The Unseen. Nanni Balestrini
was in the afternoon the armoured doors were open and so the guards reacted that way as soon as they realized what was happening was that the guards in the rotunda were being seized by two comrades because at that time we came up the stairs in pairs which was later stopped so when those two comrades got up to the rotunda they brought out the knives they had on them and they seized the guards they seized them and threatened to kill them they got them to open no since the guards had the keys of the gates on them they removed them and themselves opened the two gates that led to the two wings the left wing on one side and the right wing on the other
and so the guards who happened to be in the two wings found the way closed off they found themselves closed in a trap because at one end of the corridor there was the gate to the rotunda with the comrades who had captured the guards and at the other end of the corridor were the big windows at the far end of the corridor and so there the guards were left with no way out they were scared stiff too because they had no idea how things would go so the thing they did instinctively because it’s probably what’s laid down in their rule-book is that in these cases they have to close the armoured doors and so all that occurred to them to do and all they did was to try and close the doors
and so they managed to get some doors closed no just one door they didn’t get any others closed because in their confusion in their fear they didn’t manage in time to get any others closed they didn’t manage to close them because the comrades who were in the cells immediately stuck brooms broom handles through the bars past the door between the bars and the door stopping the doors from closing you have to picture all this happening in a split second so they really only managed to close just one door there were others they tried to close or forgot about or didn’t make it in time to close the fact is that all the guards surrendered at once they all surrendered in wholesale terror
but in the meantime while those two comrades were taking the guards in the rotunda they were taking three or four guards I don’t know how many in the meantime it turned out that in the right wing I was in the left in a dormitory cell in the right wing the comrades had sawed through the bars there were eight comrades in that dormitory because then you could leave your cell for the midday meal to cook and eat together this was another thing we’d won with the protests there’d been in the months before in that prison and you could get together in a dormitory cell to eat along with other comrades and so at that time up to eight of us could be together in a dormitory
they’d sawed through the bars of the gate and by the time those two comrades seized the two guards in the rotunda they’d already sawed through them and were waiting for that moment they removed the bars of the dormitory cell and the eight of them went out then there were really ten prisoners who were out the eight from the dormitory and the two in the rotunda and that’s how they also got all the guards who were in the second floor corridor obviously I found all this out later because I was locked in my cell I was in the left wing and I saw nothing we just heard loud shouting we heard shouting and we just heard all this uproar the guards trying to close the armoured doors running up and down the shouting but it was all no more than a moment
what happened and what then became known later or at least in part because these stories can’t always be told in full was that very quickly the comrades who’d taken the guards came down with the keys they’d taken from the guards they opened the gate leading to the stairs and they went down to the first floor and they seized all the guards down there and in that way they opened the two wings of the first floor and then they began unlocking the cells of the non-politicals and so all the non-politicals came pouring out of the cells and then they too came up to the second floor and started unlocking all our cells as well
they didn’t go down to the ground floor because it couldn’t be defended like the upper floors and the working prisoners stayed there for the whole duration of the revolt cooped up in their wing between the two floors in revolt and the guards that were outside at this point I saw people wearing masks arriving in my wing they got to my cell and they unlocked every cell in the left wing they unlocked my cell too and then there was enormous confusion and some people told us there’s a revolt we’ve taken the guards we must keep calm put mattresses over the windows because they’re likely to fire teargas rockets into the cells and then everyone put mattresses over the windows and then we all poured out into the corridor
just at the same time as I went out of my cell into the corridor I heard a tremendous rumble an incredible bang what had happened was that a comrade who’d stayed on the first floor to keep watch had seen guards reaching the ground floor and trying to come up guards already turned out in full force so he’d thrown a few grams of plastic explosive but loose I mean not packed in a canister but just with the detonator and the fuse he threw this plastic purely to frighten them away in fact I don’t even think anyone was injured I’m not certain only in that enclosed space it made a terrific bang then the guards all ran away and from that moment the revolt was under way
7
I remember that when I was transferred to that special prison I was a bit scared just that name special prison scared me and the evening before I left I was up all night talking with my cell mates they realized I was frightened and they stayed awake all night with me to keep me company then there was the whole transfer trip which was very long the whole length of Italy chained up in that armoured van but I’d no sooner arrived at the special when that fear more or less went when I got there I was pretty astounded by the way that prison worked I hadn’t had any idea it was like that now that I’m describing it I realize that in fact the atmosphere there was tense to say the least there was enormous tension but on my arrival it looked to me like a big fair
that name special prison I thought when I first got there they could label it as that but it was really a fair and the cells were bazaars you could more or less have anything in your cell all the cells were overflowing with things of every kind you could play musical instruments there were guitars and tamborines bongo drums accordions there was even somebody who had a violin and he played it whenever he wanted you could have every kind and colour of paint you wanted you could have canvases oils tempera pastel crayons charcoal typewriters you could have the books you wanted all the magazines and newspapers you wanted you could have tape-recorders and cassettes football boots and tennis shoes there was no limit to the amount of clothes you could keep in your cell all the shoes all the sweaters all the hats you could keep everything you wanted there in the cells
the association time there as they called it was quite unbelievable considering it was a special there were four hours two in the morning and two in the afternoon there were four exercise hours a day and on top there were two hours twice a week when we could all meet in a big room together and what’s more at the time for the midday meal there was the opportunity for the comrades who were in the single cells to go and eat with the comrades who were in the dormitories which meant association time was this you got up at nine you went for exercise at eleven you went back up and it meant an incredible lot of work for the guards at eleven you went back up from exercise and then they had to organize all the shifting around to escort all the people who were moving to go and eat in other cells
all you had to do was apply to go to another cell you did it on the spot on a slip of paper and that was enough they really should have carried out searches but you can’t start moving sixty people in less than half an hour and search them as well and so everybody moved around with no fuss from one cell to another to go and eat it wasn’t a case of applying a day ahead you did it there on the spot it was a formality for sure they couldn’t keep track of the applications they could maybe do it later on and it helped them most of all to figure out how things fitted to work out from the people who spent time together what the political links were between the comrades the groupings the different political tendencies
the guards were really duty-bound to search you when you left your cell in the morning for exercise and they were duty-bound to search you again when you went back up to your cell and to search you again once more when you left your cell to go and eat in another cell but all this had become impossible they’d stopped doing it and so they’d stopped checking altogether there was this constant movement there was this constant cell locking and unlocking there was this huge mass of objects piled up in the cells and when this is the situation when there are all these areas that you take for yourself that you win for yourself then the situation