteadily down the hall, leaning with one arm against the wall for support.

  “That man is sick! He needs help” I said angrily to Bradley, who just shrugged and locked us in our cell. “Motherfucker! I hate that asshole so much!” I cursed, but made myself calm down quickly, remembering my unfortunate place in this situation. I went to the sink and washed my hands and arms as well as I could with soap and the cold water, and Dorj did as well. We didn’t know what kind of sickness Martin had, but neither of us wanted to find out the hard way. I lay down on my bed, wondering what would happen next.

  An hour or so later, I heard Fester yelling, “Jídlo! Chai!” outside our door. After such a light and terrible lunch, I was looking forward to dinner, which I was sure couldn’t be any blander, and had to be more substantial. This time I went to the hatch to get our food, and Dorj grabbed our cups for tea. I took the two trays, each holding a bowl of what looked like the same soup and same piece of bread from lunch and placed them on the table while Dorj got our tea. I turned around to get the rest of our dinner, but Fester had already shut the hatch and moved on his merry way.

  A bowl of soup and a piece of bread was dinner? That was it? You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. But no one was kidding anyone—that was, indeed, it. I would soon learn that lunch was the main meal of the day in this prison (and the Czech Republic in general), and that what we had consumed earlier would pretty much set the standard for la cuisine de Pankrác. Dorj had managed to slurp up most of his meal by the time I started on mine, which was just fine by me, since watching him annihilate his meager dinner made me feel a little nauseous. Again though, it was truly riveting (if stomach-churning), to witness him eat—Dorj was a slurper of olympic-level prowess, inhaling everything in front of him in great, sloppy, wet inhalations.

  The next several hours were spent sitting in the cell, looking at the walls, hopping up every now and then to take a look out the window, doing a few pushups, and reading over and over the few incomprehensible Czech sentences of graffiti scratched on the walls by former occupants of our cell. Mostly I laid on my bed, thinking about my situation and trying to nap every now and then without much success. Once or twice Fester came by and refilled our cups with luke warm tea. At some point I noticed Dorj fiddling with three small elaborate swans he must have made prior to my arrival in cell #505. They were marvelous constructions, put together from hundreds of tiny pieces of folded up paper. It appeared that Dorj had run out of swan-making materials though, so he amused himself by taking them apart and putting them back together, the entire time whistling the same few bars of what I assumed was some Mongolian folk tune. It was rather soothing sounding, and I imagined him back in Mongolia, riding his horse across the majestic and bleak landscape of his homeland on whatever type of mysterious errand Mongols run when they aren’t locked up in Czech prisons.

  The sun was still low in the sky when the lights in our cell began to flick on and off, signaling, I supposed, that it was time to go to bed. I had been in bed already for several hours at that point, but I got up and washed my face and brushed my teeth, then said my evening prayers, asking God to give me the strength to get though this ordeal with dignity, whatever its final outcome might be. Dorj watched me hit my knees and pray with a small amount of interest, and when I was done pointed to himself and said “I buddha.” Ah, he was saying he was a buddhist (although he actually did resemble very much some of the rounder representations of the Buddha himself I had seen). I gestured that I was a meditator, and indicated interest in if he had the same sort of practice. Dorj gave a short laugh and quickly shook his head no, probably thinking: Great, another white clown who thinks all Asians like to sit around all day in extremely uncomfortable positions. Soon the lights went out, and for a short while, what was left of the sun illuminated the cell enough to read a book, not that I had one.

  Soon after lights out, the momentary quiet of the day was broken as men began to call out their windows into the prison yard in various different languages, setting off a Tower of Babel–like cacophony of communication, everyone trying to yell over each other to their friends in different parts of the prison. This was not an environment conducive for sleeping, to say the least. I heard a lot of Czech, a bit of German, and some Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were quite loud and see
med to annoy Dorj the most—he imitated them by making quacking noises and moving his hand like a duck’s bill (and that is what we referred to them as after I had taught him some English—the ducks). While Dorj was very irate over the Vietnamese (perhaps some sort of inter-Asian rivalry?), I was bothered the most by the loudest of them all—two Ukrainians who screamed mercilessly to each other with great vigor and power, one of them in a cell directly above ours. Even after everyone else had said their goodnights, these two continued to yell at ear-shattering volume to each other for quite some time, the man in the cell above me cursing loudly at the several inmates who yelled what was obviously the equivalent of “Shut the hell up so we can sleep!” in their respective languages. Even after his compatriot across the prison yard fell silent, my upstairs neighbor, Mr. Chatty Cathy of the Ukraine, would repeatedly call out until the other man would wearily answer. I wanted to strangle both of them.

  A good hour after lights out, the Ukrainians fell silent, and I lay on my bed in the dark, listening to Dorj snore. Right before I managed to fall asleep, I got up and grabbed a one-inch piece of red colored pencil lead that Dorj had left on the table, the only writing implement in the cell. I picked a smooth spot on the dirty wall beside my bed. I wrote my name and the day’s date in small block letters. Underneath that I made a single vertical mark.

  My first day in prison was over.

  chapter ten

  Pankrác Remand Prison sits south of the center of Prague, built in an area of the city known originally as the Pankrác plain. The word Pankrác is Czech for Pancras, the name of a citizen of Rome who was decapitated in 303 AD for refusing to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. The Catholic Church eventually canonized him, and Saint Pancras is often evoked, ironically enough in my case, against perjury and false witness, both of which I would fall victim to during my trial. However in the modern day Czech Republic, when most people think of the Pankrác neighborhood of Prague, they don’t think about the ancient baroque church for which the area was named. They think about the grim prison I was in, a place where well over a thousand heads have literally rolled and buckets upon buckets of blood have been spilled over the course of its considerable history. The word Pankrác is virtually synonymous with the prison in Prague, for it is the defining landmark of the area, with good reason. At the time of my incarceration, Pankrác was one-hundred-and-twenty-three years old, serving as a prison for that entire time, and the state of the facility showed it.