Short story: The Actors and their State
By: Raviakash Deu
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Short Story Writing, Prisoner, Revolutionary

A violent scab had formed on the inside of his right ankle. He glanced at it and then swiftly turned his gaze away. It looked worse than it felt. The upper crust was crimson but the bulk of the tissue was blackened. In the shape of a jagged asteroid, it spanned around two and a half inches in diameter and was closer to his Achilles tendon than the anklebone.

He’d suffered this injury to his skin a while back. It was an innocuous abrasion that he’d not paid much attention to. He vaguely remembered its origin as a gnawing, cutaneous itch. Yes. That was true. It was never anything more than an itch until recently. However, there was now pain attached to the site, along with matted, congealed blood. As he went to lie down on the bamboo-reed bed tucked neatly in the far corner of the space he occupied, he yawned crudely and twisted his torso toward the back wall.

Reaching down to the wound, he gently rubbed the tips of his index and middle fingers over its contours. He toyed with cleaving the scab from the underlay. You know, ripping off the crust to see the contents beneath. There was something voyeuristic about watching one’s own flesh heal, only to obstruct the process every so often for vainglorious delight. Part of him thought to stop these fantasies though, and he chose not to interrupt the restoration any further. He mulled over what might have caused such a hideous lesion. He filtered through various theories and experiences he’d endured in the days gone by. As there wasn’t much to note, it was difficult for him to pick out any real changes or spikes in activity that differed from his usual routine. He then mulled again and harder this time. Finally, he realised that throughout the previous two nights, he’d unconsciously but vigorously itched at the ankle. And he’d itched at it in such a stupor because of the burn caused by the iron cuffs that were clapped to his feet.

An elephantine knock on his cell door lifted him from his daydream. A slider hatch opened with a cantankerous groan. It was breakfast time. Something hissed while it travelled across the concrete and he turned himself around to assess it. As his eyes met the door, the hatch closed in on itself and the echo rang in his ears for longer than it should have.

On top of the metal tray was a bowl of three-day old slop minus the spoon to consume it. So, rather than succumbing to its tempting smell, he returned to his more nutritious appraisals about recent events. Even left no other option, he would never agree to eat the meals the prison provided him. According to the prisoner, they weren’t fit to be ingested by human beings.

A senior officer had spoken to him a few days ago in private. He was one of the only people with whom he’d struck up a genuine rapport. The rest of the subordinate guards considered him a lost hope. The officer had mentioned that a negotiation could be entered into with the authorities if the prisoner was willing to cough up some useful information regarding his crime. Our friend declined (unsurprisingly) and informed the officer that under no circumstance would he ever be cajoled, gerrymandered or stumped into a plea-bargain with ‘men of their kind.’ He was then naturally questioned on what he meant by the phrase and he explained,

“Men whose sole purpose is to uphold the ‘righteous’ views of their master and omnipotent provider, sacrificing their individual values in the name of the current state of play.”

The officer had to ponder over the explanation for quite some time before a light flickered in his mind. “So you mean to say: any man who is responsible for upholding the law ascribed by the sovereign state?”

“Precisely,” he said.

Puzzled more than embarrassed the officer grinned and asked him, “…What does that make me then?”

“That makes you one of them,” said the prisoner. “It’s a sliding scale of grotesqueness, of course… You must agree, officer? I mean you have an interest in people like me — I can tell. That’s the reason you’re not one of the real crocodiles lurking at the top of the creek. It’s also why they sent you to inform me of the deal, and not someone else. Your adherence to authority stops at the point of compassion, and in particular, compassion for the condemned.”

“I guess it does…” The officer bowed his head in religious submission before looking back up at the prisoner with a kind of arrogance. The prisoner waited for the officer to leave and reiterated that he wanted nothing of a negotiation or truce.

“Make sure you tell them exactly what I said. I don’t want anything to be misinterpreted. That’s not my game.”

The officer scoffed at the remark and moved to leave the cell for want of any peeping toms. As he did this he addressed the prisoner with a final piece of advice. “Try and eat, my friend. It might just give you the energy you need.”

*

The prisoner would often lie on his back for hours at a time either fantasising or reading. Luckily for him, the state in which he was imprisoned boasted a stellar climate. There were chance days in the crux of summer where the dry heat was choking but on the whole the tepid atmosphere was conducive for information gathering and note-taking. He read widely and with a keen eye for historical context. The officer would lend him an unlimited supply of books from the prison library on special request, and as well as giving him newfound authority for his intuitive beliefs, the literature sustained his tremendous appetite for ideas and knowledge. Written in secret, he also kept a diary and recorded his innermost thoughts and feelings as a way of trying to understand his predicament.

