9009/Chapter 6
As the line emerged from the jute-mill, 9009, who had placed himself at its head, was called out by Jennings and taken to the office of the captain of the yard. It was the same room in the centre of which he had stood on his first day, six months before, following the sputtering pen of the smiling clerk as it wrote his history in an entry of five spaces across the lined page of the book. He now sat on a bench by the door, watching and listening.
The four jute-mill guards were all there; three of them talked in an undertone about the captain’s flat-topped desk, but Jennings, though in the group, was silent, toying with the file-knife which lay on the desk. 9009 scanned the weapon; it held a fascination to him. He noted its weight. One could hack or stab with it. It would split a skull or sever a rib. And the red-striped convict had been able to get a file and manufacture this thing, and hide it till ready. A man could do many things under the noses of the guards. If he didn’t have his copper to look out for.
9009 drew his eyes away from the knife. In a corner of the room, tilted back in his chair, sat the trusty who, six months before, had taken his picture, with that of the garotter, now dead, and that of the murderer, whom he never saw. The man had not changed. His striped garments, tailored almost to dandiness, were carefully pressed; his patent-leather shoes shone; his linen collar was spotless; in his tie was a pearl scarf-pin. And his shiny black hair was parted foppishly in two bangs that descended upon the low and livid forehead.
A door swung open, and the captain entered. The trusty met him at the desk and began speaking.
He spoke in an undertone, deferentially but persuasively. As he bent his head, passing his tongue between his thin lips, his hazel eyes shifted, showing green light. He held a cigar between his long white fingers; now and then he flicked off the ashes nervously.
The blue-clad captain was shaking his head as he listened, and a frown, cutting the narrow space between his shaggy brows, told of worry. He was built on square lines, and his jaw was heavy, but he showed now no decision in his manner. It was the thin-faced trusty who was deciding through the persuasive hiss of his whispering. Fragments of sentences reached 9009. They were discussing the punishment of some convict, some convict other than himself.
“Dangerous man—these two breaks, remember—not broken,” in detached hissing bits from the trusty, whose eyes flickered green.
Then the subdued but big growling voice of the captain: “A long talk with him—talked right—willing to be a good dog—two years’ solitary—broken now.”
Again the detached hisses: “Yes, but—remember—bad one—more.”
The whispering sunk still lower; an assurance was coming into the trusty’s manner. The captain’s head dropped in assent. He had evidently yielded. But the perplexed frown was still on his forehead as now he turned to the guards. The trusty followed him. His white face was placid with satisfaction. A hot hate rose through 9009. So that was the way they did it; that was the way they sent a man to the solitary or to the whipping-post! Unconsciously, his eyes roved back to the knife, lying there, heavy, upon the desk.
One after the other, the jute-mill guards told their stories of the murder and of the shooting to the captain while he sat at his desk, listening closely. The trusty sat near him, making notes on a short hand pad, his sharp, white face thrust avidly forward. The captain listened in silence, drumming on the desk with his thick fingers. Once he picked up the file-knife and examined it. Occasionally a guard would halt at a sign from the trusty and would repeat some part of his statement. Each, as he finished, left the office, and finally it was Jennings’s turn to speak. He bent his face close to the captain’s and talked a long time. 9009 could not catch a word of what he said; but once he saw the captain look up and glance sharply toward him. Then Jennings straightened up. He had finished. He looked into the captain’s eyes. The captain nodded silently, a triple nod that told understanding, agreement, and promise. Jennings turned and went out. The case of 9009 had been decided.
Suddenly 9009 found himself on his feet, and a hoarse voice that he hardly recognised as his own was bellowing: “Say, don’t I get any say about this? don’t I get any say?”
The trusty, who was near the door, turned and threw back a glance half curious, half ironical, then went on softly, on the balls of his feet, into an inner office. The captain did not look up; he sat drumming the desk with his thick fingers. But the scowl had deepened between his shaggy brows, and his eyes had become very small. 9009 dropped back upon the bench; he gripped the edge and waited. And again, irresistibly, his eyes wandered to the file-knife, lying heavy on the desk.
“Collins, come over here.” The captain’s voice was quiet, but leaden. 9009 rose slowly and came near, the desk between them. The captain took the file-knife and locked it in a drawer above his knees. Then he sat regarding the convict in silence. As he looked into the sombre eyes of the captain and at the scowl between his shaggy brows, 9009 let his head go back, stiffening his thick neck, and his under-jaw thrust itself slightly forward. He could not help it; the movement was a pure reflex, as unconscious as the threat-grimace of a dog meeting the growl of another dog. The captain watched the change, searching the hard face before him. Then he spoke, slowly, uttering each word with great distinctness.
