13

It was already lunchtime when the phone on Fabius’s table started to buzz like a bee.

‘Hello! Hello!’ a delighted Kosef J yelled into the receiver, thinking that it was either Franz Hoss or Fabius.

Someone rang from the kitchen to alert him to collect the lunches of the inmates on the second floor.

Kosef J could suddenly feel his hand holding the receiver tremble. He struggled to put the receiver back on its rest. Anxiety took over his soul again, yet he didn’t dare to linger on. The voice on the phone was rather commanding, after all lunch could only be a very serious business.

Kosef J pressed the lift button and, to his surprise, the lift arrived without delay. He went down and got hold of the old trolley used to transport the inmates’ food from the kitchen. Then, he collected the portions for the inmates, stacked them onto the trolley and lugged them up to the second floor. As he walked past the cells, he opened all the shutters on the spyholes. He handed everyone their share. He didn’t look anyone in the eye. When he reached the end of the corridor, he ate his own meal, which was the same as everyone else’s, then waited for the inmates to finish their meals and collected everyone’s tray. He loaded them onto the trolley. He closed the shutters and took the trays back to the kitchen. No one had addressed a single word to him, and no one seemed surprised that he, Kosef J, was dishing out the food in lieu of the guards.

To continue waiting, he settled for the same spot, the corner between the lift and the window. The hours kept trickling away, and reminded him of bored and indifferent fat worms that would leave a wide trail of see-through foam in their wake. Not a single soul was to be seen in the inner courtyard, and not a single sound was to be heard in the entire prison that could disturb its somnolent peace.

Kosef J turned his attention again to those inside.

‘They stuffed their faces, what do they care?’ he said to himself.

Most of them were probably dozing on their hard and narrow beds. Some were probably walking up and down, counting the paces to the barred window and back.

‘They are in need of a walk,’ Kosef J mused.

At this very moment, the phone rang again and Kosef J was given the command to open all doors and take the inmates to the inner courtyard for a fifteen minutes’ walk.

‘How can I open the doors?’ Kosef J asked, really scared.

‘What will they say when they see me open their doors?’ he wondered again.

‘What will they think of me?’ he asked himself for the third time, profoundly unhappy.

Yet he hastened to carry out the order. The prisoners were indeed in great need of a walk. He did exactly what he knew needed doing. The lift could take six people at a time. He opened the first six doors. The first six inmates stepped out and, without a single word, headed towards the lift. The lift went down and returned empty in a minute. Kosef J opened the next six cell doors. The inmates came out, without looking at him or saying a word to Kosef J, and headed towards the lift. In a few minutes, everyone was down in the courtyard. Kosef J was the last person to join them. The inmates were walking around in the inner courtyard in circles.

‘How meek they are,’ Kosef J observed.

The inmates were moving along in Indian file, one after the other. Everyone looked straight ahead and no one talked to their neighbour, neither in front, nor behind. Every now and then someone would look up to the sky. Some would take a deep breath of afternoon air.

‘Why are they so meek?’ Kosef J wondered.

There wasn’t a single guard or soldier in sight. The inmates could have easily chattered a bit among them. They could have come to a halt here and there, to take a good look at one another. What was wrong with them? Why were they not doing anything? Were they afraid of being beaten up?

At this thought, Kosef J swiftly placed his hand in front of his stomach because he felt as if he had been receiving a blow right there.

Were those people really afraid of him? Were they afraid of being beaten by him? And could he have really beaten them? And they wouldn’t have reacted in any way to his beating?

The sequence of events seemed truly incredible. He tried to look at the inmates’ faces, to recognize them. Only three days earlier Kosef J was alone in a cell, thinking, waiting and suffering like any one of these people. Only a week earlier he was taking a walk, with them, in this very courtyard. But neither a week earlier nor at any other point, would he have had the courage to lift his head slightly and look a guard in the eye. It was a well-known fact that it was best not to look guards in the eye.

‘I must administer a blow to someone, to see what he does,’ Kosef J decided. A sort of morbid curiosity took over him. He didn’t hate or bear a grudge to anyone. All such feelings were alien to him, but curiosity had started to devour him and circumstances were ripe.

