He pulled a long face.
"That won't go far. But every evening at eight a boy comes round with the scraps left over from the Officers' Restaurant. Otherwise you will live on bread and tomatoes."
"What about bedding?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Bedding!" he said, looking at me as if I was a perfect idiot. "Do you mean to say you have come here without any bedding?"
I admitted I had, but felt too exhausted to explain.
One was utterly lost in that dungeon. Even when the war ended, would one be found? I doubted it. Yet as I would naturally never reveal the forger's name, it seemed unlikely that I would get out. . . . Then I thought of my companions. I imagined them happily together, in some place where one could see the sky. . . . As for me, I might languish down here for ever. Obviously something should be done.
But what? I rose (rather hastily, for on looking between the planks of my bed, I noticed that the crack was entirely filled with battalions of board beasts in line, waiting for a night attack), and began to pace our narrow and nasty apartment. A group of prisoners were cooking some pitiful mess by the window. Four others played poker with a very greasy pack. One was twiddling his thumbs very fast, and I suddenly recollected that he had been twiddling his thumbs very fast half an hour ago, when I had first seen him. The lonely Jew was removing lice from the seams of his coat, and throwing his quarry airily about the room.
Then I noticed that besides ourselves, there were other prisoners even more unfortunate. There had been so much to see in my new surroundings that I had not noticed the people in chains. . . . One side of our room opened out on to some half-dozen cubicles, each of which contained a prisoner in chains. These cells had no light or ventilation. They measured six feet in length by four in breadth. In solitude and obscurity, fettered by wrist and ankle to shackles that weighed a hundredweight, human beings lived there—and are still living for aught I know—for months and even years, until death released them. These men were ravenous and verminous, but they had by no means lost their hope and faith. I shall never hear the hymn—
"Thy rule, O Christ, begin, Break with Thine iron rod The tyrannies of sin . . ."