The collected stories (19 page)

(h) Laughter. Why in the world are prisoners allowed to laugh and shriek? A more somber note could be struck if each laugh were awarded five of the best. Experience has shown a yard of bamboo to be most useful for this.

(i) The bindery is a shambles, a positive disgrace. We would like to see those glue pots kept in better order.

(j) The inspections are a joke.

The above are noted in a spirit of cooperation, with the following in mind: a good prison is a clean one; no one will accuse the warder of being soft because he wants to run 'a tight ship.' Skimping will not do. The habits of youth are carried into middle age; there is a definite slouch about this place.

(signed) /. Faust

23 Nov. Have decided not to send the above to Goldpork as he may take it amiss and think I am trying to tell him how to do his job. I could send him memos until I was blue in the face and he would not pay any attention to me. When I am out of here he will have a lot of questions to answer. I shall keep my memo safe. I have submitted my request to see the minister of internal affairs when he makes his tour of this prison. I'll give him an earful!

SINNING WITH ANNIE

24 Nov. Why didn't I think of this before? The guard's words were, 'No books, no papers, no pencils, no writing tablets.' In my haste a few days ago I wrote something about Goldpork 'not allowing reading' - probably for brevity's sake. I should have remembered the order. It was almost certainly Minute 345/67ZB in the Prisons Ordinance, Appendix D. I wrote that myself after we caught that Jew with his volume of reminiscences stuffed in his phylactery. And here I am giving Goldpork all the credit for it.

(later) The reason it all comes back to me is the typist. We worked late at the ministry that evening finishing up odds and ends of Party business. I was a stickler for detail, I wanted those minutes letter-perfect. I saw her slowing down, mumbling and erasing.

'Dinner?' I said, looking up from a foolscap file.

She turned away from her heavy black Yalor Office Console and flexed her fingers.

I snapped open my briefcase and handed her a sausage, a bit of bread, a cold potato. Gratefully she took them and, munching them, told me something about herself. I don't remember a word she said, but I recall thinking, 'Yes, with a girl like that we have succeeded. Strong as a mule. Her tits are like turnips. She types a good rate and works like a dog. In the West she would be a frump at twenty.'

Nor was typing her only talent.

I begin to understand these handsome little striplings mincing through the night corridors of this dungeon.

27 Nov. Cement did very well, ten editions in a year. And Logs was to do even better. Those two secret policemen interrupted me halfway through Spindles. I wonder if they destroyed the fragment of manuscript I kept on my writing table? No, I don't wonder at all. They did, of course they did. To do otherwise would have been a flagrant disregard of their orders. They had a duty to perform. Is it bourgeois of me to hope that before those pages were incinerated some soul read them and had doubts about my guilt?

}0 Nor. Find this notebook, Goldpork! Here is one manuscript vou won't unearth. I write nearly every day, squatting on this hueket m your unclean Stall. You would never think to look here! You have not discovered me, and until you reform this prison you never shall! 1 am noting this under your very nose! Pig! Dog!

THE PRISON DIARY OF JACK FAUST

2 Dec. The minister's visit was brusquely announced for the first of December. I handed in my chit and said that I would like a word with him in private. 'I know my rights,' I said. I walked on eggshells all day, with the crumpled squares of the Memo to Gold-pork tucked into the elastic of my underpants. No minister. I waited all day today. No minister.

3 Dec. No minister.

4 Dec. No minister.

5 Dec. No minister.

6 Dec. What this country needs is a good solid overhaul by some merciless but farsighted Party man. When a minister announces a visit he has made a promise; this promise must be kept. The Memo to Goldpork of 17 Nov. is all but deteriorated in my underpants. I shall recopy it while waiting for the minister. I am not surprised Goldpork kept his job for so long. He would not last a minute in my charge.

7 Dec. No minister. I shall put the memo squares with the rest of this little diary. That minister is asking for a sacking.

8 Dec. 'It was like battling with a pillow. Squeezed at one end it bulged at the other . . .' {Cement, Ch. 10). I was writing of the landlords and moneylenders and the bullies in the ballroom. I could have been writing of my present difficulties.