‘I won’t hit hard,’ Kosef J said to himself.

‘But if I hit him and he doesn’t say a word, well then, it’s bad,’ Kosef J continued.

He didn’t clarify what would have been so bad. He carried on staring at the inmates moving around in circles, and continued to believe that nothing from what was happening there was actually true. In conclusion, he had to hit someone, because this was the only way to find out whether this was true or not.

‘If no one says anything,’ Kosef J concluded, ‘then this means that nothing is true.’

‘If I hit him and he responds,’ Kosef J continued, ‘then this means that some of this is true.’

He was looking at them knowing that he’d hit one of them, and his entire being was overwhelmed by a vague yet disturbing sensation. He felt powerful yet humiliated at the same time, because his power over the others had no real foundation. He realized that for those people walking around in circles, he, Kosef J, no longer existed as a person. He was no longer Kosef J, he was a menace, a threat, something best to avoid.

This thought made him somewhat angry.

‘Which one should I punch?’ he asked, taking a closer look around. He adopted a position from where he could basically get a glimpse of everyone filing past him.

Whom to hit indeed? The inmates walked past him one by one, looking down at the ground. Kosef J scrutinized them in succession. The first looked too old. The second had a little limp. The third seemed so weak and pale that Kosef J felt sorry for him. The fourth had an awfully scared face. The fifth was the man recently moved to cell number 50, and for whom Kosef J had harboured a fellow feeling of sorts. The sixth was a very strong and sturdy man, which didn’t suit Kosef J. The seventh looked like a proper thief, and Kosef J said to himself that such a man could only be a coward and a creep. The eighth was wearing glasses. The ninth was shivering with cold . . .

In such circumstances, there was no way he could make any reasoned choices. He simply had to choose at random.

He decided to close his eyes for a little while and count silently to 100. And when he’d get to 100, he should open his eyes and bash into the first man standing right in front of him.

‘This way it’s fair,’ Kosef J said to himself.

He closed his eyes and counted to 100. Around number 10 he said ‘Good God, have I gone completely mad?’ Around number 23 he said, ‘We are all animals,’ and around 45, ‘I should be ashamed, I should sink into the ground of shame and just stay there, and drown in the mud.’ Around 70 he said ,‘They turned us into beasts, no less.’ Around 82 he noted, ‘I should leave here as soon as possible, I should go to town and try to hide there.’ Around 87 he said, ‘I haven’t yet written to my mother, I wonder what she’d have to say?’ Around 91 he observed, ‘This is no good, this is absurd, this is a really dirty and cowardly business.’ Around number 94 he said to himself, ‘They will throw themselves at me and rip me into pieces, rightly so.’ Around 96 he stated briefly, ‘I want to die.’ Around number 97 he said to himself, trembling, ‘Perhaps he’d also hit me.’ Around number 99 he simply stated, ‘It’s pointless.’

He opened his eyes and bashed into someone, hitting a man just under his left ear. The man from cell number 50 wobbled under the impact but carried on walking. As soon as he had hit the man, Kosef J could himself feel the vibrating impact of his strike. One could only hear the footsteps of the people circling the inner courtyard. Kosef J had the impression that he had actually hit himself. He was dumbfounded, livid and with leaden feet. He kept following the man from cell number 50 with his gaze. The man would stick to an even pace, and keep the same distance of two footsteps from the inmate in front. He stopped wobbling but continued to look lower and lower at the ground.

Kosef J suddenly heard a kind of sinister laughter in his mind. As if reacting to an unseen signal, the first six prisoners headed towards the lift and went up to their cells. The lift came back, empty. Then the next six prisoners headed towards the lift and went up to their cells. The lift returned, empty again. After exactly fifteen minutes, all prisoners went up to their cells, one group after the other. Kosef J was the last one to go up, so he proceeded to lock all the cells.

Next, he huddled up in the liftcage, without even putting his mattress down, and tried to fall asleep. His body was shaking, and when he swallowed his saliva, he found it rather sweetly tasting for some reason.