by P. J. Fox
He and Aros exchanged a look: what should they do now?
No course of action immediately suggested itself to either man, or to the others that had sidled up to join them. Palawan Prison had no apparent program of activities, even forced labor. Each man’s time was his own. Guards patrolled the stockade walls, but clearly preferred not to set foot inside the actual enclosure unless circumstances compelled them to. Kisten remembered thinking, incongruously, this isn’t so bad. No one was torturing him.
Remembering this moment, later, he was astonished at how naïve he’d been.
“I think,” he said finally, “that we should make a circuit and acquaint ourselves with our new home.”
“You talk kind of affectedly,” said Kareem. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“It’s probably because Bronte isn’t his first language,” said Ali self-importantly. As always, his need to be the expert precluded actual curiosity. And for once, Kisten was grateful. Ali was convinced that he had Kisten figured out, and had written him a rather colorful biography. Kisten knew, because Ali had shared it with him on the train. His was an attitude of, allow me to amaze you with my cleverness at having uncovered the sordid truth. Kisten had listened impassively and let Ali draw his own conclusions about what that meant.
Kisten was, or so Ali informed him, undoubtedly the son of a soldier and a whore. How his father would thrill to that information, thought Kisten wryly. Being ambitious but clearly having no connections or funds to speak of, he’d enlisted in the navy and was now copying the mannerisms of his betters. Which, Ali pointed out fondly, he didn’t do all that well. “You need to tone down the sour worldview and stiff upper lip.”
Aros glanced around, his eyes lingering on the dead line. “We wouldn’t want our hosts to think we’re congregating in strange groups,” he said darkly. It was decided that, in view of their wanting to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, Kisten and Aros would tour the grounds while Ali, Walid and Kareem stayed behind and hopefully got into conversation with the locals. By dividing their energies between different targets rather than all focusing on one, they as a group could learn more than if they’d all stayed together.
Near the gate, the situation in the camp didn’t seem so bad. But as Kisten penetrated further into the enclosure he began to see things that literally stopped his breath. Aros, too, stared about him in quiet horror. To call the prisoners’ situation wretched would be to commit a terrible injustice of understatement. Those who’d arrived first and, presumably, been imprisoned the longest had made rude shelters from construction debris. Left over, Kisten presumed, from building the stockade. Simple A-frames for the most part, they looked like a series of fox dens and were each barely large enough to hold a man.
Mostly the shelters were empty this time of day, but here and there a matted head or a near-skeletal hand protruded.
Once the construction debris ran out, men began burrowing into the ground. They couldn’t dig too deeply, Kisten was informed by one man who’d been at Palawan for six months, otherwise they’d be accused of trying to escape and shot. It seemed that many men had tried to escape by digging under the stockade. None successfully, as the warden owned bloodhounds.
Kisten and Aros walked the narrow track that had been left by common consent between lines of camps. A few tried to escape the sun by covering themselves with what ragged cloth they had: squares of soiled blanket, strips of sailcloth. Other, less identifiable things. Those who were too sick, or simply too hot to move lay curled up in shallow ditches that looked like graves. Vermin swarmed over them, but they didn’t seem to care. Several, he saw with mounting horror, were prone in puddles of their own filth. On others, it had dried to an evil crust. Many were so skeletally thin that they couldn’t possibly have still been alive.
And then a hand twitched and he realized that they were. They were.
He stopped. This was Hell. He put a hand over his mouth. The stench, too, was appalling. Kisten, who thought he’d been exposed to a great deal of revolting things, had never smelled anything like it—had never imagined that such a combination of smells could exist.
Someone was watching them. Kisten could feel it. Slowly, he turned.
It was a ghost, sitting cross-legged in the dust. He had to be alive, because he was sitting upright. His eyes glittered from deep within their sockets. He had the hollowed out look of a long embalmed corpse, his skin molded flat against his bones. Thin wisps of hair still clung to a skull in which every plane jutted out in sharp detail. A jacket that had once been khaki hung on his emaciated frame. Its shoulders still bore the three gold rosettes of a captain.
