Chapter 9 The Beast Within
The Beast Within
Mitch spent the first few weeks of his incarceration in disbelief over what had happened to him: he would be spending the next five years of his life in prison for dealing books.
He could understand being given such a stiff sentence for dealing arms or drugs or some other dangerous thing, but how could anyone be this afraid of words?
It made even less sense in those first moments of consciousness just after he woke up.
Lying there with his eyes closed, he was still just a bookseller.
He’d think about restocking pencils, pens and reams of paper; taking inventory; checking which orders had been delivered, calling customers to let them know their books were ready for pickup; rearranging the window display; tidying up; paying overdue bills.
But the moment his eyes opened to face the walls of his cell, the books, the pens and pencils, the paper, the customers – all of it slipped through the bars and was gone.
* * *
One sunny mid-afternoon when Mitch returned from his allotted exercise time in the yard, the head prison guard, known to everyone as the Sergeant, called Mitch over by barking his inmate number down the corridor.
Mitch barely had time to wonder what he could have done before the first blow landed.
The baton came down hard on his shoulders, the small of his back – something in his right leg cracked and he crumpled to the floor under the assault almost immediately and curled into a foetal position, shielding his leg from further attack.
The Sergeant beat him senseless, right there in full view of the other inmates.
No one moved a muscle, but every jaw was clenched.
Finally, the Sergeant finished off his attack with one last savage kick to Mitch’s face.
Then he hitched up his trousers, which had slipped down beneath his gut in the flurry of physical activity, and walked away.
As soon as the coast was clear, Mitch was lifted off the floor by two of his fellow inmates. The beating was tradition, one of them muttered quietly. Every newcomer was subjected to it. It was the Sergeant’s way of showing that in here, he was the law.
Staggering back toward his cell, Mitch felt on the verge of tears.
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t even move his lips, and his face was so swollen he could hardly see.
He wouldn’t realize it until later, but this was only the beginning of life under the Sergeant’s tyrannical reign.
Mitch wondered what the man’s official job title was, if he had a wife.
Children. A dog. It probably seemed like a ridiculous thing to think about, but to Mitch it was vital.
If he was to hold up in prison, to hold up beneath the fear, he had to remember that his torturer was still human.
Because a wild animal can’t be reasoned with.
But even the worst man still carries, deep down, some faint flicker of humanity – no matter how small.
* * *
Two months passed. Then another. Another still.
One morning, as had been the case for the past six days, Mitch gathered with the other inmates in the yard.
A torrential rainstorm the week before had washed out the dirt road from the prison to the cemetery – five kilometres north at the edge of a forest. The road needed to be repaired, the ruts cleared of stagnant mud and filled with fresh dirt and gravel.
A roll call was conducted, and then three armed guards led the men on the long march northward.
From his perch in the watchtower, the warden watched their tiny figures stretch out along the horizon.
The procession halted an hour later. The inmates were lined up single-file and their handcuffs were removed.
Mitch rubbed his wrists, wishing he could ask for a cloth to mop his brow.
The sun had only just risen but it was already hot enough to burn the back of his sweltering neck.
The Sergeant took a long swig from his canteen as the prisoners watched, their thirst growing as he quenched his own, their Adam’s apples bobbing in time with his swallows.
Finally, the Sergeant emptied the last of the water onto the dusty ground and screwed the cap back on, and a dark spot appeared in the dust as the puddle of discarded water spread.
* * *
The prisoners had been roused at 5:30 that morning by the guards hammering their truncheons on the cell doors.
They’d had to leap up and make their beds army-style, folding hospital corners in record time, before the Sergeant came through for inspection.
If he deemed a bed unfit, he tore off the sheets and blankets, and the man who slept there was subjected to a vicious dressing-down.
Two weeks of this treatment was enough to turn any prisoner into a model recruit.
One day during inspection, not long after his incarceration, Mitch noticed that some of the inmates almost took pleasure in a job well done.
