They passed through the main gate—a spiked portcullis held aloft by twin hemp ropes the width of a fist. The chief of the guards turned then and barked out a single command.
“Stop!”
The cloud of dust that had followed the human caravan from the docks settled on their shaved heads and shoulders. Under the blazing sun, they waited.
Two more men died in the sizzling inferno.
The chief of guards bellowed out a list of numbers. Roll call. Prisoners answered in time to their numbers. One by one they were led off to various cellblocks to be deloused and issued their camp garments.
Jakob stood under the blazing sun wondering when his number would be called. He had to close his eyes to keep the brilliant yellow from burning his eyes. The heat hung on him, an oppressive yoke he longed to throw off. Sweat cascaded down his back, soaking through the red and white striped threadbare shirt he wore. With every breath the air grew heavier, bloated with a humidity perfumed by oleander and lilacs. He felt woozy. His thoughts swam through molasses.
He felt the gazes of other inmates—the veterans already serving their sentences here—rove over his moldy, putrid body. Were they singling him out for pleasure or pain? Would they seek some torrid release later that night, dreaming about Jakob? Or would they hope for a chance at him during the communal shower sessions?
Dreams are all you’ll have, he thought. For Jakob knew one certainty about his sentence beyond his inevitable escape.
“Prisoner 392!” The chief of guards barked out his number. He wavered.
“Prisoner 392!”
Jakob shuffled forward and fell. The chief ordered two other inmates to pick him up. He could barely stand, but finally managed to hold his head up.
The chief glared.
“Prisoner 392,” he said.
“Solitary.”
With that Jakob felt himself dragged to the cell. At least it was out of the direct sun, he reasoned stumbling into it. The door slammed shut; the iron impacted the doorjamb with a solid clang like the bell back in the town. He leaned against the cool rough walls and then drank from the clay water pitcher that had been shoved rudely through the opening at the base of the door.
He sucked down what must have been almost a gallon of the stagnant brew before he heard a pounding against his door. He frowned and slid the container back out. Someone grabbed it and the opening slammed shut.
Jakob turned his attention back to the cell. He paced it out and found it measured eight feet by eight feet. Only eight feet? The injustice of the situation annoyed him. How would he exercise? How would he keep himself in good condition for his eventual dash for freedom? His gaze shifted to a 12-inch diameter hole in the rear right corner.
What was this? His toilet? There was no seat. There was no … he groaned with the realization that he would have to squat and clean himself with his hand. Disgusting!
And what of his slumber? He pressed down on the bed only to discover it was a crude cement base covered with a thin straw mattress, sheet, and single blanket. A burlap sack stuffed with dried grass would act as his pillow.
Surely the warden would have to be informed. No man could be expected to live out his sentence with dignity in such dreadful conditions.
He thought of the children in the town. Lord Byron’s poetry danced in his mind.
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded … He sighed and glanced skyward. Bars?
Steel bars roofed his cell. Worse, he could hear guards walking patrols on a walkway that ran atop the cells, able to peer in and instantly ascertain what was going on below.
No privacy, either? But how on earth would he … ? A guard appeared overhead.
“Strip!”
Jakob complied. A torrent of water rained down. The guard tossed a bar of soap.
“Wash!”
Jakob scrubbed himself. He wondered vaguely if the guard was enjoying the show. He risked a glimpse up and saw the guard talking to another. Jakob felt a small measure of relief.
Another deluge rinsed him and Jakob watched the soapy residue slide off and stream toward the toilet hole. He considered this and reasoned the floor of his cell must have been built at a slight grade to enable drainage.
A towel plopped onto his head. “Be quick, Prisoner 392.”
He dried himself. New clothes fell through the bars.
“Get dressed and push the old rags through the food gate.”
He did. The guard disappeared.
Jakob lay on his bed, feeling the coarse straw bite into his back. The pillow offered little comfort. In Paris, he would have dined on figs and dates while reclining on sofas with the softest pillows. He would have drifted off to his deviant dreams while his houseboy plucked the strings of a harp. And now, he had none of it.
But despite that, he soon fell asleep.
O
il lamps burned all the time so the guards could keep watch. Jakob covered his eyes with one arm until pins and needles stabbed at every nerve. Then he switched arms.
Breakfast, watery rice porridge, arrived at six o’clock. A lunch of rice and vegetables came around noon. And dinner, which normally included fish or chicken, was served promptly at six. On particularly hot days, a jug of water would appear up to four times a day. Jakob couldn’t argue with the idea that the prison staff did seem to want to keep their inmates alive. He felt lucky about that.
But he also figured that by keeping them alive, the prison exacted the full toll of their punishments. Living wasn’t much of a life at all.
Not any more.
O
n the third day, he moved to the slit in the door.
Men wandered around just twenty feet from his cell. Further punishment, he decided. Solitary inmates weren’t allowed to speak. Any infractions resulted in a plate being placed over the slit. No more views of the outside world.
And yet, the temptation to call out to a passing inmate bore down on him with such ferocity that Jakob wondered if he’d be able to hold out.
He must!
One prisoner drew his attention more than the others. He stayed alone, a bookish man wearing thick spectacles. His slender limbs reminded Jakob of the arachnids belonging to the Phalangida order. He smiled as the Latin popped into his head. All of that knowledge he’d acquired so long ago seemed to belong to a different man.
His eyes refocused on the small man. Eventually, he could see the faded number on his back. “53.”
