33

As the weather went from bad to worse people got increasingly agitated and unpredictable. The prisoners got kitted out with warm winter outfits. Kosef J was following with envy the row of cheerful men buzzing in front of the clothing-supply room. For the duration of a day, the entire penal colony experienced the elation of having their clothes changed. The short, stocky and cheerful man was, however, transformed by this occasion into a short, ailing and sombre man. Each and every jacket and fur cap he brought out from the bowels of the clothing-supply room only deepened his wounds. He no longer dared to look people in the eye. With a trembling hand, he’d pass on their regulation equipment, grinding his teeth along the way. By the end of the day he had a gaunt face and red eyes, wide with fear, as if he’d been a witness to some terrible drama.

Kosef J was perplexed on this occasion, too. He was on the verge of desperation when he saw that even the guards and soldiers would receive their waterproof jackets and woollen socks and gloves. Discontent was surging in his soul, as if he was a child beaten up and unjustly driven away from home. He didn’t have the guts to join he queue and thus try to obtain his dues, since he was unsure what his dues were. He decided to pay a visit to the short, stocky and cheerful man, now turned ailing and sombre.

‘Have you seen all this? Have you?’ The ailing and sombre man charged at him as he came in.

Kosef J could guess what the ailing and sombre man was hinting at and said yes.

‘And what are your thoughts?’ The short, ailing and sombre man asked, shaking his clenched fists.

Kosef J didn’t want to reveal much, concerned that he might touch on a nerve. He simply said, ‘What could they possible be?’ and pulled a face in disgust. Seeing this indication of disgust, the man eased up a little, though he kept revolving round the room and kicking into the piles of uniforms brought back in return for the winter ones.

‘Look at this mess!’ The man cried out as he came to a halt in the middle of the room, arms akimbo.

Kosef J was unsure how to steer the conversation towards his kit. He simply said, ‘The cold weather is coming,’ but immediately realized that he’d made a major mistake. The short, ailing and sombre man exploded. Where had they come across this issue with the cold weather? Who had planted this business with the cold weather into their heads? How come they knew it all? Or, better still, how come they knew it all when it came to some matters but not others? Was Kosef J in a position to offer a satisfactory response to this question?

No, Kosef J was unable to respond to this question, but he was interested in finding out who did the short, ailing and sombre man mean when he said they?

Who did he mean? He meant all of them. Because all closed their eyes to something terrible, something that was unfolding right there, in front of their very eyes. Because everyone was complacent in that environment, in that disarray. Could that place be still called a penal colony? Could those people be called guards? Could the prisoners be still called prisoners? What kind of curse could have possibly been cast upon the management? What sort of underground pressures could make management tolerate such a state of affairs?

‘What state of affairs?’ Kosef J babbled.

The short, ailing and sombre man threw himself on the pile of summer gear. He was lying there head down, hands under his belly, looking like a man tormented by mangled entrails. Yes, underground pressure was so strong that it had engulfed even the time for truth. It was late now. Too late for truth to matter still. Everyone was waiting for the ultimate collapse, for both parties to collapse. No one could survive this collapse, since everything was already under the guise of dissolution. Jackets kept vanishing from the prison. Others wouldn’t notice this because they were only interested in people. They only cared for the overall headcount to be always the same. But they failed to spot the jackets. They failed to see the KIT. They had no idea that every winter, for years on end, over half of the jackets would just vanish, although the number of prisoners stayed the same. Where would these people in jackets go to, and how come new people would take their places, people without jackets? Why would management overlook such an extraordinary loss of GOODS? To be fair, in spring when the prisoners would hand in their winter equipment, the jackets would also miraculously appear. But in what state! In what filth! How ragged and torn the lining would always be! Wasn’t this enough of a warning? A warning for undeniable managerial agony, with as yet unforeseen consequences? Had he, Kosef J realized that everything was lost already?

After a few days of twisted discussions and hard bargaining, Kosef J managed to buy from the short man a cast-off jacket, with its lining all in tatters. Putting it on and checking himself out in the mirror, Kosef J was overwhelmed by a sense of embarrassement and injustice. He had never been so badly dressed or more confused. He almost wished he could return to his cell for at least three days, only to enjoy a few moments of peace.

