10

First thing, Kosef J went to the clothing-supply room. He was determined to do everything in his powers to leave there as soon as possible. The conversation with the guard had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, a sense of helplessness, pity and of deep and murky waters.

‘I know about you!’ the man in charge of the clothing-supply room said as he entered. The man rubbed his palms together and appeared to be utterly thrilled. ‘My son told me about you,’ he continued.

‘His son!’ Kosef J mused, taken by surprise. Who could possibly be the son of this ageless stocky man, with bulging fish-eyes.

‘The kid,’ said the ageless stocky man with bulging fish-eyes.

‘The kid indeed!’ Kosef J cried out, amazed that this ageless stocky man, with bulging fish-eyes could be the father of the child.

‘That’s right,’ the stocky man confirmed.

‘Oh, well, I’ve had enough,’ Kosef J’s brain concluded.

‘Why?’ the other asked.

‘I don’t know, I’ve simply had enough,’ Kosef J responded in his mind.

‘But why now, why right now?’ asked the very warm and humane ageless stocky man, with bulging fish-eyes. ‘My son said wonderful things about you.’

‘Oh well, what difference does it make?’ Kosef J asked himself.

‘It does make a difference!’ the man replied.

‘It doesn’t,’ Kosef J said out loud.

‘The child has a clean soul!’ the man pronounced.

‘I can’t get anywhere with him either,’ Kosef J mused, thinking about how the discussion with Fabius had ended the night before.

‘OK, but I’m not a prison guard,’ the man responded. ‘Guards are swines.’

Kosef J found the responses of this ageless stocky man, with bulging fish-eyes, somewhat odd. He kept silent, leaving space for the other to add something.

‘Still, fish-eyes . . . ’ the man babbled, with a hint of reproach.

‘I want to leave as soon as possible,’ Kosef J said, determined to put an end to this elliptical and pointless conversation that wasn’t leading anywhere.

‘Certainly,’ the man thought to himself, and it seemed to Kosef J as if he had heard the word CERTAINLY in his brain.

‘Follow me,’ the man said.

They descended a few damp steps and found themselves in the basement. A few tiny windows at the height of the ceiling let through a greyish light.

‘I’ve always been against this,’ the man said. ‘Always.’

‘Against what?’ Kosef J asked.

‘See this?’ The man gestured. ‘All damp. Clothes shouldn’t be kept in damp conditions. This is not the way to run a proper supply room. Let alone one for clothes.’

They moved from room to room. All along the walls there were shelves stacked with rolls of fabric, shirts folded up on top of each other, and frayed jumpers and coats smelling of mildew.

‘I should keep them in waxed paper bags,’ the man said. ‘According to regulations, that is.’

He grabbed a random musty shirt from a shelf and tore it apart in one go.

‘There! The cloth can’t hold out. How could then paper? I laid them all out, hoping they might dry a little. You think they can?

The man seemed seriously disheartened by the problems encountered in the clothing-supply room. He rummaged among a few piles of fabric resembling some kind of sticky bodies, looking like the fat and shapeless trunk of a decapitated animal, put out for a slow rot.

‘Any thoughts on what I could do? These are clothes from last year. And they can’t be worn any longer.’

Meanwhile they moved on to other, more spacious rooms. Kosef J seemed rather impressed with the heaps of clothes laid out on the shelves. Where could so many clothes come from? Did they all belong to prisoners? There seemed to be so many clothes, much too many, an immense number, there couldn’t possibly be so many prisoners. Or perhaps the clothes had been amassed over the years . . . but how many years would it had taken for the clothing-supply room to fill up to quite such an extent? The smell became harder and harder to bear. The fabrics had started to rot, each at a different pace, emanating their unique smell. Kosef J was able to distinguish between the musty smell of wool, cotton and velvet.

‘Awful,’ the man grumbled on. ‘It’s a great loss, a really great one. There!’ he said, picking up and squeezing flattened hat. A greenish liquid squirted from the hat and trickled down the man’s fingers.

‘Yet management doesn’t want to do a thing,’ fulminated the ageless stocky man with bulging fish-eyes. ‘It’s inhuman, absolutely inhuman.’

They stepped into a room chock-a-block with metal cabinets. The man opened one of the doors and a huge pile of shoes, boots, brogues and even slippers, as well as many other barely identifiable items rolled out onto the floor.

‘Leather rots, too,’ the man said, rasping. ‘Look, please take a look at these! Could you call these boots?’

He lifted them to demonstrate to Kosef J the tragedy hidden behind the metal cabinets. He was able to yank off the sole of a boot in one single move. Two rows of rusty nails appeared in the section left behind, reminiscent of the rotten teeth of a carnivorous fish.

‘See?’ the man whined. ‘Some will tell you all sorts, that I didn’t do my job properly, and suchlike . . . But how could I possibly do my job in these conditions? How?’

Grudgingly he stuck a foot into the heap of shoes.

Then he carried on pointing out other wardrobes in which the clothes were kept in plastic bags. This plastic, however, had stuck to the fabrics stored in the bags, and none of the clothes could be salvaged.

‘These are clothes from five years ago,’ the man clarified.

He ripped one of the greenish plastic bags up. An unbearable stench dispersed in the air at once, as if it were the poisonous squirt of a monster’s slashed-open stomach.

‘What can I do? What can I possibly do?’ the man said, wailing. ‘I’ve tried everything I possibly could.’

