28

Outside, at some distance from the steps to the entrance, he found Fabius. The old guard looked rather absent-minded, and was leaning against the wall, smoking. Next to him, there was a midget of a man dressed in prison uniform crouched to the ground. For a short while Kosef J was undecided. He couldn’t tell whether Fabius was waiting for him or he just happened to have some business there. He didn’t move for a few seconds, hoping that Fabius would motion to him. But the guard looked rather blank and seemed to completely ignore him.

Realizing that the old guard wouldn’t react, Kosef J decided to head towards him. Fabius was rather reluctant to take his eyes off the invisible spot he had been hooked on. The midget was holding his head in between the palms and his knees under the chin. ‘How skinny he is,’ Kosef J mused looking at the man.

The old guard was staring at Kosef J without saying a word, so Kosef J pointed at the midget and asked:

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I’m taking him to the infirmary,’ Fabius said in a bored voice.

Registering a human voice in his presence, the midget lifted his head slightly. The prisoner was indeed extremely weak, with a grey face, and an ugly, livid and treacly swell under the left ear. The man seemed to recognize Kosef J and smiled.

‘Is it very bad?’ Kosef J asked again.

‘No,’ Fabius replied. After a few seconds, the guard clarified: ‘I mean, I don’t know.’

Kosef J couldn’t handle the benign gaze of the midget, so he produced a sort of a wave and was about to leave but Fabius suddenly grabbed him by the sleeve.

‘Mr Kosef,’ he said in a miserable voice and with a gaze that rivalled that of the midget, ‘help me to take him.’

They both held on to the weakened prisoner and lifted him up, then grabbed him under his armpits and started to drag him towards the infirmary. The man seemed to be pleased with this outcome and, perhaps wanting to show his gratitude, kept turning his head from one side to the other, smiling.

‘He isn’t exactly light,’ Fabius observed without wanting to start a conversation.

Kosef J coughed. They arrived at the waiting room and planted the weakened man onto a chair.

‘There,’ Fabius noted and disappeared along the corridor, possibly in search of a doctor.

Kosef J had no idea what to do. The weak and smiling prisoner kept sliding down the chair, as if he’d had a soft spine. So Kosef J decided to stay with him to support him. He’d hold the man tight by the shoulders, who’d keep lifting his head every now and then and gratefully smile at Kosef J.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Kosef J burst out after about a ten-minute wait. There was a perfect silence in the infirmary. Kosef J looked around hoping to find another chair but he couldn’t see any. As he was holding the man by the shoulder he found himself on the side with the swelling, and his eyes couldn’t refrain from gazing at the throbbing spot that looked as if it sheltered a small and frightened animal. He could feel his stomach crunch into a ball of hate. Where had Fabius disappeared without a word? What role had he been given, obliged to support everyone and expected to be a jack of all trades? He hadn’t even been asked to stay with the midget, he was simply left with him. And what about the midget, how come he had suddenly turned so limp to be unable to sit on a chair?

Overwhelmed with anger, Kosef J took his hand off the man’s shoulders. As if his body had experienced a shock upon being left without any help, all its muscles had drawn out their last resources and the body stiffened.

‘So he can manage!’ a voice howled in Kosef J’s brain. The irony was that rather than making him feel sorry, the sad state of the midget was actually getting on his nerves. Besides, the man’s head had stiffened while leaning to the right, so the swelling found itself displayed in its brutal and somewhat ostentatious fullness. Kosef J tore himself off from the midget glued to the chair, but to his enormous surprise, he didn’t head towards the exit but to the end of the corridor in search of Fabius. He furiously opened all doors on his way. Behind most doors there was a dormitory, each dormitory larger than the other, well lit and tidy, with beds placed at the same distance from one another. The beds had been made up by a pedantic hand, the sheets perfectly fitted. Yet there wasn’t a single person to be seen anywhere.

Just as he was about to close the door, Kosef J suddenly heard his name being called from the fifth or sixth dorm. This was in fact more of a howl, reminding him of something rather bewildering that took place not long before. He returned to the dorm and looked around. From a bed in corner of the dorm, an arm was waving at him. Kosef J went closer. The man sat up, supporting himself on his elbows.

‘How are you doing?’ the man asked in a cheerful voice.

Kosef J could see that the man was toothless. He recalled that this same mouth had taken his defence at a time when very many other mouths had barked all sorts of accusations against him. What he couldn’t figure out was how come this man had ended up in the infirmary.

‘Do you recognize me?’ the man giggled, and then made some space on the edge of his bed: ‘Please take a seat.’

Kosef J made an effort to smile at the toothless man. He took a seat on his bed. The man laughed with a childish sense of happiness.

‘Was it the committee that sent you?’ he asked.

Kosef J opened his mouth to respond but the man got in early.

‘It’s awful, really awful. Did you see what they’d done?’

‘What do you mean?’ Kosef J asked, just to ask something.

‘This is no democracy,’ the man said grabbing him by the sleeves with both hands. ‘This is a gathering of lackeys and toadies. I have been fighting for two years to finally get here.’

