2

The first thing Kosef J noticed when he woke up was his cell door left ajar. He sat up and looked around carefully. The objects in the cell appeared in a blur, yet he did his best to identify them. A terrible fear nestled in his throat when he realized how late it was. The light seeping through the narrow cell window indicated lunchtime. Kosef J jumped to his feet and rushed to the wall with the window. He hooked his hands into the bars and, propping himself up on his knees, managed to lift his chin above the lower edge of the window.

The inmates were working in the prison’s kitchen garden.

Kosef J got down from the window and rubbed his palms together, disheartened. Finally, his brain decided to kickstart. If the detainees were working in the prison’s kitchen garden that meant, yes that meant that it was Sunday. Because it was only on Sundays, during recreation hours, that the detainees were allowed to work in the prison’s kitchen garden. Kosef J came instantly to grips with the entire anomaly of this morning. He remembered vividly that he did not get breakfast. Then he realized that he was now excluded from garden work as well, a work that the detainees loved because they were allowed to eat green beans and peas.

‘This isn’t right,’ Kosef J said to himself. The smell of cheap cigarettes in his cell made him sick. His whole mouth was a wound, his lips were burning, and on the tip of his tongue he could detect a few loose leaves of bitter tobacco. Yet he was allowed to sleep straight through Sunday morning, something that had never happened before. The latter thought brought some calm to him, together with the feeling of being well rested. He had never felt so well rested and so lucid before. And he had never felt a greater urge to work in the kitchen garden.

He walked to the door left ajar and surveyed the part of the corridor within view. The entire floor was deadly silent. Utterly perplexed, Kosef J waited for a few minutes in front of the door left in such a careless state. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was supposed to do or not to do. After a while he decided to open the door a little further, so he could get a better look at the corridor. He stretched his arm out and pushed the door gently. He found it beyond belief that the door didn’t display any resistance. He got to look down the corridor, like he wanted, but he couldn’t see it in its entirety. After a while, he decided to open the door properly and try to take in the whole corridor.

The corridor was deserted. At its end, the door leading to the lift was left ajar, too. Kosef J thought that after all, if things were the way they were, he could perhaps allow himself a short walk on the corridor. He slid past the walls, looking into the other cells. Nobody, nowhere. He got to the end of the corridor, where the lift was. Once there, he stopped, changed his mind and turned around. He found himself in his cell again, more confused than ever. Once more, he clenched the bars on his window and gazed outside.

The detainees were still working briskly in the prison’s kitchen garden. It was a sunny day and some had taken their shirts off.

Kosef J experienced a sense of envy, even begrudgement. His stomach gave clear signs of unease. A skipped breakfast was almost catastrophic. Hunger was grinding him not so much in his stomach but in his brain, unleashing a chain of queries and a sensation of total discontent. Kosef J was overcome with profound sadness, especially because there was no one to tell him what to do. It was obvious that something new was happening, something concerning him and his future, but he didn’t know what that was.

‘Mr Hoss!’ Kosef J shouted, standing in the doorway of his cell, hoping that the old prison guard would hear him from wherever he was, such as the lift tower, for instance.

No one answered, so Kosef J placed his palms around his mouth to form a trumpet, and shouted again: ‘Mr Prison Guard! Mr Prison Guard, this is me, Kosef J!’

He would have liked to continue: Mister Prison Guard, what the hell, this is me, surely you know who I am.

‘Mr Hoss, can I go to the kitchen garden?’ Kosef J asked again, delighted that it occurred to him to ask for permission.

No response this time either. But Kosef J was suddenly feeling more confident. The fact that he did ask for permission gave him the conviction that he didn’t do anything wrong. Basically, he wasn’t formally forbidden to go to the kitchen garden on a Sunday. He had been carrying out Sunday gardening duties for a few good years now and always proved to be a conscientious and diligent fellow.

Sure of himself, he headed towards the lift. He had never used the lift unescorted. He checked out the six or seven buttons corresponding to the various floors. He pushed the button with the arrow pointing upward and the lift rose to him. He entered the liftcage, which reminded him of his own cell, closed the safety railing, and pressed the button marked zero. The lift jerked into motion. Kosef J felt sick. He squeezed his stomach with his fists and huddled in a corner. He was disgusted with the thought of throwing up in the lift and tried to suppress the urge. He held his breath and tightened his jaws. The lift came to a halt but Kosef J didn’t dare stand up. His stomach suddenly felt very heavy. Something was poking him from within, filling him up with a gluey and poisonous liquid. Kosef J closed his eyes, clenched his teeth even stronger and huddled up even more. He was shaking all over and his muscles tightened.

The lift door was suddenly propped open and Deputy Fabius’s head appeared in the doorway.

‘Do you need to puke?’ Fabius asked, unperturbed, as if the lift’s sole purpose had been to transport people about to get sick to the ground floor.

‘Yes,’ groaned Kosef J.

‘Come with me to the lavatory,’ Fabius said, helping Kosef J to his feet.

The two men dragged themselves along the corridor, hanging on to one another. Fabius, limping and gasping from the effort, and Kosef J in pain and just about to explode. This was the first time Kosef J set foot on this corridor, yet he was able to figure out that Fabius was taking him to the lavatory reserved for prison guards. He felt overwhelmed by a strange pride, which spread all over his body despite the fact that he was shivering in pain and feeling quite nauseous.

Fabius helped him to throw up, holding him by the back of his neck. Kosef J had the impression that he was pouring all his guts out, one by one. Sweat was streaming down his neck and face, while tears borne by the effort mingled with sweat. Fabius tried to calm him down:

‘Almost there, Mr Kosef, almost there.’

But Kosef J continued to throw up over and over again, and kept on groaning until his groan began to echo, absolutely convinced that he would be vomiting like this until the end of his days. This was the moment when Fabius, holding him by the nape and shoulders, advised him that, as of that morning, he was a free man.