I
I am locked in the old prison for the night—my first night in the penitentiary.
A bed made of an iron frame with coarse canvas stretched across it, two cheap cotton blankets, a straw pillow, a large covered pail and a drinking cup, complete the total of my furniture. It is the simple life with a vengeance. The bed takes up the whole length of the cell; there is no room for walking except sideways from the bucket to the cell door. Sitting in a lateral position on the couch, with my back touching the wall, I can place my legs on the opposite wall only in a bended posture.
A tier man comes to the cell shouting "Water." While pouring it into my cup from a large can I peer at his face through the bars. His pale features, beaked nose, cruel mouth and yellow eyes make him seem like some tropical carrion-eating bird. I am so fascinated by his depraved and satanic look that I allow water from the cup to drop onto the floor.
He utters curses, "not loud, but deep," and returns to mop the floor.
I try to interest myself in an old magazine, but my mind seems unable to concentrate in a continued effort; I read, but my imagination wanders away in an interminable circle without beginning or end.
The cold is intense; the blankets, thin and gray, afford no protection. My whole body is shivering and shaking uncontrollably as if in high fever, my teeth rattle like castanets accompanying a Spanish fandango. I light a cigar and watch the smoke curl slowly, lazily across the cell until it appears like a veil between the ceiling and the floor and finally settles over my couch like a pale, transparent shroud.
Evidently there is no ventilation, but I continue to puff away, hoping to fumigate and kill the fetid odor in the cell.
Everything is still except for the occasional moaning of a sick man. Finally the electric light at the foot of the bed is extinguished, and I am left in the dark.