“Greetings,” he said calmly. He introduced himself as Asif Ja Mirza, from Sindh, lately of the 12th Frontier Force Regiment. Kisten gave his mother’s maiden name, which was Faraj.
Asif struggled upright, revealing the full extent of his skeletal condition. Kisten waited. He offered no assistance, for which the other man seemed grateful. He was still a soldier.
He led them on the second leg of their tour. That he’d picked Kisten and Aros out as newcomers was hardly surprising. In comparison to the other inmates, they were both clean and well fed.
“Be careful,” warned Asif quietly, his reedy voice still forceful. “There are those here who’d rape their own grandmothers and stab them with their own knitting needles.” And probably had, thought Kisten, seeing the glint in some men’s eyes. “You’ll want to watch out, at first. There’s not enough clothes to go around”—he indicated his own shirtless state with a half embarrassed wave of the hand—”so some will help themselves to whatever, in their minds, you don’t need.” And they wouldn’t, Kisten gathered, balk at killing to do so.
He almost said that it sounded like his first year at Ceridou, but the joke died on his lips.
A single creek supplied water for the entire prison population. It trickled through the center of the enclosure, from east end to west, and Asif proposed to show it to them. Unfortunately, he explained as he shuffled along, the cook house had been built along the east wall on the other side of the stockade and all manner of offal was pitched into its waters. Further up the creek from the cook house was the permanent camp of those men acting as guards. Almost 3,500 of them, stretched out along the banks of the creek where they drank, bathed, washed their clothes, pissed and shat. The creek was too sluggish to cleanse itself, so the filth just stagnated. Kisten could smell it before he could see it, a half-abattoir, half-chamber pot aroma that coated the back of his throat.
The ground within the enclosure was mostly flat; what structures there were not tall enough to act as camouflage. What had hidden the ghastly sight from view was the fact that the ground dipped into a sort of swale, which in the absence of proper drainage had filled with sewage and become a swamp. Kisten guessed it to be about four acres square, and through its heart cut a ribbon of undulating, yellow-brown sludge.
“That,” said Asif, almost cheerfully, “is our drinking water.”
EIGHTEEN
Time passed.
During one week, the only event of note was that Kisten finally saw himself in a mirror. He’d found the precious article when he’d volunteered for burial detail, tucked into the waistband of what had once been a native soldier. He resembled dried kindling more than a human being, and he weighed next to nothing. Kisten had been anxious for a turn at the burial detail, because it meant leaving the compound. He wanted a chance to survey their surroundings, and to breathe fresh air.
Even if escape wasn’t possible, yet, preparedness was. So for three mornings in a row, he’d helped to carry out the dead and bury them in the long trenches that stretched behind the stockade. It was late summer, and one man died every eleven minutes. In the winter, he’d been told, things got better: one man died every twenty-two minutes. He’d leaned on his shovel and he’d stared across the rolling fields and wondered when help would come.
He opened his eyes, no longer seeing the ocean of green alfalfa but
the huddled forms of a thousand starving men. Some moved about; most didn’t. His own campmates were conserving their strength. Asif, who’d joined them, had donated his prized piece of canvas to the creation of a sort of sun shade and he lay under it now, along with Walid and Kareem. Ali stared at nothing. Kisten hadn’t heard Ali laugh in a long time. Aros sat next to him, cross-legged, his eyes alert as he counted the guards that ranged along the top of the stockade.
“A hundred and eighty-six today,” he commented.
“I know,” said Kisten. He’d just finished counting the grim-faced men himself. Sometimes there was a handful more, sometimes a handful less; it depended on the general health of the camp. They scarcely looked better fed than he was, and there were rumors of cholera.
“There’s a hundred and ten at night,” he added.
“And thirty-eight along the outer perimeter?”