The situation was even worse in the room accommodating clothes from ten years ago. One could claim that it was actually disastrous. Not a single object could be identified. The various items had dissolved and mingled together like hungry mushrooms: coats and shirts, cloaks and jackets, trousers and sleeveless shirts. This hoarding of disparate things was characterized by something organic and fragile at the same time, akin to marine bodies that, once brought to the surface, dehydrate and decompose at the slightest contact with air.

‘I’ve been fighting for years,’ the man said, looking really sad and serious, without clarifying who he was fighting against.

He had experimented with all sorts of methods and had a go at all sorts of ideas. For a long time he entertained the belief that by heating the rooms, he’d manage to preserve the clothes. The humid and hot air turned out to be even more voracious, and decomposition went on at an even quicker pace. The method of keeping the windows open didn’t help either, as the currents of air played the role of catalysts and, instead of drying the clothes out, they ended up multiplying the hotbeds of infection. He had been toiling like a slave for years, tormenting his mind and body. He’d often take stuff into the open air, to the sun, so that they can freshen up. He had noticed, however, that this method weakened the fabrics no end, and once returned to the warehouse, they underwent a sort of moral collapse, unable to present any resistance whatsoever to pathogenic factors.

‘Here are the clothes from over ten years ago,’ the man pointed at a seriously bolted metal door, barricaded with a few suitcases, just to be on the safe side. ‘You can imagine what’s in there,’ the stocky man said in a disheartened tone.

He then confessed that he hadn’t had the strength to open that door for a while now. At times, especially during summer nights, he had the impression that he could hear something in there, a sort of bustle, something dodgy in any case.

‘Your clothes are in there, too,’ the man added with a guilty smile.

‘Oh, no, that can’t be!’ Kosef J cried out.

‘What can I do?’ the man whimpered yet again. ‘Would you like to open this door? If you have the courage to open this door then go for it . . . ’

And he handed him a bunch of keys.

Kosef J swiftly and almost violently stepped back a few paces. No, he didn’t want to open that door. He didn’t want anything. He was just seriously disappointed.

‘Can you see my point now?’ the man asked, coming closer to Kosef J and seeking to meet his glance. ‘Can you please see my point?’

‘Sure,’ Kosef J replied to avoid appearing discourteous.

‘I compiled reports, I explained to everyone, I had an experts’ report carried out,’ he continued to list the various items, emphasizing the term experts’ report above all.

By now he had basically given up hope. Or, rather, he had one last hope! A single one. It was Kosef J who represented this hope, given that he was now a free man. He was in a position to signal the actual state of affairs to those concerned. He was about to be seen by the prison governor to sort out the paperwork around his departure. Could he, Kosef J, please be so kind and talk to the governor at least for a moment about what he had seen in the clothing-supply room? To remind him that this clothing-supply room actually exists. To tell him that in these humid and damp basements an honest man is battling wardrobefuls of clothes, and that he needs help. It was him, Kosef J who could still salvage something in this situation. He was the only person the prison governor would perhaps listen to, given the exceptional circumstances of his release.

‘You’ve got no idea how much weight your words carry right now,’ the man added.

Kosef J reassured him that he won’t forget anything. Yet he was utterly restless within. He had no knowledge of the fact that the formal arrangements towards his release would take him as far as the prison governor. Yet another thing he hadn’t surmised and no one bothered to tell him. He had found this out by chance, and only because the man in charge of the clothing-supply room thought that he, Kosef J, was already in the know. All his plans to collect his clothes and leave at once crumbled irrecoverably. Up until then no one had ever told him to see the prison governor, and he didn’t have the slightest idea when exactly he’d be called in. Similarly, he had no idea of the other procedures he had to follow in order to be able to leave.

‘This is all my fault,’ Kosef J kept thinking for the umpteenth time. It was his fault not because he didn’t know what to do, but because he didn’t put in enough of an effort to find out what he should do.

‘And yet what shall we do with my clothes?’ Kosef J stuttered.

‘Come!’ the man said with a perfidious smile.

He dragged him along some corridors and then they started to go up. Just like on his way back from the apple orchard, Kosef J was astounded by how long he had to walk until reaching the surface. They climbed a few flights of steps, crossed a few corridors, and went past a sea of doors.

At last, the man in charge of the clothing-supply room led him to a narrow chamber, which at first sight reminded him of a tailor’s workshop. At one of the tables, he spotted the child, leaning over a cardboard box.

Kosef J made a sudden turn towards the stocky man, as if he wanted to seek his permission to enter, especially since this was indeed the child.

‘Please come in,’ the man said in a jovial tone.

The room was hot and bright. Kosef J went up to the child and started a friendly conversation.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked.

‘I’m choosing buttons for you,’ the child said pointing at the box. This response cheered Kosef J no end.

‘Buttons for me?’ he asked.

‘For your clothes,’ the child replied.

‘I made you a new set of clothes,’ the man from the warehouse clarified, throwing an embarrassed glance over Kosef J’s shoulders. ‘You can pay me when you receive your money.’

‘Money?’ Kosef J hummed.

‘What, you’ve got it already?’ the man asked with a hint of greed in his voice.

‘No, not yet,’ Kosef J replied, wondering what could this business with the money really mean. Where was he supposed to get money from? What for? And how much?

‘This will be ready by tomorrow,’ the man pointed at a pair of trousers and a jacket hanging off a tabletop. ‘All I have to do is sew on the buttons.’