How long had he been here that his number had faded so? What crimes had he committed that he now called this pit of hell home? Did he dream of escape the way Jakob did?
He fell asleep thinking about 53.
And dreamed about being free. He dreamed about escape, about getting out of the cramped cell. He dreamed about climbing over the wall, about fleeing the prison and finding his way back to his home.
He had work to do, after all. More cities to visit. More bodies to gut. More organs to feast upon. More children to…liberate.
He woke up drenched in sweat, gasping for breath, and aware of the pulsing in his loins.
The reality of where he was crashed down on him and for the first time since he’d been caught, he allowed himself to weep until he fell back asleep.
T
hrough the slit the next day, he saw 53 again. The little man shuffled across the flat ground, shoulders hunched and hands shoved deep into his pockets. Every few steps, he would glance about, almost as if he expected someone to attack him. Jakob suspected 53 suffered mentally. Had the neurotic delusions of his mind pushed him over the edge? Were they the spring from which his criminal career had jetted itself out upon the world?
Jakob slumped back away from the slit and allowed the muscle aches to bleed out of his back and thighs. He closed his eyes and saw his own torrid past dredged up and played out across the screen of his mind.
But instead of shrinking from the horror of his past, Jakob smiled. And embraced his true self.
He’d been a doctor once. Originally from Russia, he had traveled all over the continent, touring the largest cities. But he never stayed long. Just enough to slake the peculiar dementia that possessed his soul.
He’d enjoyed his life until Paris.
Who would have thought the gendarme would find him in such a compromising position?
Open wide, young sir. That’s it. Now just hold still while I slide this…
Surely the fates had intervened that time. God’s own bizarre sense of humor, he supposed.
Regardless, he was here now. But he wanted to be back there.
The realization that he needed to escape set his heart hammering inside his cavernous chest. Adrenaline punched him in the bowels. Excitement gave him Goosebumps. Blood surged south, thickening his veins.
The plan seemed fantastic. And yet … it could work. Perhaps.
J
akob wondered if his vocal chords would function once he escaped. Even now it felt like a fuzzy fungus had begun growing at the back of his throat. He tried to assure himself he’d be able to speak any of the five languages he knew—once he got out of there.
The slit in the door became Jakob’s microscope. Prisoner 53 became his laboratory specimen mounted on the slide of desire driven by necessity. Every day, Jakob subjected the little man to the most intense scrutiny he could focus through the tiny peephole.
He began with the obvious.
From watching his stride, Jakob decided 53 had injured his hip at some point since he shifted more weight to his right side and dragged his left foot a bit. It hardly registered.
But Jakob noticed.
Prisoner 53 inhaled roughly ten times each minute. Jakob concluded the little man was reasonably fit, despite his mousy manner.
His shoulders hunched up and rode forward of his head. Jakob had once seen a bare-knuckle fighter who punched with a similar head position. But 53 wasn’t a fighter.
While Jakob studied him, 53 suddenly stopped. Turned.
And seemed to stare right at Jakob.
Did he just wink at me?
Jakob smiled. How delightful. A friend of all things and here of all places. Surely this would be truly worthy of note.
The physical qualities of 53 noted and organized inside his head, Jakob began practicing. Walking posed the most difficulty. He kept bumping into the damned walls. Eight feet! Who had designed this cell? Why so little space? Wasn’t it enough to rob a man of his freedom without forcing him to live within such pitiful dimensions? A heat rose within him. Jakob punched the wall and felt a flap of skin tear away from his left hand. Bright red smeared the grayish white surface. Jakob licked his wound and felt a rush of saliva at the first coppery taste.
Jakob sighed. Perhaps what mattered most weren’t the physical characteristics at all, but rather the inner workings of 53’s mind. The things he could readily observe merely served as a gateway to the inner being.
What Jakob wanted most of all.
A
t night, the demons came. The faces of his past, brightly painted with red streaks and pinkish hues, screamed and laughed at him. They pointed with long fingers. They taunted with shrieks and howls. They chided his physical inadequacies.
What can you do with that?
I have fingers longer than you!
Go away you terrible ugly fool!
“NO!”
Jakob woke screaming and had to clamp a hand across his mouth for fear that the guards should hear him. More than ever, now he needed the slit.
He heard footsteps overhead and risked a look up. A guard frowned at him.
Would he report Jakob? Would they punish him? Would they take away his only view of the outside world? The only chance he had of escape?
The guard merely shook his head and walked away. Jakob slept no more that night.
“R
usilov. That’s Russian, is it not?”
Jakob stood with his face to the wall. Behind him, the warden waited in the doorway of his cell. The chief of guards stood nearby. The visit had surprised Jakob.
He said nothing.
“You may talk, Prisoner 392. And I would like a response to my question.”
The cultured voice bit into Jakob’s brain, its edge as slight yet precise as a scalpel. The inflection seemed clear: the warden would be civil if Jakob behaved. But the civility would end at any sign of disrespect.
“I was Russian. Yes sir.”
“Was?”
Jakob shrugged. “Now I am simply Prisoner 392.”
The warden chuckled. “Indeed. Turn around and face me.”
Jakob did and almost blanched at the sight of the bloated dwarf seated in a wicker wheelchair. What sort of fetal abnormality had produced such a specimen at this, with his tufted curly black hair poking out of his pink scalp and his lopsided eyes set lower than the bridge of his hawk-like nose? Jakob tried to remain unfazed.