‘Two years!’ Kosef J cried out to endear himself to the man.

‘Two years,’ the toothless man whistled. ‘The things I’d done for this, good God! If you could only imagine, Mr Kosef, but . . . Now that we are here among us, well, I chose to end up without any teeth only to get away.’

‘Oh, no,’ Kosef J said again, mainly out of complacency.

‘Couldn’t you tell?’ the man jumped up, looking somewhat frightened.

‘Of course,’ Kosef J confirmed.

‘Mr Kosef, Mr Kosef,’ the man shouted again, pulling Kosef J again with both hands. ‘Genuine democracy, the way I’ve known it, is gone! You know what I mean? All there’s left are some unfounded principles that are good for nothing. And that’s that. When people are good for nothing, their laws are good for nothing, too. Have you got any idea how much I had to pay to get here?’

‘You paid?!’ Kosef J cried out.

‘Yes, I did pay, and it was absolutely diabolical, but I managed. There, if you are no good at scheming, you are completely finished.’

The man was hellbent on chatting to Kosef J, holding on to him with all his might while talking. Did Kosef J realize what danger had he been through back then? There weren’t that many votes for, just over 50 per cent. A reason for this was also that it had been a cold and sordid day and they were all rather jumpy. Yet it was this very detail that the toothless man was unwilling to accept. In a proper democracy, especially in case the life and death of someone is at stake, you are not allowed to be influenced by a bad day. Irritated people in a democracy? Abhorrent. And yet, in a democracy of hunger, like this one, there was no way for people not to be irritated. Was Kosef J aware that it was possible for people to die just because of a rainy day? Such things had happened. It had also happened that a candidate had been rejected because people were jumpy and hence tempted to vote against. And one more thing: they are all afraid of yet another mouth to feed. Kosef J had turned into just that after the positive vote, an additional mouth to feed.

‘Some want to hate until they drop dead!’ the toothless man barked. ‘And they’ll hate me too until the day they die because I managed to escape.’

Kosef J couldn’t make any sense of this. How did the toothless man manage to escape? Oh, could it be that Kosef J wasn’t up to date with the ways of the committee? No, he wasn’t, and in fact he didn’t know much about the committee to start with. That’s bad, really bad. The committee was the forum that implemented in a democratic fashion the tasks decided in the day-to-day gatherings of the community. The committee was elected twice a year, through a draw. Same thing for the megaphone man. Megaphone? What megaphone? What, he, Kosef J, didn’t recall the megaphone? Oh yes, there was something. Someone was always howling into a megaphone. Every day someone else was chosen by a coin toss and tasked with taking on the megaphone. The meetings had to be led by someone, and they were led by the megaphone man. Unfortunately, at the meeting where Kosef J was meant to be received into the fold, the megaphone happened to end up in the hands of a weak and inexperienced man. Yet these were the inherent risks of democracy. It was much better this way, allowing the megaphone to pass from one hand to another by way of a draw. What would have happened if the megaphone had been taken over by a single person? As a rule of thumb, the megaphone man became powerful for the day. The megaphone man was entitled to interrupt meetings or interrupt speakers, and to allow things to develop at their will or to instil a certain sense of direction. In a sense, Kosef J had been lucky that on the day of being received into the fold, the megaphone had been handled by a less than capable and possibly extremely hungry man. For this reason perhaps, the megaphone man had found it acceptable to interrupt discussions, and he had proposed a vote to be taken so he could get away early and carry on rummaging among the rubbish in the hope of finding food.

Kosef J stopped listening. It was clear to him that the man was delirious, yet he couldn’t detach himself so easily from the grip of the toothless man. He continued to look at him and nod all along, although the man’s words would disperse in his head without making any mark whatsoever.

The toothless man had serious reservations about this lottery principle. Democracy shouldn’t have been a lottery, and yet this wretched principle was situated at its foundation since no other more suitable principle could be found. Even those who were ill were exchanged following this method.

‘What do you by mean those who were ill?’ Kosef J jumped up.

Those ill in the community, in the free world that is. Every so often, whenever there was an opportunity, they were exchanged with the patients at the prison infirmary. Obviously they went for people who showed signs of recovery and who had thus the chance of holding out outside the infirmary.

Kosef J laughed mawkishly.

The toothless man didn’t appreciate this. Why was Kosef J laughing? Did he object to this particular practice of the committee? In case he did, he was free to make this publicly known at any committee meeting.

No, Kosef J had no objections. But what would happen to these patients from the prison infirmary?

These patients would become free men. The exchange was basically perfectly fair. Those who had fallen ill in the community had the chance of rebuilding their health and hence could save their lives, while the patients from the prison colony were offered an opportunity to rebuild their personality and hence, in a sense, also save their lives. Not a single patient who had been exchanged in this way into the free world had regretted, even for a second, their place left behind at the infirmary. Many of them had of course been initially confused and incredulous. After all they had been kidnapped in order to be taken into the free world. After being given the relevant explanation, they’d understand though.

Would some of them die in the process?

