suddenly all round the landing behind the carabinieri who hemmed me in I saw faces lots of faces all the faces of my comrades staring at me all the faces had the same expression eyes staring they said nothing no sign of greeting no gesture they all stared straight at me expressionless then a wrench on my wrist and they pulled me up another flight of stairs I slipped forward I was falling the carabiniere beside me caught my elbow but the sub-machine gun slung over his shoulder slipped down his arm and ended up between my legs without looking the one in front gave another tug at the chain and I lurched forward and the carabiniere holding on to me fell on top of me and so did all of those coming behind us in a heap on the stairs with the chain twisted round our arms and legs
finally we got to the top we came out into a big ward with patients in beds in a row along the white walls the resounding tread of the carabinieri the rattling of the chain the curt orders of the escort leader the protests of the doctors and the patients’ relatives through that muddle I saw my mother and my brother coming towards me in tears my father was already dead when later they took me back in the armoured van the escort leader heaved a sigh of relief as he banged shut the door of the van and while we were waiting for the engine to heat up I saw him through the grating taking a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide out of his bag he poured a few drops on a wad of cotton wool and started rubbing it hard on his fingers and his hands he rubbed them for a long time and then we set off again for the special
Part Four
38
After the revolt in the special after they’d put us in those empty cells on the ground floor of the wrecked prison there was no more mass brutality and in every dormitory cell the debates began about what had happened of course the positions people took differed a lot but the fiercest debates developed as time passed because at first everyone was taken up with licking their wounds because the ill-effects of the beatings were starting to hit people and the atmosphere was more like a field hospital than anything else by now they’d started letting us have newspapers and what you read in the newspapers was absurd really absurd not a word of it was true it was as if nothing had happened all the news was distorted and it was utter lies to boot
as far as the press was concerned the special services operation had gone without a hitch with no bloodshed whatsoever the impression was that they’d boxed a few ears and everything had been resolved as peacefully as anything we started to demand visits from our relatives which was the only way of breaking this press blackout on what had really happened in the end they let us have a few token visits lasting no more than minutes with the glass screen in the middle what this achieved was that we managed to show ourselves to our relatives for a few minutes behind the screens so that our relatives could see the state we were in there wasn’t even any need to speak to convey how things were how things had gone
since the only things that we had were the clothes that were on our backs when the special services burst in our relatives saw us in these blood-covered clothes with our plaster-casts our wounds our cuts our injuries and so on and this was enough in other words with these visits we were able to make a crack in the blackout wall that was meant to blank out the whole business especially since we’d naturally made sure of visits for those comrades who were most mangled up in the worst physical condition which meant the people who’d been brutalized most then the relatives in their turn made a real effort trying to pass on this news to the press
the very first days were extremely hard just at the level of basic survival in these bare cells but gradually we got ourselves together to cope with living even in those conditions and we even launched another protest with the aim of getting out of those bestial conditions in which we were reduced to living ten to a cell and instead of being nipped in the bud as it could easily have been in those conditions this protest succeeded in so far as after the very first days during which even exercise time had been abolished the administration had to allow us exercise time separating us into groups and letting us have one hour of exercise
the revolt was a blaze that had burned up all the strength that we’d accumulated it had been consumed by the revolt so now what we had to do was recover step by step to regain everything we’d lost and naturally the first steps were those that would secure us greater control over our lives inside the prison control over our lives means a lot of things it means for instance demanding to have visits again because visits are our links with the outside world it means demanding to have exercise time again because apart from it being physically necessary to go out into the fresh air at least an hour or two every day exercise time also means renewing internal communication between comrades
since we’d all been put on the ground floor some communication was possible for even if the armoured doors were locked the spy-holes were open so by shouting into the corridors through the spy-holes people exchanged information the administration had expressly abolished the working prisoners’ role to stop us from circulating information and discussion about what to do now there were only the guards about in the corridors but with shouting and with the notes that people managed to pass from cell to cell collective discussion was possible then once exercise time was restored everything became much easier
some time later they allowed us to shave we could do it with a plastic razor they gave us each time and that we had to hand back immediately afterwards we could only use ordinary soap and we had no hand mirrors and so we shaved one another in turn and in my cell at that time there was a comrade who had both his hands in plaster and who could do nothing at all and at night before going to bed we had to take off his shoes his trousers his sweater and dress him again in the morning we had to put his food in his mouth when he ate we had to wash him clean him and wipe his bum when he had a shit we had to do everything for him and all the time he’d be saying thank you comrade thank you comrades
