And then one morning a keeper who had been attracted by the noise, shooed the birds away and swore in a gruff voice, warning me that it was against the rules to throw crumbs on the floor, as well as to keep bread in my pockets or in my cell.
Once a week the prisoners are privileged to wait in line to see the warden, to protest against any injustice, to recount a grievance, or to ask a favor.
Like a dozen or more I stood waiting for the quick-lunch justice of the Czar of the penitentiary. After a while he appeared, accompanied by a tall young secretary who jotted down our names and the details of the business on hand. Walking slowly, with bent shoulders, hands behind his back, the warden seemed to be about seventy-five years old. His face was furrowed with irregular, meaningless wrinkles, and he had small shifty eyes, with white hair and a white beard. He had a habit of staring at the convict who was speaking to him, and suddenly bending one ear toward the speaker as if he were partially deaf.
The warden's answers came quickly, in the jerky, high pitched voice of the Sistine Chapel cantors, and often breaking under the strain of anger. A convict suffering from locomotor ataxia, leaning on a walking stick, hanging on to a companion, begged for permission to get a pair of crutches ... his mother would get them for him.
"What for?" queried the warden, innocently.
"Because I can't walk with this stick," answered the convict.
"Then why don't you get a cab!" said the warden. And he snickered and then coarsely guffawed.
Again he furiously upbraided another petitioner.
"Where do you think you are? At the Waldorf-Astoria? Next thing they'll be asking me to get them flowers, candy and theatre tickets. I am here to see that you are punished. See?"
After having thus vented his spleen he uttered some alleged witticism at the expense of the helpless convict, and showed a great appreciation of his own humor, uncovering a row of yellow, brown, half-decayed teeth in a sneering grin most unpleasant to behold.