And when the Sergeant finished his rounds without saying a word, Mitch watched their hardened faces light up like they were little boys again, simply glad they hadn’t been yelled at by the teacher, and felt almost ashamed for getting caught up in the game himself.
* * *
The rest of the country might’ve had limited access to outside news, but the prison was entirely cut off.
No newspapers. No television. No books. The years of Mitch’s imprisonment were like a gap in time, a dark space in which Mitch was transformed beyond recognition.
Still, the daily routine set in, difficult as it was, and he managed to make it through each day and survive each night by filling his mind with imaginary plans.
* * *
At last, there came the day when Mitch found himself standing on the sidewalk next to a telephone booth from another era.
It would take time to rebuild himself, but he had the look of a man full of hope for a new life.
He turned and took one last look at the watchtower behind him and then walked away, limping on his right leg – which still ached from the Sergeant’s beating – whenever it was about to rain.
At the intersection, he paused and smiled, thinking of the Sergeant carrying on with his life behind the prison’s walls.
He had to wait quite a while for the bus back into the city.
Fields of wheat and barley streamed past the windows and eventually gave way to an urban landscape.
The two-hour ride was followed by another silent walk.
Mitch dragged his lame leg slowly, until he reached a metal shutter pulled down over a display window through which he could just glimpse, between the latticed bars, piles of books covered in a thick layer of dust.
He took the alley around to the back of the shop and stepped into the courtyard, where an alley cat was sleeping on an old garbage can lid.
It opened one eye and stared steadily at him.
Mitch gave it a nod and reached into his jacket pocket for the keys.
He crossed the back room and sat down on a stool behind the counter, where he remained for the rest of the day, quietly taking in the wreckage the police had left behind.
Time didn’t mean much to him anymore; five years spent behind bars without a single visitor had taught him to make it his ally.
As the sun grew low in the sky, he pictured Monsieur Verner flirting with Madame Ateltow, Mathilde’s ghost wandering among the shelves and that of Madame Bergol turning the pages of a borrowed book.
He smiled.
* * *
In all the time it took for Mitch to get his bookshop back in order, he forbade himself from thinking about his life before prison.
He could remember the moment he made this resolution perfectly.
He was still behind bars, late one afternoon.
He’d refused to comply with one of the guard’s stupid orders.
The guard on duty had warned him to stay in line.
He had exactly six months to go before his release.
It would be a shame to extend his sentence by committing a breach of conduct now, wouldn’t it?
Dark thoughts had crowded Mitch’s mind, a mixture of rage and resignation.
Dwelling on the past relieved his boredom, but it also brought about a despair that was killing him little by little.
That evening, Mitch had realized that he was sliding down a dangerously slippery slope, headed toward a point of no return.
So before it was too late, he promised himself to think only about the future from then on.
Every day since his release had tested his resolve.
Memories crept in like demons as he was arranging books on a table; or when his gaze lingered too long on the silhouette of a woman passing the shop window; or when the slant of the late-afternoon light cast the shadow of a tree across the floor between two shelves.
The sight each morning and evening of the old coal hatch door as he crossed the courtyard.
But he always found a way to push his temptation aside.
Just a few days before the reopening of his bookshop he went to the park to read on a bench, but his lonely demeanour and shambling walk unsettled the parents whose children were running around the playground nearby, and soon enough someone called the police.
So he went back to the shop and spent an hour tidying shelves that were already tidy and rearranging displays.
Later, Mitch locked up for the night and set off to catch his train.
On the way he spotted a couple up ahead on the avenue, holding hands.
He trailed behind them all the way to the station – he was going that way too, after all – and the sight of them stirred something in him.
He lost sight of them in the main hall, but as he stood on the platform he let his mind wander back to distant evenings in hole-in-the-wall restaurants and smoky jazz clubs.
Mathilde’s face had become indistinct in his memory, faded like an old photograph.
His heart aching, Mitch took refuge in his book.