A Modern Purgatory

by Carlo de Fornaro

V

My skin has been itching for two days, and I attribute it to the coarse underwear and ill-fitting clothes. In my cell after the day's work I make a careful inspection and am quite frightened to find my whole body covered with red spots. Evidently I have caught some skin disease from those tattered old rags which have been worn by generations of unclean and diseased convicts. The thought of having to pass a year in a prison hospital is anything but cheerful.

I turn my thoughts to other things by trying to read a novel from the prison library. A slip had been left in the cell to be filled out with the name of any book that I might desire to read. In my innocence I put down "Shakespeare's plays or the Bible." A novel entitled "Truthful Jane" was left in their stead.

But I cannot read. And so I start instead to inspect my surroundings. The new cells compare very favorably with the cells of the old prison, which are really holes in the wall and reeking with the mysterious unwholesome smell of rat holes and graveyards.

At one end of the cell opposite the door are two small openings for ventilation; one at the top on the right hand side and the other at the bottom on the left. In trying to find out the depth and direction of the holes I plunge my arm into the opening, and my hand feels a square object. It is a small bible! I am delighted by the discovery. On the fly leaf there is some handwriting in pencil in a careful, intelligent hand: "To my successor: May this book while away your long and weary hours and make you forget your troubles and worries as it did to me. Don't forget to replace the book where you found it when you leave."

A tier man comes to the cells with a light for those who care to smoke. He is a pleasant-faced individual, quite polite and ready to do any small services within his limited powers. I find out that he has been condemned to a year for keeping back mail in the post office. The tier man who had made such a disagreeable impression on me that first night in the old prison, is a church thief.

My battered and rusty cup has been filled up with water. I am afraid to drink from it, as it might have been used by some consumptive or syphilitic convict. Necessity being a great inventor, I press some paper to the rim of the cup to prevent my lips from touching it.

As I walk up and down the cell I am always unconsciously trying to put my cold hands in my trousers pockets, only to discover over and over again that there are no pockets there, only one on the inside of the coat.

The clipping of my hair so close to the skin at the height of the cold season has brought a cold in the head. I have no handkerchief, and shall have to wait a whole month until they allow me to write to have a few sent by mail.

These apparent trifles, and all the nagging, idiotic rules, invented by senile commissions and wardens to torment the helpless captives of society, are always magnified by men brooding in the solitude of cells. But I have made up my mind not to permit anything to ruffle my equanimity, so I pick up some letters from friends and read and reread their cheering contents. If people who write to their unfortunate friends in prison only guessed how they yearned to receive those familiar scrawls, and how they are treasured and memorized, they would write oftener.

A night keeper walks by like a shadow, flashing a bull's eye lamp into the cells to catch us in any infringements of the rules.

There is only one rule tacked up on the walls, but the other 999 we have to guess or learn from fellow convicts. The list of rules which we have to find out at our own expense or from wiser convicts would fill up a small volume.

As there are no written rules, and nobody informs us of all the unwritten rules on our entrance here, as is done in Sing Sing, the thought comes to my mind that this apparent forgetfulness is really meant to give the warden and the keepers an unchallenged power of persecution over suspected and unruly convicts.

Most of the punishments inflicted by the warden are for infractions of rules which the newcomers are in entire ignorance of, and these infractions occur no matter how obedient and willing the new arrivals may be to keep within bounds of the prison laws. The foreigners, Italians, Slavs and Teutons, all those who do not know English and who cannot learn the rules from their fellow prisoners, are the greatest sufferers from this carelessness, whether it is intentional or otherwise.