At times. There were losses on either side. Even when making it to the infirmary, some of those taken ill in the community wouldn’t last long. Life was hard, and the squalor stifling. Hunger and old age wouldn’t spare anyone. Yet they were adamant to carry on with their fight. They had developed this method of fighting, and would fight in this fashion. Would Kosef J be able to suggest a better option?

No.

Unfortunately, as he had mentioned already, there were very few places at the infirmary. In fact, it wasn’t a matter of few places but of few patients. The prison guards, those beasts, wouldn’t want to accept that prisoners could become ill. Or, they’d only declare them at the very final stages of their illness. And even then they’d have had to wait for the patient to recover a little before they could engineer the exchange. At times, those finally brought in as patients would die after two or three days at the infirmary, owing to the serious state in which they had arrived. Such deaths represented a massive loss for the community. For this reason they would make sure that the dying were identified early on and exchanged in good time with patients who had a decent chance for recovery. In this way even the dying had an easier end, knowing that their final moments were spent in the free world. The irony was that, from time to time, the so-called dying had miraculously recovered, being spurred on by their new-found status as free men. Such things had indeed happened, perhaps twice or three times in the last twenty years. Thus, these occurences proved that the idea of freedom was rooted in occult forces, able to revive even the dead.

If so, why didn’t the idea of freedom manage to heal those already free?

Perhaps because most of those who’d come down with illness in freedom were toadies and profiteers. Also because many of those in the free world pretended to be ill and became willingly ill, only to have an excuse to get to the infirmary. Because the infirmary had turned into an obsession for the free world. The infirmary had become a dream, an illusion, a chimera. Who wouldn’t have wanted to enjoy a better meal, to skip work and stay all day in bed, lying between clean sheets? Everyone. They were all obsessed with this possibility. And many would go mad because they’d keep thinking about this too much. Half of the community was put on the wait list for the infirmary, catalogued as ill, which was a proper shame on the face of democracy. They’d take advantage of the fact that no one had the authority to establish the existence and seriousness of any illness. In order to put an end to this tendency, the community had abolished the principle of seriousness as far as illnesses were concerned. Future partients were exchanged on the basis of draws, just like all other events in the life of the free world were influenced by lottery principles. Thus, those ill would await their turn for years. He, the toothless man, happened to get lucky. Following this principle, many genuinely ill people were of course sacrificed and they’d give up their ghost. What matters though, is that the principle wasn’t sacrificed. Moreover, democracy wasn’t sacrificed either. For this reason, people were motivated by survival and not by dehumanizing laziness in the infirmary.

How about the guards? Wouldn’t they notice anything?

What should they notice? Guards were dealing in numbers, not people. For them what mattered was that a certain number of people should be present in a certain number of beds. According to the guards, there were no individuals, only masses and quantities. No guard would remember for longer than a second the face of a detainee. This was a horrific aspect of truth, yet one that allowed for the saving of many lives.

By this point the toothless man got really tired. His hands loosened their grip and Kosef J could finally free himself and stand up.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘In this case tell the committee the following: at the moment there are twenty-seven people at the infirmary, fifteen of ours and the rest theirs. Two of their people are in a severe state and could die from one day to another. Five people are an utter waste of resources because they have completely recovered but pretend to be still ill. These five and the dying could be exhanged anytime, including tonight. Another prisoner will be brought in today. Got it? Repeat!’

Kosef J did repeat all this, and the toothless man nodded after each sentence.

‘Let’s carry on,’ he continued. ‘The prisoner who’s coming in today doesn’t have anything serious. Someone had hit him by accident, and this is why he has a swelling of some sort behind the ear. He could also be exchanged fairly soon, in a day or two. Note that cell number 50 in the tile pavilion is empty, so someone could be put in there to recover.’

‘What?’ Kosef J froze.

‘What’s what?’ the toothless man asked.

Kosef J mumbled and had the impression that he had goosebumps all over. What had happened to the prisoner in cell number 50? He had acquired a swelling behind the ear. How come? Well, these beastly guards tend to hit in the most painful places. But how can one’s neck swell so badly after just one blow? Who knows what this man actually had behind his ear. Everyone has a weak spot. Perhaps this man had his weak spot right behind his ear.

Kosef J felt dizzy and sat down at the edge of the bed.

‘Repeat,’ the toothless man insisted.

He did.

‘Now,’ the man continued, ‘in case they want to exchange anyone tonight they should send the kid to let me know. In today’s bins there were soiled bandages and bits of dressing. The cook, who is a bitch, had stolen two portions of food from the infirmary trolley. Repeat.’

Josef K repeated.

‘At least two of our people are also almost recovered, although I’m not entirely sure of that. Anyway, should there be many people on the wait list, these could be exchanged too. Got it? Bedsheets have been put up to dry right behind the kitchen, so at least one could be easily stolen without any problems. A window in salon number 8 was smashed by the wind and broke into pieces. Half a window is still in good condition though, and could be taken away. Repeat.’

Kosef J repeated all this and the toothless man seemed pleased enough with what he heard.

‘Now hurry up,’ he said. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, tell them that I’m in need of nothing.’