Having spent almost ten years under lock and key the prisoner had adjusted as much as he could to the conditions of his detainment. Current scab aside; he’d survived any tribulations with resolve and not without letters from his dearest friends. An eloquent, erudite and entertaining envelope from an accomplice could alleviate his anxiety, tighten his grip on his aims and serve as a healthy distraction against the monotony of being shut out for long periods. One piece of correspondence, received the day before from his former right-hand-man, offered a book recommendation as an addendum to his message:

§

…One additional thing: I’d suggest you get a hold of the Black Book if you can, chap. Its author is Gabh Ghinsat. It’s essential reading for you, especially this close to the Promised Land…

§

Back in the cell, he watched the slop bubble and burble against the bowl and began to wretch. He shifted to his desk and re-read the letter from his most trusted accomplice. On his notepad he scribbled down a request for the Black Book, walked towards the door and pushed it through the crack.

“What’s this, 379?” The duty guard shouted.

“It’s a book request. I’d like it delivered immediately.”

“Immediately, you say? … Very well. I’ll contact the officer at once.”

“Please do. Chop, chop now. Get a move on. I need it sharpish.”

Within five minutes the slider hatch opened once more and the request was propelled into the confines of the cell. It landed perfectly, title-side up on the prisoner’s bed, just within his reach. He stared it at blankly before fingering through its leaves and raising it to his nostrils for a whiff. It had a hint of caramel and smoked cedar wood. The pages were jaundiced with age (though still bound sturdily to its spine) and the hardcovers weren’t totally mutilated at the edges. Seeing as he had a few hours before the obligatory forty-five minutes of exercise in the yard, he thought it high time to crack it open and see what all the fuss was about.

There was no introduction, no contents page and no foreword from an editor or noble steed. There were breaks in the text but the chapters had no numbers and he’d often have to strafe back a few pages to fully understand what he’d just read. Ghinsat talked about his own trial and imprisonment, which occurred fifty years prior to the prisoner’s. The Black Book was written in diary format and each entry focused on a particular day during his time in custody. Its language, description and the way it captured the feelings of a man gaoled in penal servitude mesmerised the prisoner. He’d never read an account that paralleled his own sentiments as much. It was uncannily close to his experience. There was however one small but niggling issue. Ghinsat hadn’t revealed what crime he was sentenced for. He hadn’t even hinted at it. This frustrated the prisoner immensely and he was possessed by an incessant urge to find out. He absorbed every syllable on every page thereafter yearning for clues.

Fifty pages seemed to pass like ten. He devoured them, swallowed them whole. On and on he read struggling to find out what the man had done to deserve his persecution. As he continued he couldn’t help but learn other lessons from Ghinsat’s penetrating words. There was still so much he had to consider, so much left to ascertain; not only from Ghinsat but from life, however much of his was left. Cursing himself for not having stayed alert enough to use this wisdom when he needed it most, he elected to swear at Ghinsat:

“Bloody genius!” He cried. “How did you know all this?!… You bloody Genius!”

The prisoner squeezed the two ends of the book ready to split them apart. He was embittered but enamoured by his insights. It was in that very moment that Ghinsat became his new prophet. He officially became his estranged, penal blood brother, hidden by an overprotective dragon in order to save the prisoner from harm. But now he’d finally located him — Ghinsat, that is. He’d parried the fiery onslaught from the dragon, dived head first into the golden sand upon which it sat, and taken the Black Book from under its belly. He now was drinking from this veritable fountain of knowledge and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

He paused and realised he’d got to the final entry of the book. He slowed his heart rate down to match his breathing and composed himself, certain that this part would contain the final clue. It was obvious, he thought. Ghinsat had set the whole thing up for the final reveal. If not, then there was no use to the book. If not, his accomplice’s recommendation had been wasteful and in vain. If not, then there was simply no point in him being here, bearing the costs of his actions, trying to find catharsis in Ghinsat’s admissions, conjuring up all this hope and desire for a greater meaning to his insufferable treatment. There was no reason for 379 to continue without an adequate and satisfying conclusion to Ghinsat’s story. The confession was coming, he thought. It was plain and clear…

“379!!” The head guard screamed. “Out now! Mandatory exercise is starting in one minute. I need you up and ready. No excuses!”

The prisoner gawped at the air with one half of his mouth open. No, he thought to himself. This was not happening. He wasn’t ready! Surely the time hadn’t passed so quickly. With a vague reluctance he wobbled his head and rose to his feet. He didn’t want to shut the book. Not now. Not this close to the end. But as its fanned pages folded in on each other like dominoes, he dropped it and heard its heavy spine send a blunted thud through the floor. In spiritual revolt he finally trudged towards his cell door. His chains chinked a baleful rhythm on the concrete below.

“Turn around and place your hands through the flap, please.”

The head guard unlocked his handcuffs and the prisoner wriggled his fingers frantically trying to alleviate the stiffness in his joints.