Item: Enemies

(1) Goldpork

(2) The minister of internal affairs

(3) Fatso, G's toad

(4) The little chap who visited me several nights ago and played hard to get

9 Dec. The film version of Logs was praised and won a coveted medal. It opened with a panorama of a great banqueting hall. Fat men slobbering over pigs' trotters, ladies yelling, young men reaching into the bosoms of dowagers, dogs lapping up scraps. The camera moved to the cellar of the house: bearded old men reclining in coal piles, little boys whimpering. Back to the banqueting hall: fat men begin to dance with one another. Jigs and reels. 'Spin the floor!' cries one man (close shot of hairy face, hog jowls, food-flecked fangs). He stamps on the floor with his big boots. Cut

SINNING WITH ANNIE

below to cellar: old men and young boys putting on harnesses; they begin to tug and yank, little cattle on a threshing floor. Above, the people dance, the floor revolves gently; music plays. Fat men clutch their partners' bums. Taster! Faster!' they call; they stamp. Below, the proletariat get the message. They summon all their strength; they run on their harnesses: they are literally dancing. The old men become young, the young men strong. Above, the floor is spinning, revolving crazily, much too fast. The first fat man falls, then another. A dowager sprawls and spills her pearls. Skirts fly. The dancers are spun from the revolving floor by centrifugal force; some are knocked cold. Below, the workers strip off their harnesses and sing. A small boy makes a fist and raises his arm. Last shot: this dirty little fist.

I used to know what all this represented. I am not so sure now.

10 Dec. Clearly, the inner Party has gone soft. My analogy is the potato raked out of the coals too soon. Break open that crusty jacket, dig your fork into the soft mealy white . . . but wait\ Grasp the potato with two hands and pinch it open: a cold hard center will be revealed. Burned on the outside, but cold and uncooked at the center . . . and that indigestible lump is enough to ruin the whole meal.

In our discussions, particularly at the Twentieth Plenum, we decided on and minuted the reverse of this. It was, so to say, the center of the potato we were certain was nourishing; we were not so sure of the rest.

Problem: Identify the potato's components, the fire, the tongs.

Who eats this potato?

There are rumors flying about. They say the minister has come and gone. But how could he? He hasn't seen me. He is fiddling his mileage claim, there is no doubt of that.

Ask yourself, Comrade Minister, which Party member penned the second Five-Year Plan? Yes, I wear manacles, but none of my chains weighs as heavily as this ingratitude.

ii Dec. Are there compensations here? Yes, I confess there are. Today, during our ten-minute fresh-air stroll we clanked as usual in a circle, reminding me of the painting by that insane Dutchman of a prison scene - blue convicts in a blue exercise yard - a painting, let me record, hanging in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (who said the Russians are an insensitive people?). And one, then another

THE PRISON DIARY OF JACK FAUST

and another of my fellow prisoners whispered hoarsely, 'That's him! There he is!' This continued (That's himV) until the guard knocked one of the whisperers to the ground and told him to pipe down. But they continued to look at me with their gray faces. Several lifted their chains at me and shook them. It's nice to be recognized in a crowd.

14 Dec. At night now they scream my name.

15 Dec. They're still doing it. It gives me quite a lift.

16 Dec. Today I was set upon by six inmates and beaten. It was just after breakfast while we were emptying our chamberpots into the swill vat. The guards stand as far away as possible (the stink is overpowering) and these six, seeing their chance, gagged me with a mitten and knocked me insensible. I was not found until half-past ten. I was given broth and told to report to Goldpork. He recognized me immediately.

'Comrade Faust, we meet again.'

'Under less happy circumstances than before, Goldpork, I don't have to remind you.'

'Sit down, I want to have a word with you. What's this I hear about the stir you're causing in your cell-block?'

'They scream my name. I liked it at first, but today they beat me. They dug their fingers into my eyes and plucked at my neck and cheeks. I hated it.'

'And what do you conclude from this little affair?'

'Simple. They belong here. I don't. You know, Goldpork, we built this prison for them, not for ourselves. It is they who should be munching on scraps and wiping the rims of their soiled chamberpots . . . not me. If only I had known!'

'You didn't deserve to be beaten, then? Don't you see that these men are relatives of all the people you liquidated?'

'I have one regret. I should have searched the houses more carefully. I might have turned up one or two of these oafs in cupboards and liquidated them as well.'

