“I will leave this open for an hour, then I’ll be back.”
I slowly opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by a bright, golden glow, too bright for my weak orbs. I had to shut them against the glare. Gradually, however, my pupils adjusted to the illumination and I was able to look around me without squinting and without pain. Even so, the cell was still gloomy, like twilight on a rainy day. An hour later the guard returned, or at least the voice sounded the same.
“Close your eyes again,” he instructed. “I am going to turn up the lights further.” I did so, and when he instructed me to do so, I opened my eyes slowly and cautiously. The tiny cubicle was flooded with a luminous glare, causing me to squint again. The radiance ringed the cell like a nimbus around a dark star, illuminating fully for the first time the interior of the tiny vault. I was appalled and sickened as I looked around. The walls were moist and crusted with slimy mold. The ceiling, too, glistened with moisture. The floor was filthy with excrement, and the bucket, unemptied for some time, teemed with maggots. The odious worms were also slithering around the floor.
I vomited.
It was perhaps another hour before the guard returned. This time he opened the door. “Come with me,” he ordered. I scrambled from the foul cave without hesitation, experiencing shooting pains in my neck, shoulders, arms and legs as I straightened up for the first time since my arrival. I had difficulty walking, but I waddled after the guard like a half-drunk duck, sometimes steadying myself by putting a hand against the wall.
He led me downstairs and into a sparsely furnished room.
“Stand here,” he ordered, and disappeared through an open door that led to another chamber. I turned, inspecting the room, marveling at its size and spaciousness after so long in my moldy burrow, and then stopped as I suddenly confronted the most hideous creature I had ever encountered.
It was a man. It had to be a man, but God in heaven, what manner of man was this? He was tall and emaciated, his head crowned by a dirty, unkempt thatch of hair that spilled to his waist, his face hidden by a filthy, matted beard that fell to his belly. Spittle drooled from the slash that was his mouth, and his eyes were wildly glowing coals in their sunken sockets. He was naked and his flesh was coated with filth, sores and scabs, lending it a leprous appearance. The nails of his fingers and toes were grown out, elongated and curved like the talons of a vulture. Indeed, he looked like a vulture. I shuddered as I regarded the apparition. I shuddered again as recognition loomed.
I was facing myself in a mirror.
I was still horrified at my appearance when the guard returned, clothing draped over his arm and a pair of shoes in his hand.
I recognized the apparel as mine, the clothes I was wearing when I was received in the prison. “Put these on,” said the guard brusquely, handing me the garments and dropping the shoes on the floor. “Can’t I shower and shave first, please?” I asked.
“No, put on the clothes,” he said, giving me a malevolent look. I hurriedly garbed my filthy frame in the clothes, which were now several sizes too large for me. My belt was missing. I clutched the trousers around my wasted stomach and looked at the guard. He stepped into the next room and returned with a length of cotton rope. I cinched the waist of my trousers with that.
Almost immediately two gendarmes appeared, one of them carrying an array of restraints. One of them cinched a thick leather belt with a ringbolt in the front around my waist while the other fastened heavy shackles around my ankles. I was then handcuffed and a long, slender steel chain was looped around my neck and the handcuff chain, threaded through the ringbolt and fastened with a lock to the chain connecting my leg irons. Neither officer said a word as they trussed me. One then pointed toward the door and gave me a light shove as his partner led the way through the exit.
I shuffled after him, unable to walk because of the leg irons and fearful of my destination. I had never been chained like this before. I considered such restraints only for violent, dangerous criminals.
“Where are we going, where are you taking me?” I asked, squinting in the late afternoon sunlight. It was even more brilliant than the lights inside. Neither of them bothered to answer me.
Silently, they placed me in the back seat of an unmarked sedan and one climbed behind the wheel as the other seated himself beside me.
They drove me to the railroad station. The afternoon light, even sheltered as I was in the car, made me dizzy and nauseous. The nausea was not all due to my sudden exposure to daylight after all these months, I knew. I’d been ill-feverish, vomiting, diarrhea and racked at times by chills-for the past month or so. I had not complained to the guards in Perpignan. They would have ignored me, as they had ignored all my other pleas and protests.
At the railroad station I was taken from the car and one of the gendarmes snapped one end of a light chain onto my belt. He wrapped the other end around his one hand, and, leashed like a dog, I was led and dragged through the people assembled at the depot and shoved onto the train. The conductor showed us to a glassed-in compartment containing two benches, the door of which was adorned with a sign stating the booth was reserved for the Ministry of Justice. The other passengers looked at me in horror, shock or revulsion as we passed among them, some falling back in disgust as they detected my odor. I had long since lost all olfactory sensitivity to my own feculence, but I could sympathize with them. I had to smell like a convention of outraged skunks.
The compartment was large enough to accommodate eight persons and as the train filled and all the seats were occupied, several sturdy peasants, at various times, appeared and sought permission to ride in the compartment with us. They seemed oblivious to my malodorous condition. Each time, the gendarmes waved them on with a curt refusal.
Then three vivacious, pretty American girls appeared, dressed in a minimum of silks and nylon and festooned with shopping bags laden with souvenirs and gifts, wines and foods.
They reeked delightfully of precious perfumes, and with a broad smile, one gendarme rose and gallantly seated them on the opposite bench. They immediately tried to engage the officers in conversation, curious as to who I was and what my crime had been. Obviously, ensnared in chains as I was, I was some notorious, terrible murderer, on a par at least with Jack the Ripper. They seemed more fascinated than frightened, and animatedly discussed my offensive stench. “He smells like they’ve been keeping him in a sewer,” remarked one. The others laughingly agreed.
I did not want them to know I was an American. I felt degraded and ashamed of my appearance in their presence. The gendarmes finally made the three young women understand that they neither spoke nor understood English, and the three fell to talking among themselves as the train pulled out of the station.
I did not know where we were going. I had no sense of direction at the moment and I thought it would be useless to again seek my destination from the gendarmes. I huddled miserably between the officers, ill and despondent, occasionally looking out at the passing landscape or covertly studying the girls. I gathered from their conversational comments that they were schoolteachers from the Philadelphia area and were in Europe on a vacation. They’d been to Spain, Portugal and the Pyrenees and were now journeying to some other enchanted area. Were we en route to Paris, I wondered?
As the miles passed I grew hungry, despite my feeling of sickness. The girls took cheeses and breads from their bags, canned pates and wine, and began to eat, sharing their repast with the gendarmes. One attempted to feed me a small sandwich (my hands were restrained so that I could not have eaten had I been allowed), but one gendarme grasped her wrist gently.
“No,” he said firmly.
At some point, some hours after we left Perpignan, the young women, convinced that neither I nor the gendarmes could understand English, commenced discussing the amorous adventures they’d been having on vacation, and in such intimate detail that I was astonished. They compared the physical attributes, prowess and performance of their various lovers in such vivid language that I actually felt embarrassed. I’d never heard women engage in such locker-room tales, replete with all the four-letter words and lewd comments. I concluded I still had a lot to learn about women and at the same time I speculated as to my own standing had I been a participant in their sexual Olympics. I made a mental note to try out for their games should we ever meet again.
Our destination was Paris. The gendarmes hauled me to my feet, made their farewells to the ladies and hustled me off the train. But not before I’d said my own good-bye.
As I was pulled through the door of the compartment, I twisted my head and smiled lasciviously at the three young teachers.
“Say hello to every one in Philly for me,” I said in my best Bronx voice.
