Chapter 6 Chapter Three Cell No. 267

Seven steps from the door to the window, seven steps from the window to the door. I know that. I've walked up and down this pine floor in Pancratz Prison countless times.I was imprisoned for seeing through the corrupt policies of the Czech bourgeoisie to the people, and maybe I was in this cell.Now they are crucifying my nation, German guards are walking up and down the corridor in front of my cell, and somewhere outside the prison blind political fortunes are spinning the thread of treachery.How many more centuries will it take for man to see everything?How many thousands of prison cells have been experienced on the way of human progress?How about going through thousands of prison cells?Ah, Neruda's Infant Jesus. "The road to the salvation of mankind is boundless." But mankind is no longer asleep, no longer asleep.

It takes seven steps to walk over, and it takes seven steps to walk back.Against one wall was a camp bed, and on the other wall was nailed a dark brown shelf with earthen bowls on it.Yes, all this is familiar to me.It's just that now it's a little more mechanized: heating pipes have been installed, and toilets have replaced dung buckets—but the main thing is that the people here are all mechanized.Prisoners are like automatic machines.As soon as you press a button, that is, as soon as you hear a key turn in the lock of the cell door, or hear the sound of opening a small window in the door, the prisoners jump up, and no matter what you are doing, you have to stand next to each other. Standing erect, the warden shouted in one breath as soon as the door opened: "Achtung. Celecvozibnzechcikbelegtmit—traj#manalesinordnung." Order is normal.") Number 267 is our cell.However, the automatic machines in this cell did not work so flexibly.Only two prisoners jumped up.During that period of time, I was still lying on the grass mat under the window, lying straight on my stomach.One week, two weeks, one month, one and a half months——I came back to life afterward: I could turn my head, raise my hands, support my body on my elbows, and even try to turn over and lie on my back... There is no doubt that it is easier to describe this than to experience them.

There were also some changes in the cells.There used to be a sign for three on the door, but now there is a sign for two, and now there are only two of us, and the younger Karlik who sang my funeral poems has gone, and I am left alone with him. Memories of a kind heart.To tell the truth, I only vaguely remember his last two days with us.He patiently told me his story over and over again, while I was often in a coma while he told it. His full name was Karel Marets, and he was a mechanic who opened cages in an iron mine near Hudlitz, from where explosives needed for underground work had been transported.It has been almost two years since he was arrested and imprisoned. Now he is probably going to Berlin for trial. A large number of people were also arrested at the same time. Who knows what will happen to them?He has a wife and two kids, and he loves them, very much.

Yet he said: "You know, there's no way I wouldn't do it, because it's my responsibility." He used to sit next to me and force me to eat.But I can't eat it. It was Saturday—had I been in prison for eight days? —He took the strongest measure: he reported to the prison medical officer that I hadn't eaten anything since I came here.Without his permission, the medical officer of the Pangkratz prison is sullen and wears an SS uniform. Czech doctors can't even prescribe aspirin.The medical officer actually brought me a bowl of sick porridge himself, and stood beside me, watching me finish my last mouthful.At this moment Karlick was very satisfied with the success of his intervention.He himself fed me a bowl of Sunday soup the next day.

But then it still didn't work.With my battered gums, I couldn't chew even the boiled potatoes in my Sunday goulash, and my swollen throat couldn't swallow even a small piece of food. "He doesn't even want to eat beef stew—beef stew," Karlik complained, shaking his head gloomily as he stood beside me. He then gobbled up my share with Daddy. Alas, those of you who have not been in the Pangcratz Salt Prison in 1942 will not understand and cannot understand what this "braised beef" is.Even in the hardest of times, that is to say, when all the prisoners are growling with hunger, when some living skeletons wrapped in human skin are clearly visible in the bathhouse, when each prisoner uses a greedy When staring at the few mouthfuls of his companion's food, when the disgusting dried vegetable porridge is delicious with a little tomato juice, in this most difficult period, as prescribed twice a week— —Thursday and Sunday—the meal sharer put a spoonful of potatoes on our plate, with a tablespoon of braised gravy with a few shredded pork, and it was nothing short of appetizing.Yes, the problem is not the appetizer, but the fact that this thing reminds people of human life.In this cruel and perverse Gestapo prison, it was something normal, tinged with human life.When people mention this "braised gravy", even the tone of voice becomes soft and beautiful. ——Ah, who can understand how precious this tablespoon of "braised gravy" is to someone who is facing the threat of death? Two months later, I understood Karlick's surprise. "I don't even want to eat braised beef"—what could be a clearer statement of how close I was to death.