'And so you're trying to tell me you are a faithful Party member still?'

'I have committed no crime. I am not one of these comrades who runs shrieking into the arms of a Western publisher as soon as I am wronged, though I know I could live quite a nice little life

SINNING WITH ANNIE

if I did that. But I am not one of your backsliders. I was put in here, and here I will stay until the Party feels I have been punished enough. When I am set free I will work as always, with fervor.'

'It's pleasant to hear that, Comrade Faust. You bear us no ill will?'

'None at all.'

But I had. Though I only realized it after I went back to my cell and reread all the entries in this diary. I was dreadfully afraid. I held these scraps of paper up to the light and, as my name boomed through the corridors, I read with a sinking heart. I begin by saying I am innocent. I go on to complain about Goldpork and itemize ten objections to this prison. I slander the minister and the guard. I indulge in bourgeois nostalgia about my tenth-rate film. And as if this is not enough six days ago I describe the Inner Party as a lump of underdone potato.

Furthermore, and much worse, I withheld all of this from Gold-pork. I tried to pass myself off as a good Party member. But what is a good Party member doing in prison? I had said when I pocketed my Party card that I would serve. I am doing nothing of the sort. I am a complainer, like the chap on the commune who won't dig sugar beets because his mattock is bent. I should have told Gold-pork exactly where I stood. If I were honest I would hand over this diary. What earthly good is it? It represents nothing. Who would bother to read it except one of our magistrates or those Western publishers? It is an indulgence. I will write no more today.

iy Dec. Spent the whole day poking through my mattress looking for reactionary newspaper clippings to read. Found nothing. Knock on door. Fatso. Asked what pile of straw and oakum on floor might be. Told him to his face.

Note: Delete (g), (h) and (j) from Memo to Goldpork. These have apparently been remedied while I was busy with this diary. They know what they are doing. This is further evidence that I am a scab. It was no trick. My guilt shows in every square I fill. After this knowledge, what forgiveness?

24 Dec, There is some satisfaction, when in prison, in knowing that one is ginltv. The tune passes quickly, one stops talking to oneself, one hears no grudges. I look forward to seeing Goldpork again and telling him everything, perhaps producing this diary from my shirttront and letting it spill over his desk. They were right all

THE PRISON DIARY OF JACK FAUST

along. My imagined innocence weighed on me and made me lax; but, guilty, I have a place - I belong. I see the logic of their decision to thump on my door with truncheons and drag me bootless from my flat. Today I sat and mused, humming a tune I once heard with Marushka when we secretly listened - as we did countless times! - to the broadcast of a foreign power. I am not Party material, and it is clear that Goldpork is. I shall see him tomorrow and cheerfully convey my guilt by wishing him a Merry Christmas.

Those were the last words Jack Faust was to write. He handed over his diary and freely confessed to all his crimes. They were mostly imaginary ones, but they contained such a wild note of threat that he was hanged before the new year. He was not mourned. I know this is true. My reward for extracting his confession from him - I did little more than listen to him and nod to the steno - was a very agreeable posting in Rome, attached to our Embassy; my job was to round up people who had fled the country and were seeking asylum in Italy. I got to know the ins and outs of fleeing, and I was helped in my searches by Marushka, whose full name and address I had found scratched on the wall of Jack's cell. In our six months in Rome we drugged many an escapee and posted each back to the capital in a mailbag. Only Marushka could have been expected to mourn Jack Faust, yet when I asked her she denied all knowledge of him. I could only smile.

And smiling one night I said I was stepping out for a breath of fresh air. I did so and never returned. The morning I left Italy (this was in Milan) I thought I saw Marushka whiz past me, straddling the back of a Vespa and clutching the Italian driver with one hand and what I believe was the manuscript of Jack's unfinished novel {Spindles) with the other. But I may be wrong; many Italian girls had Marushka's knees, and all girls jounce the same on a scooter: I love to see their rolling bottoms and hear the seat springs oink! In any case, Marushka is doing all right for herself. I am pretty sure she pinched Spindles from Jack's flat; I know I never discovered what happened to it. The police were no help. I have a feeling that one of these days I'm going to see it in translation on the revolving paperback bookstand at my corner drugstore.