“You watched Japanese Tommy kill Thurston this afternoon, and you didn’t call a guard nor make a signal.” He paused. A twitch of protest rose from 9009’s feet along his whole body. But it had not time to find voice; the captain was speaking again, with his heavy pounding inflection: “And a month ago you heard Smith and Boone saw their bars; you heard ’em for weeks—and you said nothing.”
9009 sickened. He had the sensation as of a great net which had fallen about him, over his head, around his arms. They had known this all the time! They had known it and had kept it all this time waiting for their good chance. He continued staring at the captain, eye to eye, silently, but a little haze of sweat, like the film on the window-pane of a heated room, was coming upon his forehead.
“Wilson!” the captain called out without moving.
The trusty came from the inner office. His tongue passed between his thin lips, catlike. “Get me number eight key,” said the captain.
“I know you like a book,” the captain went on, almost indifferently to 9009; “I’ve handled the likes of you for years, and”—he paused thoughtfully—“I generally manage to break you fellows.” He glanced up sharply at 9009 and without looking took a heavy key from Wilson who had come with it behind him; then went on, pointing at the key with his index finger. “You come here thinkin’ you were bigger than the guards; and we’ve known you from the start, and watched you. You’re the kind that generally manage to lose your copper”—9009 went yellow. The captain rose and stood still a moment. ‘“You ought to lose it for this affair,” he went on—9009 swallowed hard—“but I’m going to give you one more chance; I’ll give you a taste of what we have for you bad men.” He weighed upon the last three words heavily, with ponderous sarcasm, but this was lost on 9009. He was taking a big gulp of relief. “Come on,” said the captain.
They went, without a word, across the yard, to one of the cell-houses, and down a flight of stairs, to the basement. The captain stopped before a heavy door of oak, studded with spikes, and signed to a trusty who met him there. The man swung open the outer door of oak, and then an inner door of smooth steel. 9009 entered. The door creaked shut behind him; the outer door slammed; he heard a bolt fall. And there was no longer sound or sight.
He stood on a steel floor, in darkness. This darkness was absolute. It seemed to have weight, to press down upon him. It smothered. And there was no sound. It was as though he were buried deeply with tons and tons of silent earth upon him. He stood still a long moment, while this feeling enwrapped him slowly; then he stepped forward on tiptoe, reaching with hands before him, till he touched a wall. It was of steel, and he ran his fingers over rivets. Face to this wall, he moved to the right, struck a corner, then another wall; another corner, another wall; another corner; another wall; a fourth corner, and the wall from which he had started. But missing his tale, he went about a fifth corner, counting it as the fourth, felt a vague sense of mistake, and then, suddenly, a dizziness made him sway on his legs. He had lost his bearings; it was as if, about a pivot upon which he stood, the whole world had revolved several times.
Controlling the sickness within him, he went around the cell several times, eyes shut, groping carefully; and at last, like a blessing, there came to his finger-tips the feel of the joining of the door-edge; and the world, swinging, readjusted itself; and again, in his head, like a reassurance, he held the plan of the prison. Preserving this carefully, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled over the floor. It stretched, smooth, without a wrinkle, between the four smooth walls; there was on it nothing, not a stool, not a blanket—nothing.
He stood up in the centre. There oozed to him not a drop of light; above his head, cold eddies of air passed like vague beings. A desire was growing within him—a desire to beat upon the floor and walls, to hammer and to shout.
To resist it, he sat upon the floor; it was cold and very hard. He tried to lie down and relax himself to patience. He began to wonder how long he had been here. He did not know if it was an hour or a minute.
He tried talking to himself. A timidity, a diffidence overwhelmed him as he heard this voice, sounding strange to him. He closed his lips. But in a little while he heard himself again speaking aloud, and he was cursing. According to the legends of prison life, this is a sign of coming insanity; so, crouching in the centre of the walled-in darkness, he occupied his mind by counting his copper.
He reduced to days his sentence; then to days his copper; then to days his sentence minus his copper; then to days his sentence minus his copper minus the days already served. He did this many times, by different processes.
But insensibly he passed from this, and a vision came to him. As he crouched here in the centre of this cubical compressed blackness, he saw suddenly the captain’s flat-topped desk, and the knife upon it. He saw this sharply—its gray colour, spotted with brown stain, its heavy back, with the file-rasp still upon it, the keen blade, the needle-like point; he could feel its weight, its well-balanced weight, that admitted of cracking a skull or carving out a rib.
Then he saw the red-striped convict spring upon the garotter leap-frog fashion and entwine his legs about his neck while the knife went up and down with a pumping movement. He saw his nostrils, breathing joy as he stabbed, stabbed again, stabbed, stabbed; his eyes blazing joy. And he saw him lying on his back, his legs still entwined, looking up with his white face, now full of peace and of satiety———
When, the next morning after breakfast, the captain of the yard saw 9009 emerge from the dungeon, he noted that the convict’s eyes were bloodshot, and that heavy lines had sprung, overnight, from the ends of the nostrils to the corners of the mouth.