Franz Hoss couldn’t recall an uglier start to the winter, not in the last twenty years. Fabius claimed that seriously nasty winters tended to come around every seven years. Yes, Franz Hoss agreed to this view, but he hadn’t quite seen such a start to the winter as this one. Kosef J, on the other hand, was of the opinion that all winters he had experienced while at the colony had been terrible.

‘Well, this will be worse,’ Franz Hoss observed.

Fabius couldn’t agree with this. It wasn’t the beginning of the winter that mattered. What really mattered was the middle and the end. Winters would get increasingly more terrible as they drew out.

‘Well,’ Franz Hoss noted, ‘this one will be long and terrible.’

The old guard was more or less right. Frost had arrived earlier than usual, and because of the cold weather that exceeded regulation limits, prisoners were no longer taken out for work.

Night after night the two guards would warm up by drinking mulled wine in Rozette’s kitchen. Kosef J would finish with the dishwashing in the dining hall and come over to join them.

‘How’s it going?’ Franz Hoss would ask.

Kosef J would never be quite sure what this question really meant. He’d respond though, by saying, ‘Thanks, well,’ or ‘How could it not?’ or ‘Well, how indeed?’ The two guards would pour him some wine and ask him to tell them yet again about his audience with the colonel. Kosef J would tell them for the tenth, fifteenth or hundredth time how his meeting with the prison governor went. The two guards would start to re-examine every single moment of the meeting yet again. No one had seen the colonel for a good few weeks; Kosef J had been in fact the last person the colonel had spoken to. All orders arrived on small slips of paper, seemingly torn out of school books. It was obvious that something bad was going on. The colonel was angry. One could tell this from the short and sharp orders, too. Something had changed in the colonel’s soul. After all, if the colonel had opted for that form of reclusion and loneliness, then it was obvious that loneliness could only be a response of some sort.

‘Yes, but a response to what exactly?’ Fabius tried to jog his memory. Franz Hoss carried on in a pensive mood and stared into the red mouth of the electric oven. The colonel stopped appearing in public. He was probably deeply marked by something that had happened at the colony. Something wasn’t working properly at the colony. Something was rotten.

‘Yes, but what?’ Fabius wondered.

Franz Hoss didn’t know what to say to this. Hadn’t they, Fabius and Kosef, noticed that people had changed? Couldn’t they see that people were no longer the same? A few good years had passed since he, Franz Hoss, was no longer keeping track of faces. He’d have never got them wrong in his youth. He’d know all prisoners both by appearance and number. Now, however, he’d only recall them by number. By number and only that, because something was going on with people’s faces.

‘Yes, but what?’ Fabius continued to muse.

Franz Hoss didn’t know how to answer this question either. He only knew that people would change face. They’d simply become someone else. He’d been seriously shocked by this at the beginning. It would regularly happen that in some cells, in place of some people others would turn up. In place of a young man, for instance, a much less young man would suddenly appear overnight, and in place of an elderly man, an even older one would at times turn up. Instead of a gaunt man with swollen eyes, another man would appear, all wrinkles and nearly blind. It took him a long time to speak to anyone about these oddities because he didn’t have the courage. After all numbers were always the same and, in principle, nothing really bad happened. Also, he hadn’t mentioned all this because he’d considered them mere hallucinations. But these hallucinations kept proliferating. There was something going on that went beyond what seemed to be mere hallucinations. Something bizarre that could potentially have serious consequences.

‘Yes, but how serious?’ Fabius cried out.

‘I don’t know,’ Franz Hoss replied, defeated. ‘I simply have no idea.’

Kosef J listened to the two old guards with an air of bewilderment and respect. He didn’t dare to share his views although Franz Hoss and Fabius would ask him from time to time about his take on all these events. He didn’t belive any of this. What could he possibly believe?

‘Perhaps it’s better this way,’ Franz Hoss muttered and then started praising Kosef J: at least Kosef J would always stay the same. Staying true to yourself was no mean feat, especially in such times of uncertainty.

Kosef J shrugged and modestly lowered his forehead.

‘How about the colonel?’ Fabius continued. ‘What could possibly be on the colonel’s mind? What could possibly reside in the soul of that man so loved by everyone?’

No one had any idea about what was going on in the colonel’s soul. But the human soul as such had continued to remain a mystery, especially the soul of refined and delicate individuals. These have tended to remain a secret to all, and, in Franz Hoss’s view, the soul of Kosef J was a mystery, too.

‘When I think about the fact that you could have easily left, but stayed on to do what you are doing . . . ,’ the old guard observed.