relationships with the guards have changed for in the rare moments when they could get away from under the noses of the NCOs the sergeants and the warrant-officers who were always in the corridor at least one of them whenever there was no NCO about for a minute the guards would talk to us saying over and over again that they hadn’t been the ones who’d done the beatings that they hadn’t been there that they’d had no part in that blood-bath and that in fact they totally disagreed with what had happened and they even said all the guards who’d taken part in that bloodbath had all been transferred
but of course this wasn’t true at all and there were a number of occasions when comrades thought they could identify some of the guards who were in the corridor on duty and they were sure that they’d been among the guards who’d beaten us up and there were also some tense moments every so often a row would break out when somebody thought he could identify one of the guys who’d beaten us up because then the ones who’d had the worst of it got really mad and then there’d be serious threats made and that kind of thing it’s inevitable one day a comrade who was certain he’d identified one of the guy’s who’d beaten him up told him just wait one day I’m coming to get you even if you hide under the ground and I’ll cut your head off
the sergeant who turned up in the corridor just then reacted by transferring the guard who’d been threatened somewhere else right away so as to make things simmer down afterwards however they remembered this business of the threats because later when all these comrades who’d threatened the guards during that time when all these comrades came to be transferred to another prison weeks and months later then they were badly beaten up all over again because that’s how things always work in prison retaliation isn’t always immediate things vary from moment to moment according to who’s got the upper hand it can maybe happen that they’ll make you pay for things even many months later
the guards reckon that sometimes there’s no need to settle scores by beating somebody up right away in the heat of the moment because there’d be an immediate response in solidarity from all the other prisone
rs and then there’d be havoc it’s much more convenient for them to mark the name in the black book and later on when it’s time for a transfer and a guy’s taken out of his cell because he’s setting out for a different destination and he won’t go back to that prison for at least a good while then they beat him up that’s it things like this also happened during that period but the general mood was very good the morale of all the comrades was very high and that was a proof of the great solidarity that existed between all the comrades over and above the different political positions
39
At any rate during the first days we spent in these bare cells after the revolt all crammed together in those conditions the very first things to be done were to see to the treatment of our injuries to look after the comrades who were in a bad way and most of all we were still very afraid of another show of brutality from the guards because we’d started to fight back again and so the comrades put their minds to finding at least some minimum of weapons for self-defence which amounted to getting hold of some blunt instruments at least which wasn’t very easy because they’d left nothing in the cells they’d left nothing at all not even stools or tables nothing
and so the first things to be seized on were the windows which were literally dismantled under the guards’ very eyes and the iron bars were pulled out of these windows and in those first days even though they saw all this not only did the guards not interfere when they saw what was being done but they no longer dared even to come into the cells in other words the head count the entry of a group of guards into the cells to count the prisoners was suspended for the count the guards made do with opening the armoured door and doing the count through the barred gate but they were perfectly aware that the weaponry was there in the cells because they saw that the windows had been dismantled
but then when they allowed us to have our exercise time again naturally people thought that this was a move to get the cells emptied and that during the exercise period the guards would go inside and clear the cells of all those bars and so we were left with the dilemma whether to go to exercise and leave the cells unattended allowing the guards to go in and disarm us or whether we should choose to forego exercise which most of all meant giving up our means of communication inside the prison but there was no doubt that what mattered most was communication and just as we’d anticipated no sooner had they given it back to us than the guards took advantage of the exercise period to dash into the cells and carry out a general search confiscating all our weaponry the bars and everything else
from that moment there was pressure from the comrades pressure to get out of those conditions though in those conditions there weren’t many things to be done the least constructive course given the conditions was to take more guards hostage seeing the way things had turned out earlier for if these guys had come in even when we had nineteen guards hostage it meant they were willing to fight it out on that ground on the assumption even that some people would die our conditions now were very harsh and we absolutely had to get out of them and the only way to get out of them was to fight but it had to be a fight that got somewhere and the conditions we were in meant we had to invent an altogether novel way of fighting
we had to find a way of fighting with the only weapons we had available and in the first place we had to invent potential weapons since we had nothing naturally the shopping orders had been done away with every means of buying food had been done away with the food they gave out was the prison food a reddish liquid mess that was handed out at mid-day and in the evening with plastic containers and plastic spoons and then pressure was started with the demand to be allowed to buy at least some items of food stuff you could eat without cooking food like milk biscuits fruit and that kind of stuff because there was still no way these guys would let us have our primus stoves and saucepans and so on
