Why should my trained mind crumble like a match box and be destroyed under physical torture, mental distress and moral humiliation?
Is not suffering the greatest of all tests, necessary, purifying and regenerating? Why not wait patiently and courageously for the day of reckoning, worthy of the gods on Olympus?
I count my heart-beats to get an idea of the passing of time. The minutes seem to have frozen on the fountain of time; they drip laboriously as if each and every one of them represented eons of memories and experiences; as if each was attempting to demonstrate that in the accounting of eternity they were as significant as centuries. In a supreme physical effort of my will I grip the bars and grit my teeth to stop the impending and foolish disintegration of my mind. The waves of despair, the racking pain, the insane delirium are slowly beaten back into submission, like a defeated army. The imagination is disciplined, the will has thrown the switch and illuminated the real inward self, as I stand watching, through the steel bars, the windows on the opposite wall. I feel calm, serene and strong.
Of a sudden, as if to illustrate my state of mind, out of the gray, blue mist, a large, luminous, rose disk slowly arises beyond the opening.
The sun, the glorious sun! Silently it looms up, magnificent through the haze, like a mirage announcing the advent of better things and more hopeful days.
The same sun I had seen arise in India, Egypt, Italy, Mexico, in many frames of classical and tropical beauty; but never has it seemed to me so divine, so perfect, so precious as on that awful morning.
II
At 6 A. M. a quick, metallic carol announces a new day—and a Sunday. With a clanking noise and in swift succession the cell doors are unlocked and on every tier the whole line of convicts walks along the galleries and down to the ground floor, to a long iron sink, divided into small dirty tubs that are filled with murky water.
Our ablutions are performed in rapid military style; those not strong or nimble enough to get near the crowded trough, before the command, "Back out," is shouted, have to return to their cells half-washed or dirty. Sometimes a laggard insists on finishing his washing; and then an angry voice assails him rudely: "Come on, you God damn bum, didn't yeh hear me? Back out!" And a guard "fans" him over the back with a club, pushing and shoving him all the way to the galleries, as a reminder to quicker obedience.
Back at the cells, every man stands at attention behind the door with hands on the bars, waiting for the keeper to count the men until he orders, "Close," and with a deafening noise every iron door bangs in unison. Then after a short rest the bell rings for breakfast, and we march into the mess hall.