when the greetings were over I had a better look round the cell and in fact the cell was completely transformed from the way it was before for instance they’d taken up all the floor tiles and they’d just concreted it over as well as the double row of bars already at the window they’d added a new grille of special bars made of thick criss-cross cylinders I’d already heard about these new bars for these are the famous anti-saw bars for they’re made of a special alloy and inside they have a core another steel cylinder that turns on its own axis so even if you break through the bars with a saw when you’re halfway through you find the swivelling core and the hacksaw can’t get any grip on the swivelling core
so besides the double bars that were there already they’ve put an extra grille with these special bars and on top outside they’ve put an iron grille with such a tight mesh that you can’t even get your little finger through it and then the next day I realized that hardly any light came through and then I also saw that they’d replaced the washbasin it wasn’t ceramic any more but made of iron and steel completely embedded in a block of cement the same went for the stand-up toilet also embedded in a block of cement the little wardrobe was also made of steel and bricked in the armoured doors were kept locked for practically the whole day only the spy-hole was open and naturally the armoured doors were always locked at night
I spent the first night after my return in this cell but before I went to bed something else happened for in the cell opposite mine I had an old comrade that I knew well and who’d also been in prison for a long time and in the cell next to his I saw a face at the spy-hole a young comrade that I didn’t know he greeted me I greeted him then I talked for a bit to this old comrade and the new arrival was there at the spy-hole listening to us and wanting to talk as well but the old comrade would make strange faces at me whenever the new arrival tried to get me into conversation the other guy would make strange faces then he made a sign to me with his hand as if telling me to be quiet at the time I didn’t understand I understood there was something wrong but I didn’t understand what it was
47
The next morning I went down to the exercise yard and I ran at once to hug my old comrades so there were hugs and kisses for everybody and then they started talking about everything that had happened in my absence especially the arrival of these new comrades all of them very young and judged by the old comrades to be very childish and inexperienced they’d just been imprisoned they still didn’t know the way things worked in prison besides there were rumours that among them there were suspect individuals people who’d been arrested on the statements of pentiti and who during the judges’ interrogations had made total or partial admissions and so had backed up the pentiti even if they hadn’t given names or added anything else and then there were others who themselves had been pentiti and then had thought better of being pentiti and had retracted
I felt all the contradictions and tensions of this new situation because before the atmosphere of the prison had been an atmosphere of community for there were excellent fraternal relations and so on with these newcomers there were really big problems because many of these newcomers had weird histories they were the last generation of combatants all of them really young their biographies all very similar they’d had no experience of a movement also because by now the movement had been swept away which meant their experience had amounted to reading some document or other the clandestine distribution of some leaflet or other slogans on walls a banner pinned up on a fly-over and then maybe somebody killed on one of their very first actions and then arrest on the statements of some pentito
they were now living through a dreadful dispersal for they now no longer had any political project and their comrades who were left outside were now small groups trying only to escape hunted down with carabinieri and police on their trail all over Italy but even there in prison they held on stubbornly to their connecting bonds of clan and band that for them were like family ties I asked about this new comrade in the cell across from mine who the night before I’d been warned not to speak to and they told me he was one of those arrested a couple of weeks earlier I’d followed his story on television and his and his comrades’ arrest wounded and on the run through the woods and countryside these scenes of a large-scale manhunt with carabinieri pursuing in helicopters and on horseback after a robbery that went wrong
they captured them and what had happened was that this guy had been tortured and he’d talked under torture and had brought about the arrest of other comrades of his who were now there too in this same prison for the first week this guy had stayed in his cell he hadn’t gone down to the exercise yard his comrades tried to argue with the others and they spoke up for him saying he was tortured he named names but it’s us if anyone who should have a say for we’re in jail because he gave them our names but since he talked under torture and they tortured us too even though we didn’t talk we can still very well understand what he did so after a week of arguing it out a decision was made that the guy could come out to the exercise yard and it was all settled
in the exercise yard the atmosphere had changed there was no more football it had become a neurotic scene of endless discussions where every day there arose the problem of someone who was maybe an infiltrator a bastard and so on and as in all prisons there was this argument about grassing and torture that had become routine with anybody they captured then the comrades of that guy who’d been tortured and who’d talked told him it would be good for this experience of yours to be written about and passed round he took it as a duty and spent a week writing this document just when he was going to have others read it he said he’d had second thoughts that that draft wasn’t right that he had to do another one a few more days went by he did a second draft he circulated it among his comrades as far as his comrades were concerned it was fine
