Part 17 (1/2)

I knew exactly what I should look like when they found me. My hair would be long, falling over my shoulders, and my beard--not red, but white--would be down to my waist,--for people live for weeks on water, and my nails would be so long they would turn back again...

and my hands would be like claws, with the white bones showing through the skin, and the knuckles knotted and bruised. I remembered seeing a cat once that had been forgotten in a cellar... It had worn its claws off, scratching at the wall.

Then a chill seized me, and I began to s.h.i.+ver. That frightened me, so I made a bargain with myself--I must not think, I must walk. Thinking is what sends people crazy.

I got up then and began to pace up and down. Twelve feet each way was twenty-four feet. There were five thousand two hundred and eighty feet in a mile--so I would walk a mile before I stopped--I would walk a mile, and I would not think!

I started off on my mile walk, and held myself to it by force of will, one hundred and ten rounds. Once I lost the count and had to go back to where I did remember, and so it was really more than a mile.

But when it was done, and I sat down, beyond a little healthy tingling in my legs I did not feel at all different. I was listening--listening just the same.

Ted and I had agreed that if we were side by side, we would pound on the wall as a sign. Four knocks would mean ”I--am--all--right.” I pounded the wall four times, and listened. There was no response.

Then, for a minute, the horror seized me--Ted was dead--every one was dead--I was the only one left!

If the authorities in our prisons could once feel the horror of the dark cell when the overwrought nerves bring in the distorted messages, and the whole body writhes in the grip of fear,--choking, unreasoning, panicky fear,--they would abolish it forever.

After an eternity, it seemed, the key sounded in the lock and the guard came in, letting in a burst of light which made me blink. He came over to the window, swung open the iron door, and the cell was light!

”What time is it?” I asked him in German.

He knew his business--this guard. He answered not a word. What has a prisoner to do with time--except ”do” it. He handed me a broom--like a stable broom--and motioned me to sweep. It was done all too soon.

He then took me with him along the hall to the lavatory. At the far end of the hall and coming from the lavatory, another prisoner was being brought back with a guard behind him. His clothes hung loose on him, and he walked slowly. The light came from the end of the hall facing me, and I could not see very well.

When we drew near, a cry broke from him--

”Sim!” he cried. ”Good G.o.d!... I thought you were in Holland.”

It was Bromley!

Then the guard poked him in the back and sent him stumbling past me.

I turned and called to him, but my guard pushed me on.

I put in as much time was.h.i.+ng as I could, hoping that Ted would be brought out, but I did not see him that day or the next.

At last I had to go back, and as the guard shoved me in again to that infernal hole of blackness, he gave me a slice of bread. I had filled my pitcher at the tap.

This was my daily ration the first three days. I was hungry, but I was not sick, for I had considerable reserve to call upon, but when the fourth day came I was beginning to feel the weariness which is not exactly a pain, but is worse than any pain. I did not want to walk--it tired me, and my limbs ached as if I had _la grippe._ I soon learned to make my bread last as long as it would, by eating it in instalments, and it required some will-power to do this.

Thoughts of food came to torture me--when I slept, my dreams were all of eating. I was home again, and mother was frying doughnuts.... Then I was at the Harvest-Home Festival in the church, and downstairs in the bas.e.m.e.nt there were long tables set. The cold turkey was heaped up on the plates, with potatoes and corn on the cob; there were rows of lemon pies, with chocolate cakes and strawberry tarts. I could hear the dishes rattling and smell the coffee! I sat down before a plate of turkey, and was eating a leg, all brown and juicy--when I awakened.

There is a sense in which hunger sharpens a man's perceptions, and makes him see the truth in a clearer light--but starvation, the slow, gnawing starvation, when the reserve is gone, and every organ, every muscle, every nerve cries out for food--it is of the devil. The starving man is a brute, with no more moral sense than the gutter cat. His mind follows the same track--he wants food...