Authors: Nanni Balestrini
it comes into my mind that I'll also have to write to my parents I think of them there at home anxious worried by this business that's come so unexpectedly it was unexpected for me too even if it crossed my mind occasionally but though possible it seemed so remote and in any case it wasn't worth dwelling on it so this too is why I'm now so stunned and dumbfounded and most of all so unprepared now that it's happened but my parents couldn't even imagine that I could get mixed up with the law as far as they were concerned I was a being from another planet a crackpot a dreamer but harmless incapable of hurting anybody I hoped the comrades had gone to see them to calm them down to give them a bit of reassurance I really haven't a clue how to write I had no idea how to communicate with them
the spy-hole is opened again it's the sergeant of the guard who stares at me in silence without a word after a moment or two I jerk my head as if to enquire what's wrong he remains silent a bit longer then he asks me you wouldn't be the one who killed our warrant-officer two months ago I answer that I've never killed anyone that I'm there through a mistake that soon it will all be cleared up the sergeant gives me a surprised look and says that all the ones like me he's ever come across so far never say they've nothing to do with it and that they've done nothing they only say they're proud to be communists struggling against the state whereas it's the non-politicals who always say they're innocent even when they've been caught red-handed
I'm put out by this I wouldn't like to have made a blunder I feel as if I've broken some kind of protocol that must exist among comrades in prison meanwhile the sergeant starts telling me that the murdered warrant-officer was a decent fellow who had children and a family that what the people who murdered him put on the leaflet wasn't true at all that he didn't have a gang that beat people up that he'd never beaten anybody up or had anybody beaten up that he was a good humane fellow and so on and he goes on to explain that they're all decent fellows that it's wrong to hold anything against them that you have to understand that they're doing that job just to get by because they have to feed their families
that it's not their fault if there's unemployment that they're the first to want to get out of there if they get a chance of anything else that they've come from the south where there's no work and they've had no education and this is why those are the only jobs they can get but they do the job with respect for others and that it's not them we should hold things against because they're only carrying out orders and they're compelled to carry them out that it's the politicians we should have it in for and not them they're in agreement that things as they are are disgusting and that they need to be changed because they too realize that things can't go on like this but we shouldn't go shooting at them but at who's really in charge who's really to blame for the situation the sergeant goes on like this and there's no end to it
while he was going on like this it sounded to me just like the same reasoning the same things that the blacklegs doing overtime were saying when we went to picket in front of the factories to stop them from going in but here on top there was the naivety with which he said those things which made it evident that they weren't his own ideas they were ideas he'd picked up talking to comrades they were crude basic propaganda clichés and all this became his justification but the point was his reason for telling me all this this was the point and clearly he was doing it because he was afraid of ending up like that colleague of his who'd been killed and he wanted to keep on the good side of anybody who directly or indirectly could be a threat to him
and the way things were at that moment I had a kind of advantage over him I knew nothing at all about prison then but I was beginning to guess that it was a different world with different rules and a different logic that I had to learn as quickly as possible because in there along with the air that smelled of shit of piss and of vomit you also got a whiff of constant fear of threat of danger so it was better to be cautious to be careful better an excess of caution than a mistake that could have consequences I couldn't even imagine I felt the danger instinctively even in what the sergeant said maybe he'd been sent there to sound me out to see what sort of guy I was and how I saw things and so the best thing to do was not to give myself away to be vague about things but then even if I'd wanted to what could I have said in reply to that speech of the sergeant
so all I did was look at him until he stopped talking because a guard was calling him I hoped I wouldn't see him come back but he'd left the spy-hole open and in fact a minute later he was back looking through it but before letting him get started again I asked him if he could give me some matches because they'd left me my cigarettes but without matches I couldn't light any then the sergeant of the guard tells me that the rules forbid those in isolation from having matches because there's already been a case of someone going crazy and setting light to the mattress which is foam rubber and burns in minutes and gives off smoke that suffocates you in no time and if this happens at night when the keys to the cells are up in the rotunda there's the risk of a fire that would burn everyone inside the cells
when you want a light call the guards knock on the spy-hole and they'll give you a light seeing that the sergeant was so ready to give me information I also ask him how long I have to stay there in isolation he's astonished by the question he didn't know how long I had to stay in isolation he only knew I was in judicial isolation pending interrogation and that until then I could have no contact with anyone neither inside nor outside the prison I couldn't go out into the sun nor go into the exercise yard with anyone else not even with anyone else in isolation like me and I couldn't talk to my lawyer or my parents until I'd been questioned and since I was a political isolation was even more severe these were the orders he'd received from his superiors who in their turn had received them from the magistrates
and by way of going back to the earlier conversation he gives me a wink you see it's not us who've put you in these conditions we're not the ones who make these decisions do you see who's making them I ask him how long it usually is before the interrogation with the judge and he tells me that it can take up to forty days from the day of arrest I think to myself that it hasn't even been half a day and I'm already in this state I can't even imagine forty days the sergeant of the guard gives me a light and then to show him that I don't want to talk any more I turn my back on him and I go towards the bed then he closes the spy-hole and goes away I stretch out and slowly smoke the cigarette savouring every puff and I fall asleep without even noticing
I wake up again with the spy-hole suddenly being opened a fattish face taps on the door with a biro and twice says the word shopping the guard is holding a clipboard with a list of foodstuffs and other things on it I ask him what I can order and rather impatiently he says how should I know I think of cigarettes and mineral water and order that he's holding a form with my name and my registration number and he writes down cigarettes and mineral water and then shuts the door again saying he'll bring me the stuff the next day I lie down on the bed again for a bit but I can't get back to sleep then I get up and I beat on the door with the palm of my hand no one comes then I shout guard guard two or three times the spy-hole opens and a guard gives me a light with a lighter and then closes it again