At two o'clock that night Karlik was woken up.Ask him to pack up in five minutes, as if he's just out for a stroll, and not going to a new prison, concentration camp, or execution ground to end his life—who knows where he's going.He knelt down by my straw mattress, put his head in his hands, and kissed me—then a brusque shout from the guard in the corridor declared that such feelings were forbidden in Pankratz Prison. It was so revealing—Karlick stepped over the threshold, and with a click, the door was locked again... We were the only ones left in the cell. Can we meet again in the future, friend?When will the people we left behind be parted next time?Which of us will go first, and where will we go?And who is going to summon him?A guard in an SS uniform?Or the Grim Reaper without uniform?

Now I write only the thrilling sentiments of my first parting.A year has passed since then, and yet the sentiments aroused when I saw off this friend are still constantly, and sometimes very strongly, in my memory.The "two people" sign hanging on the cell door was changed to "three people" again, and soon changed to "two people", and then "three people", "two people", "three people", "two people" appeared again. ".New fellow prisoners came and went—only the two who had originally remained in Cell 267 remained faithfully together.

This is "Papa" and me. "Father" named Josef Pešek, a sixty-year-old schoolteacher, chairman of the Teachers' Council, was arrested eighty-five days before me on charges of drafting a proposal to reform the Free Czech Schools" Conspiracy against the German Reich". "Daddy" is a... But, friend, how to describe him?It's a tough job.Two people, a cell and a year to live.A year of living together where the quotation marks around the title "Dad" disappear; a year in which two prisoners of different ages become true father and son; a year in which we learn from each other The other party's habits, mantras, and even the tone of speech.Try it now and see if you can tell which are mine and which are papa's; which he brought to the cell and which I brought?

He watched over me all night, wrapping my wounds in soaked white bandages, driving away the approaching death.He devoted himself to scrubbing the pus and blood from my wound, and never showed any disgust at the stench emanating from around my straw mattress.He mended my poor torn shirt, which had been the victim of my first trial, and when it was too worn out he gave me his own.He also took the opportunity of half an hour in the morning to "leave the wind" and ventured to pick daisies and grass stems for me in the prison yard.Whenever I went to stand trial, he always accompanied me with a caressing look; and when he returned, he dressed my fresh wound with a new bandage.Whenever I was taken to stand trial at night, he always stayed up. He didn't go to sleep until I came back, put me on the straw mat and carefully covered me with a blanket.

That's how our friendship began, and it never changed when we stood on two legs together and did our son's duty. My friend, I cannot write all this in one sitting.The life in cell No. 267 was rich that year. No matter what happened, the old man had his own way to deal with it.All this should be written.But my narrative is not over yet (it seems hopeful that I will). Life in Cell 267 was rich.The guards opened the door almost every hour to check.This may have been a mandated strict surveillance of a serious "communist criminal," but perhaps it was pure curiosity.People who shouldn't die often die here.However, it is rare for people who are sure to die to live again.The guards in the other corridors often came to chat in our cell. Sometimes they quietly lifted my blanket and inspected my wounds with an air of expertise.Then, according to their respective tempers, they said a few silly wisecracks, or pretended to be sympathetic with hypocrisy.One of them—the Cowhide King, as we originally nicknamed him—had been more frequent than the others, and he asked the "red devil" if he needed anything with a big smile on his face.No thanks, no need.After a few days, the cowhide king finally saw what this "red devil" needed, and that was to shave his face.So he brought in a barber.