but then he decided to withdraw this second draft too and not to circulate it any further and then one day he came down to the exercise yard he called a meeting he came down to exercise with an extraordinary expression very tense very nervous he called all his comrades together the rest of us couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on what was happening he called his comrades together in a corner of the yard and he started talking to them however we saw that once he’d stopped talking there was no discussion they let him finish then they all walked away and they left him there alone without a word and they went away
we went and asked these others he’d talked to and we found out that he told his comrades that he’d never been tortured but had been threatened with torture which had scared him and he’d talked and named names without being tortured we were all flabbergasted this was really serious because we were in the middle of arguing about how to halt the spread of grassing and something like this turns up and there are guys who’ve ended up in prison because of this guy people who’ve really been tortured and haven’t talked and this guy here on the other hand was only threatened and he talked in other words there was hell to pay it was clear that the situation was out of hand
then the first thing they do is remove him from the dormitory cell and put him in a cell on his own in quarantine when the guy went down to the exercise yard nobody talked to him any more and we asked his comrades what they planned to do they said we’re conducting an enquiry into this business and since we’re part of an organization we’re also asking the other comrades in other prisons what they think as well as the comrades outside before we make a decision and in the meantime he stays as he is that was their answer then they started their investigation which consisted in sending out word of the problem to get a response from people in their organization who’re in other prisons or who’re outside in clandestinity through a complicated system of codes through letters and telegrams written in code
the guy kept to his cell he spent the whole time on his pallet reading the sports pages in the newspaper watching films on television like any other convict he spent all his time like this waiti
ng for the solution to his problem talking to him was pointless all he did was reiterate I’m not leaving here it’s right that the comrades who are in prison through my fault should have the right to judge me he’d say he was ready to die if this in some way would make up for what he’d done he talked about suicide and some of his more cynical comrades thought that this would be the best solution for everybody because it would save them the trouble of killing him and it would also mean more politically than them killing him
there was no doubt that what his comrades preferred was not to have to kill him they weren’t at all happy about having to face this problem and having to come up with this solution of having to kill him it was perfectly clear that if they did it it wasn’t in the least from conviction but because they were compelled they were compelled in the face of their comrades in the other prisons and outside from whom there began to arrive telegrams with decisions that were all unanimously for killing him and they were compelled in the face of the other combat groups who otherwise would accuse them at once of openly covering up for a pentito a bastard just at that time when the struggle against the spread of grassing is the main thing which means that if you come face to face with a pentito you have to nail him straight away without hesitation
I was ambivalent because on the one hand I was already in a psychological state of preparation for my eventual release I really believed that now there wasn’t much longer to go so it wasn’t the right time to be drawn into this whole business with any strength of feeling because anyway I’d be getting out pretty soon but also because the truth is that when I heard about this business I didn’t like it at all not because I despised him because I’d been scared at the prospect of torture I’m in no position to judge they never threatened me with being forced to drink gallons of salt water with being given electric shocks on the testicles with being systematically beaten with truncheons with being kept standing on one spot for days on end with being cut up with razor blades with having my fingers burned with lighters they never threatened me with these things and I know very well that these things are done
the weird thing was that this comrade went down to the exercise yard and without fail every day he went up to his comrades who ignored him they even avoided looking at him and he’d say to them well have you decided and they’d say no he’d go back to his corner then despite everything I decided to talk to him however the guy was completely out of his head I told him go away go leave here what are you doing here what are you waiting for for them to kill you he kind of smiled at me shook his head and then walked on so I walked beside him and went up and down the yard a couple of times beside him the yard had gone silent they were all watching us I was taking a risk it was a challenge but then two other old comrades joined me and walked along with me and the guy it’s not as if I thought it achieved anything it was a gesture a gesture that was all
maybe it achieved nothing in that situation of general lunacy but at least they didn’t kill the guy they gave him a thorough beating once and made him go into isolation and as far as he was concerned it all ended there but afterwards things like this happened one after the other things it was hard to make sense of any more or find solutions everything seemed crazy to me now everything seemed really crazy everything now was possible like your cell-mate maybe your best friend suddenly one day will crack you’ll come up from the exercise yard and he’s not there anymore and then you realize that he’s gone into isolation where a judge will be summoned and he’ll sing to him and he’ll sing your name too and for us this was the end of the solidarity that had been our great strength the only thing we’d had left
48