“I’m going to open your door now, 379. Step out and face the wall opposite.”

He did exactly so and his ankle cuffs were removed.

“Follow the others into the yard. You have thirty minutes…”

The head guard moved rapidly to the next cell and began the process again with the next prisoner.

As there were only four prisoners on his cellblock, the yard seemed relatively empty. 379 had not communicated to the other three apart from when strictly necessary. During allocated exercise they huddled round a small table in the centre often playing cards or mouthing irrelevancies. Two of them were serial murderers and the third (a lifer) had accumulated adjudication after adjudication inside his four-walled abode becoming a self-professed menace to society. They rarely paid our friend any attention. He paced in ovals round their table; head up toward the cobalt sky, arms folded neatly behind his back. On this occasion he deliberated on what he’d just been reading.

Half way through the book Ghinsat admitted that the ten years he’d spent behind bars were unequivocally the best and most life-affirming years he’d spent in the state. He explained that as a man condemned to death for a crime he was proud to have committed, there was nothing left to prove. He’d maintained an adherence to his principles and acted out an extension of his ideals. His rulers were aware of that and now their only solution was to find him and make him disappear again completely. Ghinsat appreciated he’d done what he was destined to do and his execution would only concretise his conquest in the eyes of the believers of his great cause. The prisoner turned these thoughts over in his mind in an attempt to guess what evil Ghinsat had done. He was almost certain the real answer lay in the last entry. All he needed to do was wait until the end of the thirty minutes so he could satiate his morbid fascination.

“Time’s up, boys!” The head guard bellowed from the watchtower. “Get back inside. We need to tie you savages up again. Can’t have you roaming the cells without any chains, can we? There’s no wondering what you might do to each other! He He He.”

All four of them were, this time, dragged forcibly back to the block by an equal number of duty guards armed with steel-capped truncheons. 379’s wrist and ankles were clasped tighter than usual and he was pushed and shoved into his cell. With a creek and then a clang of his cell door shutting, he sank to his knees and fell face-first onto his bed. After ten seconds of shock he opened his right eye and looked for the whereabouts of the book. It wasn’t where he’d left it — on the floor, at the end of his bed. He stood up in pain and rummaged underneath. It was there before he’d gone to the yard! He was sure of it. He went over to his small desk and scanned through the pile of papers and diary entries — in no sensible order — spread lazily over it. He even checked his basin in case he’d left it there without noticing. No. It had disappeared just as Ghinsat had at the end of his ten-year stretch. The prisoner might never find out what his blood brother had done to warrant capital punishment. To him, there was no bigger shame than that.

Dejected and heartbroken he sat with his back against the wall on the dust-covered floor, incensed by his loss. It was no use asking the duty-guards where it had gone. They’d offer up lies, untruths, excuses, anything to abdicate responsibility. Men of their kind only followed orders. His last hope was his friend, the officer. Maybe he could bring him back the book. Maybe he could reveal the elusive crime. It was worth whatever energy he had left to arrange another meeting with him and find out.

As night wandered in through his barred window he caught sight of a shadow on the sidewall of his cell. It was the outline of his emaciated body. The undulations between his ribs and the gauntness of his neck and cheeks were apparent. He was a carcass, not a corpus. A modest vulnerability, who’d been preyed on by a more terrifying and larger predator of his own making. The stench of the slop had dissipated but the bowl remained. He’d refused all prison-made food some months ago but the guards were obliged to deliver it to every inmate. Hitherto 379 had summoned enough fight to get through the days. There was no sign of weakness, and although stripped of fat, he was functional and compliant. He wondered whether Ghinsat looked as ghoulish — in the past — during his own hunger strike. Perhaps not. Suddenly, in a whimsy, he considered breaking it there and then, tasting the slop, as it were. Was his commitment to the cause strong enough to withstand the degradation of his muscle tissue too? Would his vital organs cease to function at some indiscriminate point without any fuel? It seemed as though neither of these questions perturbed him much. He swallowed some saliva in mockery of those imprisoned souls of years gone by, too weak to stomach the nil-by-mouth, too preoccupied with their body to warrant it’s total sacrifice for a crime they had to commit. A lustful pride came over him. Another bout of egoism inflated him to the summit of hope. He shut his eyelids and knew that he was to be remembered after his execution. He’d done everything necessary to certify his status as a martyr-in-waiting. Maybe it wasn’t right for him to think in this way or be so self-serving but he couldn’t help it. Maybe real martyrs never thought about permanence. An assent to the revolutionary canon probably never factored in while they pursued their anarchistic aims. However, the prisoner hardly cared for what others had or hadn’t done. He wanted to be remembered as the only man of his generation to stand up to the cowardice of the actors and their state. As Marx had said, wrongdoings were sometimes right doings when manifesting one’s ardent beliefs in the world and boy, did he believe it. The prisoner wasn’t exactly setting anyone free by the crime he’d committed but he was promoting a staunch defence of one’s right to individual sovereignty in the State.