The barber was the first prisoner in another cell I knew: Comrade Baucek.The enthusiasm of the cowhide king did not help.Papa supported my head, and Comrade Boucek knelt beside the straw mat, trying to carve a path through my weedy beard with a blunted razor.His hands were shaking, and there were tears in his eyes.He believed he was shaving the face of a dying man.I tried to comfort him and said: "Be bold, my friend, as I can withstand the torture of the Pechek Palace, I can also withstand your razor." But my strength wasn't working out, so we both had to stop now and then to catch our breath. Two days later, I got to know two more prisoners.The leaders of the Peček Palace lost their patience.They sent people to pass me, although the medical officer wrote on my summons every day: "I can't move", but they didn't care, and ordered me to be carried no matter what.So two prisoners in the uniform of the handymen brought a stretcher and put it in front of my cell door.Dad struggled to dress me, and my comrades carried me away on a stretcher.One of them was Comrade Scoshepa, who went on to be the attentive "uncle" throughout the hallway, and the other was... When I went down the stairs, I slid down an inclined stretcher, and a man who carried me Said to me: "Hold it." Then he lowered his voice and added: "To adhere." This time we did not stop in the reception room.They carried me farther, down a long corridor, toward the exit.The corridors were full of people--it was Thursday, the day the prisoners' families came to pick up their laundry--and they all looked at our miserable procession with pity in their eyes, which I didn't like much .So I clenched my hands into fists and waved them over my head.Maybe they would understand that I was greeting them when they saw it, or maybe they didn't see this childish action clearly, but I can only do this, and I don't have any more strength. In the courtyard of the Pankratz prison, stretchers were loaded onto the big truck, two SS men sat next to the driver, and two others stood near my head clutching pistols in their holsters.The car drove away.The road was so unsatisfactory: one pit, two pits—I lost consciousness within two hundred meters.It's ridiculous to drive on the streets of Prague in a car like this: a five-ton truck that can accommodate thirty prisoners is now only consuming gasoline for one prisoner, and there are two SS soldiers standing in front of and behind each other Gun still in hand, glaring at an unconscious body, lest he flee. The next day the farce was repeated.This time I supported it all the way to the Pechek Palace.The interrogation didn't take long.Officer Friedrich of the Anti-Communist Section unceremoniously "touched" me, and I was transported back in a coma. It is now certain that I am alive.Pain is life's twin sister, and it evokes my sense of life very clearly.Almost all the prisoners in Pangkrates prison knew that I was lucky to be alive: from the sound of knocking on the thick walls, from the eyes of the orderly when delivering meals, they sent the earliest congratulations. Only my wife knows nothing about me.She was held in solitary confinement in a cell downstairs from mine, only three or four cells away.She lived in pain and hope until one day, during a half-hour "breathing" in the morning, a female prisoner next door whispered to her, saying that I was finished, that I was beaten all over my body during the interrogation, and then died. In the cell.When she heard the news, she ran around in the courtyard, everything in front of her eyes was spinning; how even the female guard punched her in the face to express "comfort", and drove her back to the ranks to protect She didn't even feel the order of the prison.Her large, tearless, kind eyes stared blankly at the white walls of the cell, but what could she see?Another news came to her the next day, saying that instead of being beaten to death, I could not stand the torture and hanged myself in the cell. During that period, I had been writhing on that poor straw bedding.Every morning and night, I try to sleep on my side to sing to my Gustina her favorite songs.How could she not hear my singing, how much passion did I pour into that song? Now she has heard of me and heard my singing, though she is farther from me now than ever.Now even the guards are used to the singing in Cell 267, and they no longer knock on the door to order us to be quiet. Cell 267 is singing.I've sung all my life, and I don't understand why I should stop singing on this dying day when I feel so strongly about life.As for Papa Peshek?Ah, unexpectedly, he also loves to sing very much.He had neither musical hearing, bad voice, nor memory for music, but he was so kindly and sincerely infatuated with singing, and found so much joy in it, that I could scarcely hear how he was. When slipping from one tune to another, he stubbornly sang "Suo" where "La" should be sung.We sing like this, we sing when we are full of sorrow, we sing on bright and happy days, we sing farewell to comrades who may never see each other again, and we sing to welcome the good news from the Eastern Front.We sang joyously as men have always sung, and for ever, living and singing. There is no life without singing, just as there is no life without the sun.Now our need for singing is doubly greater, for the sun does not shine upon us.Cell No. 267 faces north, and only in summer, the afterglow of the setting sun casts the shadow of the fence obliquely on the east wall for a short time. ——At this time, the old man always stands up with the help of the bed, staring at the fleeting brilliance... His eyes are the most melancholy eyes that can be seen here. sun.You round magician, who shines so generously upon the earth, and wreaks so many wonders before men's eyes.However, there are so few people living in the sun.Yes, the sun must shine, and people must live in its radiance.How wonderful it is to know this truth but after all you want to know something far less important: Will the sun still shine on us? Our cell faces north.Only occasionally on sunny days in summer can you see a few sunsets.Oh, Dad, how I want to see the sunrise again.