When I got the news of what happened to Gelso the winter was nearly over above the reinforced concrete pit of the yard there was a luminous blue sky the air was sweet when the wind blew you could smell the sea nearby down in the exercise yard we started wearing fewer clothes taking off our sweaters and shirts we lay down in the sun our white bodies breathed but then we looked at one another and on our pale necks our torsos our backs our arms we saw a mass of darker marks we were all covered in those fungus marks and we pretended not to look at one another not to see those marks that covered us all it was in that period that I got the last letter from outside it was from Malva and it was about Gelso
in the end with some pressure from the prison doctor who no longer had any doubts about Gelso’s unbalanced mental state his plea for release had been accepted he’d been put under house arrest because they’d come to believe that he couldn’t be treated in prison he only got worse there and so he’d gone home he’d gone back to live with his family and at first his friends his comrades people who knew him well who were also his childhood friends and who were fond of him went to visit him they tried to get close to him to help him any way they could but it all seemed futile it seemed that Gelso no longer recognized anyone he didn’t want to talk to anyone he didn’t want to see anyone
he’d asked his parents not to let anyone into his room and he himself never left his room he also had his food brought to his room and within a few days he turned the room into a cell he took out all the furniture he only wanted to keep a bedstead a table and a chair he always kept the window closed and the light on even during the day and he started fixing it up like a cell with the same things prisoners use cardboard boxes that had contained detergent or pasta hung on the walls to make do as shelves and then one evening he acted out an escape he tied the sheets together and dropped down from the window they found him in the yard with a sprained ankle
he spent a month without once leaving his room he lived like people in prison and he had no wish to see anyone and if he saw someone he didn’t recognize them he hardly even recognized his parents who of course were in despair they were at their wits’ end but they preferred to keep him there even like that since it meant that at least they could keep him out of a criminal asylum and a month later one day they found him hanged in his cell which was his bedroom one morning they found him there he’d hanged himself with the sheets tied together that he’d used to act out the escape that he’d always had on his mind and that even now had failed him
Malva’s letter ended by saying that we had to realize how things had changed now outside and that we had no idea how different things had become outside like everything outside the air had changed the atmosphere the mood how people talked we weren’t to imagine that things had stayed the same now the great fear had passed the bosses had regained their confidence they were flaunting their money again their Rolls Royces in the streets their furs their jewels at La Scala and now everybody including many old comrades thought only about working to make money forgetting everything that had happened before when they thought that maybe everything was going to change
in the evenings after supper there’s a strange silence we no longer call to one another from our cells you can see the blue rectangles of the spy-holes uniformly lit up by the reflections from the television sets you can only ever hear the same monotonous rise and fall of music mingled with voices the ceiling is patterned with the beams of the yellow floodlights cutting through the huge window grid pinning you to your bed you’re inside an enormous tin of sardines squashed pressed together you’re inside a sealed tin hermetically soldered shut what is there outside this tin who is there outside what are they doing what are they doing now why do they go on doing things doing all the things they’re doing without me where am I what am I which is my face now that all I have left is my face here crushed flattened squashed
I broke the mirror with a leg of the stool I threw all the pieces down the toilet I flushed it I flushed it five six seven times I kept on flushing it staring at the black hole of the toilet that black circle where the water rushed down I put my hand inside it then deeper down to feel the bottom I put my head in it I pushed my head down but it wouldn’t fit it wouldn’t go through the hole to come out somewhere else to see out to see where I am where you are when we were a thousand ten
thousand a hundred thousand it can’t be true that there’s no one outside it can’t be true that I feel nothing any more that I no longer hear any voice any sound any breath it can’t be true that outside there’s only a vast cemetery where you are can you hear me I can’t hear I can’t hear you I can’t hear anything any more suddenly the floodlights cut through the darkness they fill the cell with light
when the opaque morning light slid through the bars and the window grids things in the cell regained their usual banal ordinary appearance we began again to think and imagine how we could see how we could make ourselves seen outside that prison that was becoming a cemetery the place of greatest silence where no message no voice no sound passes in or out any longer we looked at the problem of how to regain communication with the outside world and we decided to launch new protests to break that deadly silence we began by beating the bars during the night we’d agree on the time for this at exercise we had no watches we had no alarm clocks but we could see what time it was on the television sets that were kept on all night
and so simultaneously in the middle of the night all of us together started beating on the bars with wooden ladles with broom handles with stools most of all with pots and pans and pandemonium broke out because everybody was beating harder and harder even people on the other floors who heard our battering started battering too along with us and in that closed place all the cells all the corridors reverberated in the night it was as if the prison would explode it was as if everything would come down but in the end when gradually the blows died away a great sadness came because we all realized that we were only beating for ourselves and for the guards because the prison was in the middle of the countryside lost in a great expanse of boundless emptiness with no one around who could hear us
The Unseen Page 24