The Unseen. Nanni Balestrini
lined up there on the table surprised me and then later when I went for the afternoon exercise it also surprised me to find out that the same thing had been done in all the other cells too
so I remember that the atmosphere of that afternoon exercise was particularly tense there was an atmosphere you could cut with a knife and what I thought in the light of earlier situations I’d been in and experiences I’d had I thought somebody was going to get done in because there was a lot of tension and you could see it in the air you could feel it in so many things in a strange silence that was different from usual and especially from the looks quick rapid looks that passed suddenly between some people as they were walking up and down and then the thing that I surmised and that must have been on their minds a stabbing or at any rate the settling of some score or other and I was expecting it to happen any minute something like what I’d seen other times before like once shortly after they arrested me and it really upset me at the time
that time it happened as we were exercising outside as usual when three or four non-politicals because we exercised along with the non-political prisoners these non-politicals went up close behind another non-political they went up close to somebody exercising there like them and from behind they put a noose round his neck a knotted steel wire they put this noose around his neck from behind and two of them took his arms they held his arms tight to keep him from moving and they pulled the noose it’s this system that’s used to immobilize someone during a stabbing for it isn’t as easy as it seems to stab someone so that the blade can get deep enough into a vital organ but it can happen that the person survives even after twenty or thirty stab wounds
it’s not easy to stab somebody it’s not as easy as it might seem I mean it’s easy to stab him but it isn’t easy to kill him because besides he isn’t just going to take the stabbing without putting up a struggle he struggles he wriggles he goes wild he thrashes all over the place it’s very difficult to hold him still I mean and one of the techniques is precisely to put a noose around his neck first to pull it until he half loses consciousness because he’s nearly choking and in the meantime you stab him with the knife pushed up from below because wounds angled down are less effective you have to push the knife up from lower down and most important you have to try to aim for a vital organ maybe just under the sternum here
and so they put this noose around his neck and the others held his arms and the one behind him started pulling the steel wire noose but the steel wire noose broke or it’s more likely that the knot was badly tied anyway it snapped or it worked loose or I don’t know anyway they didn’t succeed in pulling it tight round his neck of course he was terrified because he knew at once what they had in mind trying to get a steel wire round his neck but as for them after a moment’s awkwardness they treated it all like a joke all the more because they hadn’t brought out the knives yet the knives hadn’t appeared yet
so they were making a joke of it they were slapping him on the back saying so we gave you a fright as if it was all a joke but he didn’t believe it was any joke he didn’t fall for it at all because besides you don’t play jokes like this in a prison if someone plays a joke like that on you then you’re the one that murders him because these are no jokes then the guy went over to the exercise yard gates and he started to yell to call the guards to let him out and that was when the ones who were after him realized that either they went for him right then or the guards would arrive and it would all become trickier and if he managed to get out in time they’d never get him because then he’d obviously be transferred or shoved into the isolation cells anyway he wouldn’t be showing his face there again that’s for sure
then just as the guards were running to see what he was yelling about four or five of them jumped on him with knives with blades skewers and they started stabbing him all in a muddle and obviously he put up a fight he didn’t just stand there and let himself be stabbed he was kicking trying to shield himself to wriggle free and he took quite a few stab wounds before he fell to the ground and all the while screaming and the guards were rushing about the exercise corridor they could see what was happening but they didn’t come into the yard there was a sergeant yelling from behind the gates cut it out cut it out the whole scene lasted a few seconds the others were at the far end of the wall we were all there all at the far end watching without a move the whole scene lasted a few seconds
he was screaming and screaming like a lunatic then he was thrown down on the ground not just thrown he fell on his knees and just then he was stabbed two or three times with a skewer down on his head just like that with the skewer down on his head and just as he turned his head a skewer another stab with the skewer caught him right in the eye a skewer caught him right in the eye a skewer stabbing right into his eye and he was really screaming in an unbelievable way then he fell down on the ground then when he fell down on the ground they kept on stabbing him trying to get him in the heart because they kept on stabbing him in the chest but they were stabbing him in the neck too they were trying to tear his neck open
the blood he was on the ground with the blood gushing out of him from every one of the holes from all the wounds from all the cuts he had from his head from this eye with blood coming out of him all over the place it was a lake of blood it was a pool of blood that must have been ten feet wide really and he wasn’t moving any more with that eye that was a red stain with one eye half out and the other gaping and he seemed dead and he wasn’t moving any more he seemed dead he wasn’t moving even a finger then they stopped and went back to where everyone else was at the far end of the wall of the yard and the guards opened the gate a little because the guy also happened to be only a few feet away from the gate they took him by the feet and they dragged him out
6
But meanwhile time was going by out there and nothing was happening and when the time came to go up because we were exercising in the volleyball court but no one was playing volleyball they were all walking up and down exchanging those rapid glances and now and then a few muttered words and time was going by and nothing was happening I was expecting somebody to be stabbed but nothing happened and even when the time came for the guards to take people back to the cells people started going back up with no fuss just as usual and so everybody went back up and I went back up lagging behind talking to another comrade and I didn’t have the faintest idea that at that very moment a fuck-up like that was happening
I got back to my cell and it was just a few minutes after I got back to my cell when I heard shouts coming from the direction of the rotunda I should explain what the rotunda is the special section of the prison we were in was a small three-storey block ground floor first floor and second floor and each floor was split into two wings at the centre of these wings on every floor there were two gates and in between the two gates there was a space that was the rotunda the same rotunda where the stairs were and from there people dispersed into one wing or the other the right wing one side and the left wing the other side I was in the left wing of the top floor the second floor that is
on the first floor there were all the non-politicals and on the ground floor there were the so-called working prisoners the ones that carry out food distribution duties in the corridors and do the cleaning in the corridors and so on the top floor on the other hand held all the politicals there were sixty of us politicals and incidentally it’s worth mentioning that shortly before this there had arrived the overwhelming majority of prisoners both politicals and non-politicals who’d staged a very tough revolt in another special prison and who’d then been transferred it had been a very tough revolt there had been two dead two prisoners with a reputation as bastards had been killed and just about the whole prison had been wrecked and so now in ours the politicals’ floor was full there was no room at all to spare there were sixty of us and it was full up
I was at that time in a cell with four other comrades and I heard shouting coming from the rotunda very agitated shouting and I saw the guards who patrolled the corridor of our wing at first I saw them running towards the rotunda at the far end of the wing and everybody in the cells came to look through the bars separating them from the corridors and a moment later the guards came back at a run shouting and they started closing the armoured doors because the cells have a barred gate and in front of it they also have an armoured door and precisely because of the protests there’d been in that prison we’d won the right to keep the armoured doors open all day and have them closed only between eleven at night and seven in