In his mind why should anyone give all their autonomy over to a bureaucratic power? In the name of the many? So that we can all be governed as a mass of entities, doing as we’re told, never upsetting the equilibrium, living in a civilised manner in order to avoid harm, injustice, evil and reckless violence as much as is possible? This wasn’t how our friend, the prisoner, imagined the world. This was never his hope for humanity or the State. Good Lord, the inefficiencies of mass control! The free-riders, the scammers, the lazy coasters and the exploiters all gaming the system however they deem fit; too unscrupulous to work within boundaries set down for normal, adherent folk. Offshore bank accounts, shell companies, special purpose vehicles, secret mistresses housed in flamboyant, lush eight-story apartment blocks on sun-laden seashores, race privilege, class privilege, beauty privilege, privilege in general, anything that could be used to circumvent the constituent rules and laws enacted to keep most people mostly in line. These were the real permutations of state governance. Were these the injustices and evils the so-called ‘rules’ sought to avoid? Of course not! 379 knew that dogmatic rules only ever enabled new, more virulent injustices to emerge. ‘You can never stop the individual,’ he would say. ‘You can’t stop the individual because he stakes his claim for what he wants, not what he needs. The animal inside him cannot be civilised through control. The real ferocity of his spirit will guard against the invisible hand of authority and bat it away with disgust.’ The prisoner knew Ghinsat understood that too. That’s why Ghinsat and he were one and the same, marching forth into posterity hand-in-hand, as revolutionaries, not prisoners of war.

Lying down in the relative comfort of a woollen blanket (that the officer had smuggled into his cell on one of his visits) 379, albeit temporarily, let go of his anger towards the missing book. He was to sleep now and wake tomorrow with a fresh outlook for the days that remained. He was to start again, still in adherence to his beliefs and in opposition to his enemy. His joints ached and a worrying malaise travelled through him, goading him to cease all thought and enter the dream world. He obeyed its command and he was thus transported blissfully into another story inside of his mind, but outside of his reality.

Something slippery made him tune in to the liquid sound of footsteps on the other side of his cell door in the preceding corridor. They were plentiful and hurried, shuffled rather than ambulatory, without much time between each planting of boot sole. The officer was instantly recognisable and (quite frankly) made the prisoner anxious. He spoke to the duty guard in a hushed muffle as he arrived and the prisoner quickly tasted the portentous flavour of the forthcoming scene.

The officer walked into his cell upright and calm. 379 refrained from exiting his nest but allowed himself a slight lateral rotation in his neck. In his right hand the officer was holding the Black Book, its front cover facing the prisoner.

“So you removed it from my cell?” the prisoner asked him.

“I did.”

“And why on earth did you do that?”

“I did it for your own good, 379.”

“What? My own good? Listen here, you little worm. You don’t do anything for my own good. You do things because I tell you to do them and you’ll have hell to pay if you don’t.”

Far from being threatened, the officer began to chuckle and flick through the leaves of the book in complete defiance of the prisoner’s assertions.

“Why are you laughing? I don’t recall saying anything amusing.”

The officer continued to chuckle and his sneer became more sinister as he ogled him intensely. The prisoner had no choice but to get out of bed and approach his opposite, as if to provide himself with at least a postural defence.

“You removed that book after distributing it to my cell. I hadn’t finished the final part of it… Give me the book.”

“I took it back because it’s not what Ghinsat would have wanted.”

“Ghinsat?”

“Yes. Ghinsat would not have you read his last entry until you were ready.”

“Ready?? Ready for what, officer? I’m being executed in ten days! I’m ready to finish that book. Everyone knows I’m ready. There’s no way in hell I’m not ready! And besides, what are you talking about? Ghinsat is dead. How do you suppose to know what Ghinsat would have wanted?”

“Ghinsat only wanted his true disciples to absorb the final entry on the day of their execution.”

“I’m not one of his true disciples. I have no idea who Ghinsat is, how my accomplice knew to recommend me his book or what he did to deserve his miserable treatment. No my friend. You are mistaken. I am certainly not his disciple (as you have implied) and therefore I do not follow the rules he has set out. So, give me the damn book.”

“I’m afraid we can no longer grant your request, 379. I must leave now. I will be back in ten days time with the book for your last reading.”

“You cannot just leave like that, officer!” the prisoner screamed.

“I’ll be back in ten days, 379.”

“No! You do not leave without my permission!”

The officer walked away from the scene clutching the book by his side.

“Don’t you leave with that book, officer!”

But the infamous clank had already begun resonating round the stoned walls of his skull. The officer and the book vanished. 379 stood naked and alone in his cell.

Dil Sher