The outer perimeter was enormous, enclosing easily another fifty acres. Its intent was to discourage tunneling but, Kisten noted, the men were spread too thin to do much good. They relied on fear and physical weakness and, most of all, on the bloodhounds that Kisten sometimes heard baying in the night. “That’s what I counted,” he confirmed, “but there could be more.” Men he hadn’t seen, when he’d been on burial detail. A long time ago now.
A man he didn’t recognize shuffled past.
“Are you convinced that your brother is coming—that he even knows where to start looking?” Aros spoke in low tones. Kisten had told Aros something of his thoughts on the subject of escape, but no one else. Aros paused. “He might be dead,” Aros added finally.
“No.” Kisten shook his head slightly, the barest movement. “I’d know.”
Aros looked away. He didn’t believe him.
A drum began to beat atop the western wall. It was their one activity of the day: roll call. Judging by the position of the sun, it commenced at ten o’clock in the morning. Roll call was also when the men received their rations, so interest in attendance was high. Those able to stand did so, and began to form into groups. Only those able to reach the food were served it, a program which ensured that death came quickly to the sick. But there was so little food to be had that sharing was impossible.
For the purposes of organization, the forty or so thousand men currently residing in the enclosure had been divided up into squadrons of 270 prisoners each. Each squadron was assigned a number—Kisten was in 137—and further divided up into three groups of ninety. Every ninety selected, from within its ranks, a leader. The leader of their ninety was Aros.
At the signal, the men formed up as best they could in the narrow paths separating the shanties, blanket tents and dugouts. A few minutes, or sometimes half an hour later, a group of rebel scum masquerading as sergeants would appear. Some of them belonged to the Rebel Coalition; some belonged to the Society of the Righteous. And some were just thugs.
They’d stroll up and down the lines, examining the men at their leisure while they remained upright in the scorching heat. If the count was less than it’d been the morning before, the leader of the deficient ninety was called to account. Sometimes a number of men were too ill to stand up; sometimes, they’d died. Proving this necessitated showing the rebel sergeant where they were and, occasionally, starting the whole count over again. The bodies of the dead were carried to the west gate and left in a pile beside it, until the ration wagon could haul them to the burial ground. They couldn’t parole enough men for burial detail to carry them all, not anymore.
It was also the leader of the ninety’s duty to write the name and other particulars of the deceased on a piece of card and attach it to his wrist. Rank, regiment if he knew it, place of birth. Most men didn’t talk much about their previous lives.
Since, as Asif had long ago observed, there was a shortage of clothes, the bodies were stripped before burial. It seemed indecent, at first, but Kisten got used to the idea. These men didn’t need their clothes, where they’d gone. Those still living, on the other hand, had to think of winter. Dharavi was tropical, but this far north and this far into the mountains, the weather would turn brutal. Sometimes, Kisten caught himself staring into the distance, as if hoping to catch the first breath of cooler air. As if he could somehow fight it off.
The count was usually concluded by noon, and this was when the rations were distributed.
The cook house having proved unequal to its task some time ago, what food there was came raw. The men were on their own as far as preparations, a situation that created its own set of difficulties. Kisten stood beside Aros as the ration wagon rolled to a stop in front of them. A sour-faced man spread a blanket on the ground and on it placed three small piles of food: one pile for every thirty men within their division of ninety. At least, those able to stand. There was, Kisten saw with interest, bread today. In the beginning, there had often been bread. Now, there was sometimes bread but more often than not a handful of cornmeal.
Aros gathered up the food in the blanket and carried it back “home” to their spot in the enclosure. No man, except the most amoral or desperate, encroached on another man’s camp. There was little enough humanity left to them; most of them still treasured it.
When they returned, the other men were waiting for them in a large, sad looking group. Kisten helped Aros spread the blanket on the ground and begin the laborious process of apportioning the food into individual servings. Eighty-something pairs of eyes watched them intently. “Lieutenant,” called one, pointing to a cube of bread, “that piece is smaller than the one next to it.” Aros remedied the error and moved on. The men had nothing else to do, and their lives were involved. Finally, after the bread was divvied up to everyone’s satisfaction, the same procedure was repeated with the bacon.