when the spy-hole opens it seems for a moment that I'm not locked in that hole and for a moment it makes me feel better in the evening the prisoner who brings the food comes back some overcooked pasta with a sour red sauce one forkful with the plastic fork and I leave it all on the plate and go back to sleep now and then in the night you can hear screams from the adjoining cells you can hear people calling the guard who doesn't come the light is left on and if I'm lying on my back the glare's straight in my eyes and while I'm awake during one of the regular cell-check patrols when they open the spy-hole I ask the guard to put out the light but he says he can't that the rules say it has to stay on
a night of fitful sleep with that bright light on all the time then it's morning the first cell-check patrol comes around early and then the working prisoner with the watered down white coffee and a piece of bread half an hour later they open my door for exercise the guards outside in the corridor each carry a long truncheon and one of them uses it to point to the small door at the end of the corridor before I go outside he asks me if I want to empty the bucket but I say no the idea of lifting that stinking pail disgusts me I go through the little door followed by the guards with their truncheons we enter a kind of narrow tunnel and at the end it leads out to the open air into a kind of narrow corridor between two high walls where there's only room for one person at a time at the end it opens out into a small courtyard with an area no bigger than a few square yards surrounded by high walls
they open the last gate at the end on the left and then they lock it on me again above it there's an iron grating and through it I can see a part of one wing of the prison with the windows screened by vents broom handles with television aerials tied on to them stick out through some of the vents I think how those are the cells where I'll go after isolation I'm not clear what difference there is but at any rate there's television I don't know how many years it is since I've watched television but now I have a great desire to watch television to see anything at all with images and sounds anything at all that comes from outside anything at all with faces colours words
30
A lot of girls came to the centre too young women and not so young students workers housewives who'd come to the demonstrations who'd met during the occupations and in the centre they'd taken a room of their own and on the door they put a notice women's room and woe betide anyone who goes in there without their permission especially when they're having their meetings and then outside they distribute alternative information on sexuality on health on reproductive rights on wages for housework they do loads of things they make demands to the council to set up a self-managed clinic they slog up and down streets and squares with the campaign for free abortion on demand and one evening they burst into a cinema during the screening of a pornographic film and they take polaroid pictures of the audience with a flash then they go up to the projection cabin and seize the reels of film
another evening a group of them is in the street waiting for a criminal type who was involved in a rape attempt just recently and about twenty of them jump him with sticks they kick him and hit him with the sticks a bunch of his friends comes out of a nearby bar and they follow the scene hooting with laughter we males get ourselves down there too for when we knew what was going to happen we'd stationed ourselves not too far away just in case of retaliation but the women wave the sticks angrily at the gangsters and at us and they tell us to get going for they've no need of us to defend them and the next day they proclaim their action with a notice pinned to the walls which says let's take back our right to the night
the women at the centre talk more and more among themselves and if they're talking about the men it's clear that they're not talking about them in the way that we talk about them typically male when you come down to it even there at the centre the women are always regarded as women in other words differently and the women who come to the centre are still given ratings sized up and gossiped about the usual stuff that men do everywhere and as time goes on the women emphasize their separate meeting times and separate conversations and if one of us goes up to them while they're talking they chase him away after a bit we get pissed off because we can't make it out we start teasing them and they turn aggressive they withdraw among themselves they go around in a group they leave in their cars without us they have private discussions and they give us dirty looks so what the hell has happened
one evening they don't turn up at all and for the whole evening we talk abut it we speculate with rumours and malicious gossip Cotogno is given the job of finding out about Valeriana even though he's not too keen because he knows Valeriana better than we do and in fact Valeriana gives him short shrift as soon as he tries asking her questions she chases him away she tells him to mind his own business and stop spying for all the other shits which means us Lauro and Lupino have a try with Mora and Verbena just the same result and I try with China and we end up having a row everyone's rattled a few days go by and we see a small group of them at the centre pinning up a poster on a wall it announces a meeting the next evening they're fixing it with drawing pins and sellotape talking among themselves as if we weren't there the atmosphere's hostile some suggest boycotting the meeting taking a different line from the last few days the guys in couples are more bewildered more cautious and less sure of themselves but the others are more incensed Cotogno is particularly at a loss Nocciola yawns with indifference only remarking women's stuff sometimes tempers erupt what are you playing at but the meeting comes round full of tension when I arrive they're already there all lined up grimly sitting in a row as we wait none of us says a word ah well it was about time we got down to this says Gelso breaking the silence and doing his best to act cool yes it was about time snaps Menta because we're really fed up with your shitty behaviour
what shitty behaviour we all look at one another in amazement our eyes meeting Menta goes on you treat us like dirt and you even pretend to be surprised but as from today it's over unless there are some changes we're leaving well leave then shouts Ortica losing his temper what's keeping you back ok it's still Menta speaking but first we want to make it clear what shits you are what pieces of crap no different from other men despite giving yourselves airs as revolutionaries and the vanguard of the proletariat but in your relationships with us you're the rearguard about the same level as my father and my grandfather Lupino is genuinely surprised but what's going on what's happened what's this all about this is a funny way of doing things a funny way of discussing things you disappear for a week and you turn up again with a poster for a meeting ok and then you come here and tell us that we're all shits I really don't understand