we succeeded in gaining the right to buy these things and the chance to buy food to order gave us our foothold for this protest because now we had the option of not eating the prison food and so the prison food became our weapon in this struggle because every day litres and litres of this red coloured mess were piling up in the cells and then suddenly at a prearranged time all of us together poured the entire mess into the corridor a real river of sickening red-coloured liquid mess that was poured back out of all the cells into the corridor and this became what was known as bacteriological warfare
the guards who were in the corridor had been virtually doubled because they had to be able to maintain their surveillance of us every single minute of the day so there were always a lot of guards in the corridor they were always huddled together in big groups we were on the ground floor which wasn’t even well ventilated and so all that sickening mess poured into the corridor naturally produced a certain unpleasantness for the guards and being in the corridor had become virtually unbearable so the guards came up with the obvious solution which was to bring in the working prisoners from the special to clean out the corridor but the working prisoners refused of course out of solidarity with our struggle saying we’re not going to clean up this is a protest we’re no scabs and we’re not going to go against a protest by other prisoners
the working prisoners refused to clean all this mess out of the corridor it stayed there and every day there was more and more of it and we started flinging out not just the mess of broth but all kinds of rubbish as well that accumulated there and people also started shitting in plastic bags and paper bags or in newspapers and flinging them out into the corridor through the spy-holes the war we were waging was bacteriological warfare in earnest because with this mountain of dirt and rubbish and excrement that was building up out in the corridor from day to day there was now a real risk of disease and epidemic there was the risk of viral hepatitis and that sort of thing we were running the risk but so were they
then the guards turned to the working prisoners in the judicial prison instead of those in the special clearly they went and picked out the worst elements from among the working prisoners in the judicial they went and picked out the worst elements and all the informers the spies in the service of the prison administration and they brought them into our corridor to clean it out then no sooner had they arrived than all the comrades shouted insults from inside the cells from behind the spy-holes we shouted threats saying if you’re here cleaning this block the day they move us out of these conditions you’ll pay for it and you’ll pay dearly this threat was enough for the lot of them took to their heels at once and then the guards found themselves back where they started
by now the situation had become pretty rough it had become intolerable because the guards couldn’t lower themselves to the same level as the people who clean the corridors with their own hands because it wasn’t their duty it wasn’t their job and for them to start cleaning meant giving in while on the other hand the fact was that too much shit was building up in the corridor and they were really in danger of catching some infection or other like hepatitis there was the real danger of an outbreak an epidemic by now they were having to go round with handkerchiefs over their faces in the corridor they had handkerchiefs over their faces they came and opened your cell with handkerchiefs over their faces
since there was no way out of it the ministry decided it had to resolve the situation by sending an outside cleaning firm into the prison they took out a contract and they paid the top rate to an outside firm a company that operates in exactly the same way any firm working in the prison operates a construction firm or a firm of fitters an electrical firm when there are repairs to be done and this was a firm of cleaners and when the firm arrived the guards suddenly closed all the spy-holes of the armoured doors and within a couple of hours these contract workers with all their cleaning equipment and disinfectants had cleaned away the whole lot
40
And so the outcome was the build-up of these cycles where we would fill up the corridor with shit and they would bring in the cleaning firm to clean it out again and so i
t went on but in the end they allowed us to have visits as a way of relaxing the tension a bit the prison administrators or rather the ministry because with the way things were it was the ministry that made the direct decisions they allowed us to have one visit a month with the visitors behind a glass screen and so China turned up one visiting hour she turned up without them giving me any notice she was coming they called me and they took me into the visiting room with the glass screens in it it was the first time I’d seen that room they’d rebuilt it completely and China was already there waiting for me she was there sitting behind the screen when I went in
there was an intercom under the screen behind a little square grille I bent down to speak into it but across from me China signalled that she couldn’t hear anything she also tried to speak into the intercom on her side but I couldn’t hear her either I punched the grille a couple of times but it made no difference it was clear that they’d cut off the intercoms they’d cut them off deliberately so that to make ourselves heard we needed to speak very loudly we almost had to shout and so the guards could hear everything the situation was impossible China had travelled a thousand kilometres to come and see me and she had to travel another thousand to get home and we couldn’t even talk to one another we had to shout to make ourselves heard
she looked smaller and thinner she was dressed in smart clothes not as I’d remembered her I’d never seen her like this she was wearing a skirt and a smart jacket with big padded shoulders which must have been the current fashion she’d had her hair cut she’d had it cut short it was over a month since I’d seen her she was wearing little earrings and a little wrist watch she who’d never worn a watch she was sitting there on a block of concrete a concrete cube that was supposed to be a stool the glass was thick it was double thickness and it was dirty it was virtually opaque and had a greenish tinge through it China’s face was a bit distorted and I shifted around this way and that to try and get a better view of her in the room there were four visiting positions with screens like the cashier’s windows in a bank and the guards were in a room just behind us looking at us through a square opening in the wall
The Unseen Page 20