Aros and Kisten served themselves last. Eighty-six portions: four men had died in the night. One of them had been Kareem.
Aros handed Kisten his rations, and Kisten wrapped them in a piece of cotton that he’d ripped from the tail of his shirt and made into a sort of handkerchief. He knew that Kisten had wanted to be on the burial detail, but had been refused. “The True Faith,” he began slowly, “teaches that we shouldn’t mark a man’s grave, lest we start worshipping it out of grief.”
Kisten didn’t respond.
“Do you believe in the True Faith?” asked Aros.
“What I believe,” said Kisten coldly, “is none of your concern.”
Aros shrugged. “Fine, then. Let’s go.”
There was awhile yet before they could eat; there was something they had to do first. Ali had taken to ironically calling the supply of fuel they were given for cooking a “toothpick.” Kisten thought that the short, louse-ridden splinters were quite a bit smaller than toothpicks. If two men combined their portions, they could usually get enough of a fire going to boil a cup of water by tucking the wood in a small gap between two bricks and placing the cup on top. The bricks had been a godsend, discovered when one of the more enterprising of the other prisoners had tried to dig a well. He’d been shot for his efforts—accused of attempting to escape, which perhaps he was—but the guards hadn’t bothered to confiscate his prize.
Partially cooked mush was disgusting but coarse, unbolted cornmeal could kill. Kisten hadn’t known that, of course; he’d never been inside his own kitchen and had only the foggiest notion of where food came from. But a few weeks prior, there had been an epidemic the likes of which Kisten had never even imagined. Dysentery swept the camp and men, their stomachs and intestines aggravated by thousands of tiny cuts from trying to eat the sand-like substance, began to shit blood. Fever, nausea, vomiting…and blood. So much blood.
After that, the stronger inmates had taken to foraging for fuel on their own.
Aros and Kisten reached the edge of the swamp. They were met by several other men, all there for the same purpose. Wordlessly, they began to undress. Even the most talkative fellows had little to say to each other, these days. Kisten removed his uniform jacket and, folding it carefully, laid it dow
n in the dust. Old, ingrained habits died hard and the other men were doing the same. In the navy, Kisten had learned to wash, dry and iron his various uniform components, too. He unbuttoned his shirt, which had once been white but was now gray, and folded it as well. He’d bartered his undershirt for an awl so he could punch more holes in his belt; even so, his trousers hung loose on his hips. He’d never been a fat man but he’d never been thin, either. He looked down. His pelvic bones jutted alarmingly, and thin depressions were forming between his ribs.
They waded in.
There was a time when he wouldn’t have done it. Now, he didn’t even care. He was impervious to the smell, impervious to the feel of the sludge creeping up his thighs and clinging to his balls. He’d never suffered from excessive modesty, but never had he been so profoundly disinterested in who saw him naked or what they thought of the experience.
Growing up, Kisten had always been fastidious. Fussy, even. As an adult, he’d washed with the most expensive soap, worn the most expensive cologne, gotten his nails manicured and had women compliment him on his hair and skin. Disguising his vanity seemed, to him, to reek of false modesty. He was good-looking; women loved him. Why not enjoy himself?
He plunged his arms into the muck until he was up in it to his armpits, his nose inches from its surface, and felt around for wood. There was quite a bit of it down there, cast offs from when the logs of the stockade had been planed into shape. It was, thus, mostly pitch pine and pitch pine burned fast and hot. He pulled up a piece and, wading over to the bank, laid it down. Later, after he’d reached the end of his endurance, he’d use the flat of their group’s shared knife like a strigil and scrape off as much of the muck as he could.
He hoped it would rain, soon; he’d like to stand under the rain and feel it running over his skin. There was a time…his lip quirked into a crooked half smile that he’d begun to develop. They’d been here since mid-spring and fall was coming on. Just a few months, but it could have been his whole life. Everything else had begun to feel like a dream.